The housing play by play...and here's the snap!

So last week...we found a house we liked. No wait....we found a house we fell in LOVE with. :)
We have spent the last 4 months looking at newer homes because we wanted a newer home for many reasons. Number one they tend to be a bit more spacious or open versus broken up (and technically we have that here kind of, the current house as an open feel to it because the doorways are so wide), and #2 they tend to be quite a bit less maintenance. Our criteria originally was we didn't want to entertain anything older than 20 yrs unless it was really kept up and redone. Because of that we have seen probably 30+ houses that had similar square footage (between 2000-3000) that all had different layouts, but only to a degree.

One thing I found out was, when looking for a 5BR home, if you go under 2500sq ft, you sacrifice one of the living areas on the main level. There was one house in particular that had this situation and while I loved this house, upon really thinking about it (and bringing my sil in it to ask her opinion) I realized that that was just too small. One of my bigger fears, is getting a house that is TOO big. I know that sounds ridiculous being that I am a mom of 8 kids, but if you know me you know that I tend to be a minimalist. What I don't want is a huge house that I have to clean and care for when we don't NEED that kind of space. A lot of the homes we have seen were not too big (I think any over 3K sq ft would have felt that way honestly), it became very clear awhile back that it had to be over that 2500K mark to work.

This of course put an even greater twist to this situation, because lets face it...even in this buyers market we currently live in, 5 BR homes are still hard to come by (especially ones on the newer side).

There was also the budget issue. Honestly we would be hard pressed to get a house of this proportion if the economy were not as such. While my hubby makes great money, I refuse, REFUSE to be house poor. I like having cash flow each month that does not include CC's (we have 1, it has a very low limit, we pay it off every month...thats it), so because of that we needed to have a strict budget or else figure something else out. So far we have been able to find quite a few candidates for our obsession (Dean's little key phrase to help relieve the guilt we feel for obsessing over houses day in and day out lol).

The first house we almost bit on didn't meet a lot of the criteria we now currently have. We were less than 8 hours away from submitting our offer on that house before we pulled it, and thank God we did! It was built in the late 70's and while it was huge (3000K sq ft plus a full finished basement the same size,...yeah HUGE)...it needed a ton of updating that I felt would literally break us over the next few years financially. I don't want to spend future windfalls/bonus checks to update a house, no thanks. I would much rather take vacations and pay for braces for 8 kids without making costly monthly payments....things like that.

The next almost house is the one we have been waiting on for the last 60+ days now. It is a short sale which basically means "be prepared to wait a really long time with no certainty that your getting it". It has been a VERY long 60 days. Honestly during the entire wait I have wondered if God didn't send us that one to put us off for that time to usher in THE house after the fact. The jury is still out on that one...as of right now we know the bank is working on it, and the seller is hoping we are interested, but we have kept looking jic something else comes available. As of right now we are no longer under contract in our offer though because they passed the 60 days deadline of the offer (they being the bank). The sitch is complicated...the house has 2 loans on it, both held by the same bank but the $ amount owed versus what we offered is very different. The house is only worth market wise right now about 2/3rds of the amount owe, to the tune of $100K less. This sadly is the situation wit many Michigan home values if not all right now. Our house is no different. We bought it at $130K and it is currently worth $66K, thanks to all the neighborhood foreclosures. Nice huh?

In the meantime, we have found 2 others that did not pan out. The first was a beautiful HUD home with 4BR's plus an office on the main floor for the 5th, but it had no A/C, appliances and no fence. Because its a HUD they require 2% closing automatically...so between those 4 things, there was no way financially we could swing it. We have lots of $ saved, but def not that much.
The second one was the more recent house where we put in an offer that was declined (in other words they scoffed at it). We didn't low ball or anything, we offered what our realtor suggested for comparable in the area, and while it wasn't our highest and best we wanted to see if they would negotiate and this was our starting point. After being dissed the first time LOL, we decided to come back 10K higher...well that offer they never even acknowledged! Even the realtor never answered it. I took that as my sign that it was not the one (even though it was a great house! :) ). Disappointing,...yes but while it stunk I really knew in my heart it was meant to be. (see previous post to evaluate my psyche lol).

Which brings us to the current day, Monday April 5th. As of this morning, i am appy to report that we have found a very unlikely beautiful home,...on a very unlikely huge lot in the city limits. The location is smack dab in the center of everything in the downriver area. The neighborhood is very nice, feels secluded even though it is literally minutes from grocery/target/movie theater etc.

When I first saw the ad, I was willing to consider it simply because it had a welcoming feel to the picture of the front of the house. The ad said it was built in 1981...which kind of concerned me, but it also said it had been remodeled 8 yrs ago and from the pics it looked somewhat updated (not really my taste but it wasn't 1980's either). Our realtor was kind of concerned because of the age, but we decided to go see it last week anyway while we were waiting on the short sale house.

And as this story goes...we have fallen in love with it!! Here are the details...it was redone 8 yrs ago, COMPLETELY redone apparently because we learned from their realtor while we were looking at the house that the house was struck by lightening 8 yrs ago and burned nearly to the ground so the ins. paid to completely rebuild it from the ground up. You can tell that's what has happened because no expense was spared! It has hardwood floors through most of the house, and the rooms that do have carpet are really nice upgraded (they may even be newer than 8 yr because they are immaculate). The kitchen is gourmet, the bathrooms have nice tile top to bottom. Now there are things about it that I'm not super crazy about, BUT...thats how it goes when looking for a house on a budget. Unless you have endless amounts of $ to spend on a house, your not going to get everything you want.

What we are looking at is nearly half an acre of land in the city. That alone is worth the price we are paying. The yard isn't fenced (one of the drawbacks) but because the house is in such awesome shape we won't need the extra $ to fix the other things we were going to have to is many of the other houses (such as all new carpeting, appliances, etc.). The house also comes with....are you ready for this???? A HOT TUB!! *squeeee*

I think the thing that sets this one apart from the others we have seen though is that when you walk in it feels like a home...not just a house. Almost all of the other houses we have looked at had these major cathedral ceilings in several areas of the house, which are nice don't get me wrong, but in order to paint those you either have to own scaffolding, or hire it done. Mrs. Cheap says she doesn't like the idea of having to hire ANYONE to do something like that in her house LOL. In this shortsale house thats exactly what would be going on because the entry is 2 story (and in desperate need of paint...its currently light blue which looked nice with the previous owners decor, but not mine lol).

It does have higher ceilings in the great room, but with a taller ladder they are accessible. The lot has lots of trees, landscaping, an outdoor sound system, brick paved patio (thats huge), a real fireplace, 2.5 baths, oh and a huge dining room that will easily fit my great big table for all 10 of us, YAY!! :) The house is darling, and very homey. It's so...us.

So with that said, as of this afternoon we are putting in an offer on it. We are so excited about this one...but differently so. I have a good feeling about it, and so does Dean. We are trying not to get our hopes up but its really hard because there is so much to love about this one it would definitely be the one that got away if we don't get it. We think the owner is fairly motivated as his kids are all grown and at college or older, and his wife passed away a few years ago so it is just him in the house, and the neighbor (yes already met one lol) said that he is hardly ever there anymore because he tends to be with his girlfriend...makes sense now as to why the house is spotless. :)

So I'll be back with an update hopefully in the next day or two at most.

Today I have video to upload of the kids Easter egg hunt yesterday. Daddy had to work so i cam'ed it all for him to see and it turned out good. This week is spring break week so i might actually have some time here or there to post pics of some things I've been wanting to share as well. For now I have a busy day ahead of me with a doc appt for 2 of the kids and tackling the last of the stuff to be put away up stairs, oh and a wall border upstairs to come down. I best get busy in case we get some good news this week :)