Well after all the hell my wife and I have gone through in the past year (for those who do not know, look at bottom of post for the LONG story… lol) with looking for houses, we finally found what will hopefully be our new house by the end of the year. It’s located near Hampton Manor in East Greenbush (off 9&20). It has an oversized 1 car garage with plenty of room for tools and to be able to work on both sides of a car comfortably. There is also a brand new above ground pool on one side yard, a decent size back yard, and another large side yard. It’s on a double lot so the yard size is quite nice.
The house itself is 1600sq.ft. with a lot of DIY upgrades that aren’t perfect, but there doesn’t seem to be any major issues, just some minor finishing work that was not finished. Its got a nice size kitchen, dining room, and a good place for my bar :excited. The living room is a very nice “man-cave” set up with a perfect set-up for my projector… and room to put a small pool table behind the couch (which I will be steeling from my dad since he doesn’t want it anymore). There is 1 bedroom downstairs, and 2 upstairs so plenty of sleeping room for anyone who is at the bar too long… lol. And quite possibly my favorite part is that in addition to the boiler hot water heat, there is also a wood stove and a pellet stove for some free heating (minus cost of wood/pellets). My other favorite part is that due to the circumstances, we are getting the house for around $40k less than the local comps so with some little finishing touches, and time for the market to come back up, we should be able to re-sell the house at a decent profit.
We are going through SEFCU and at one hell of a rate. The final approval was done Wednesday and thanks to our one and only Jammer, the inspection was done on Thursday. And def. a big 2 thumbs up to Jammer for a great thorough inspection at a very fair price. He told me everything that needed to be done and seemed to double check everything to make sure nothing would be missed. A lot more thorough than any inspector I’ve dealt with in the past (for our last house purchase attempt, and my mother-in-law’s house which we are currently renting). And he broke everything down perfectly so I am 100% confident with what needs to be done. So now the only 2 hurdles that remain are the FHA inspection which will be “interesting” and the under-writer approval of the loan. Hopefully everything will go smoothly and we will be able to have the closing before the end of the year.
LONG STORY (for those that know the story already, scroll down for pics):
About a year ago my wife and I started our search for a house. At the time my wife was getting the loan with her mom co-signing for it. After looking at multiple houses we found the first one and put an offer in. The offer was accepted and we thought we were good. Unfortunately the seller continued showing the house after the offer was accepted and about 2 days later the seller received a better offer and used the lawyer clause of the contract to break the contract with us and take the other offer. Morally it was completely wrong, but whatever. So the hunt was back on. We found 2 more houses that we liked but our offers weren’t accepted and we continued looking. We finally found another house we liked and had our offer accepted once again. This time we went through everything; the inspection, the appraisal, we even had our current apartment completely packed and ready to go. The day before the closing we received a call from our realtor asking if we knew why the bank kept asking for an extension. We told her we had no idea and that we were all ready to go for the next day. She did some digging and apparently when the loan was approved it was through Countrywide and when good ole bank of america bought them out, they went through all of their loan approvals with a fine tooth comb. Well the underwriter for b.o.a. didn’t like that my wife was making a shift differential for working the night shift and refused to count that towards her income (even though she had been doing it for over 5 years). Without that extra income the underwriter denied the loan so after paying around $1000 (I believe, i could be a little off though) between the inspection, the appraisal fee, etc, we no longer had a loan approval and once again lost out on the house. So we decided to give up for the time being and since then I’ve been busting ass trying to get my debt down and my credit up.
Fast forward to about 2 months ago. I finally decided to give it another go after I paid my truck off and got some other debts paid off. I received the approval and the hunt began again. This time started off just like last time. Put an offer in on the first house, but another offer was put in at the exact time that was the same bottom dollar amount but ours had the seller concession with it so the sellers took the other offer instead even though ours was in first… oh well. Then we had another offer that was just barely beat out in a similar fashion. So now we are onto this house and hoping that everything goes smoothly from here.
And now finally some pics since you’ve read so much already… lol
Front of the house:
Side hard with pool:
Back yard:
Garage:
Main entry-way with wood stove:
Looking from “entry room” towards kitchen:
Kitchen:
Looking from kitchen towards living room:
Living room / man-cave:
Master bedroom:
Closet/storage space and past that is the 3rd bedroom (2nd is downstairs). The upstairs bedroom has a hatch stairway down to the kitchen.
Front porch… which will have the washer/dryer (currently in basement) and will be the R6 winter storage room… lol
