We bought a house! And then it broke.

As you know, E and I have been house hunting for awhile now. After a crap ton of house hunting, several offers, some accepted and other rejected and a few bidding wars E and I officially closed on our very first home.

And then it broke. 

I should back up to our initial viewing of the house where we first met the seller. We had just submitted an offer on a larger and more expensive house down the street that needed some major work when we decided to look at back up houses. This house had just come on the market and we had an appointment to see it but the agent didn't show. Whoops. As we're waiting outside, the seller pulls up, apologizes, and opens the house for us to see. Only he didn't stop there. Instead of stepping to the side, he takes us on a full tour of the cutest little cape cod you've ever seen. He was charming, the house was charming AND updated, the backyard was a miniature paradise and we loved it from the beginning. Lucky for us, the seller also loved us and when we submitted our offer that day at $8,000 over asking, they accepted over the 20+ other offers they received.

Thus began the weirdest home buying process you can imagine. The seller wanted to be extremely involved and loved to talk, he would send me text messages or call and keep me on the phone for an hour and a half. He wanted to share his life story and seemed obsessed with the fact that E and I are white. He was there every time we viewed the house, wanted to come along for our inspection, and continuously assured us that whatever the house needed he would take care of. It was unusual, but we loved the house and wanted to keep the seller happy so we rolled with it.

Our home inspection take one went pretty well. The house was built in the 1940s but seemed to be in good shape.  The inspector gave our house an 8.5/10 but said he couldn't go under the house due to a flea infestation. The seller, who you'll remember was home during the inspection, called an exterminator on the spot, they came out a couple days later and the fleas were taken care of. The inspector was able to go under the house for home inspection take two, checked it out, noted some minor things but so far so good.  The seller was following through with his promise to take care of repairs.

Finally, our home inspection report arrives. Since our house is older, it needs major electrical work to ground all the outlets. The foundation needed a couple posts swapped and some plywood sheeting, the roof needs some flashing and the stairs weren't to code so they pose a trip hazard. The termite report required by our state also requested that the seller trim back his trees and bushes that were growing onto the roof and fix a small plumbing leak. With the electrical being the big ticket item, the most basic safety repairs, excluding the little things, came to about $10,000. We sent over the report and request for repairs and this is where things really started to fall apart.

Instead of countering back or deciding which items he wanted to fix, the seller became personally offended by our repair request. He felt we were making up the numbers and decided he didn't want to pay for anything. An awkward few days pass before he contacts me via phone and I explain during the 1.5 hour phone call that we asked only for the quoted amounts from reliable and affordable people. He takes the time to tell me all about how licensed contractors are only out to get your money, electrical outlets don't really need to be grounded, knob and tube was better anyway and he can do the work himself because his family member was an electrician. Oh boy. Major red flag that he's cheap.

While all this is going on, our agents are dealing with his agent who is not at all on the up and up. He can't seem to get his paperwork together on time and they have to bug him repeatedly for basic forms. They tell him his seller has gone rogue, isn't licensed or qualified to do the work he's now decided he wants to do, he's liable for everything he's tinkering with and we need to reach some sort of compromise before the deal falls through. The agent finally stops the madness, and the seller, his agent, and our agents give up a little money to get us to just under 5k in closing cost credits. It's a far cry from the 10k we needed but at this point we just wanted him to stop touching our house. More red flags but we still love the house.

With that deal in place, we move on to the termite tenting which somehow hasn't happened yet because the seller is dragging his feet. We're closing in 3 days, 2 days, 1 day and finally refuse to fund escrow until the house has been tented and we're given termite clearance. The seller tried to trim the plants himself (Cheap, cheap, cheap!), couldn't because he's not an arborist or gardener, and told us the termite company would take care of it. Thus begins yet another disaster with our house.

The termite tent comes off, we get termite clearance, fund escrow with our down payment and officially own our first house! Hooray! Except not. I pull up to the house, take our key out of the lock box, and our house is a disaster. The termite company didn't trim anything and instead opted to tent OVER our beautiful yard. Everything was dead. When I went to unlock the front door I heard a hissing sound. The termite company had stepped on our water service pipe, cracked it, and it was now leaking under our house. The phone lines had been knocked down. Our drop sprinkler lines had been pulled up. Welcome to home ownership. 

 Before

After

Our Realtors, who are the one amazing decision we made 100% right, stepped up to the plate and helped us fix the immediate issues. They called in and paid for an emergency plumber to clamp our cracked pipe, contacted and met with the termite company to negotiate some repairs, dealt with the sellers agent over the blatant violation of our contract and we made some baby steps forward. The termite company agreed to cut out the plants they had killed, doing more minor damage in the process, and insisted that they had been following the seller's orders. Apparently he tried to negotiate a cheaper price and insisted that we didn't want the plants cut. We now can't see around all the red flags waving.

Of course though, the damage wasn't isolated to the exterior of the house. Because the seller was cheap and didn't want to hire movers, they scratched the crap out of our original hardwood floors taking out their furniture. They took chunks out of our plaster walls. He smoked like a chimney and the walls were saturated with his cigarettes. And without all their crap in the house, we could see what they'd been hiding. The seller was super into DIY and being a fucking cheap ass. He basically DIY'd the pretty but CHEAP and not terribly functional kitchen that looked so nice. He DIY'd the bathrooms. He DIY'd the deck. And he did it all badly.

Not only were the fixtures and materials cheap, the seller didn't hire a designer where he should have so the layouts are awkward and don't make the best use of space. The kitchen has no pantry. The bathrooms don't have storage. Everything he did "looks" nice on the surface but isn't quality when you examine it more closely. I don't know what he was thinking.

Now the good news, because there is good news. We are home owners. Despite the sellers colossal mess, our dead garden, our scratched floors, our nicotine soaked walls, and our busted pipe, the house itself has fabulous bones. The neighborhood is quite. Once everything is redone, it's going to be gorgeous. Despite all this crap going on, we still love it and we still can't wait to bring our baby home to their first home.

17 Weeks - Home Offers!

Today E and I officially signed a sellers counter offer to accept our first house! This house and lot is a little smaller than the previous one we offered on (with less closets, boo) but it's got good bones and is very cute. It's far from a done deal though, there were counters sent to several people but I have a feeling they're going to pick ours. Then, we move into a whirlwind of inspections and contractors because the house we offered on needs some work before we can move in.

Another row of bumps!

Actually, some work might be an understatement. It needs a new kitchen, with walls knocked down, a small addition to add a bathroom, flooring replaced, laundry moved to the garage and the sliding doors moved to a different wall. It also needs some fencing, drywall and insulation in the garage, and floors refinished. So really, most of the house when you think about it. As long as the addition is done, we could probably wait to renovate the homes two existing bathrooms. One is kind of unusable but the other is in good shape despite being outdated. The floors could also probably wait to be refinished, but it would be so much easier to do that before all our furniture is all moved in.

In the meantime, our house hunt has started to merge with my pregnancy in my dreams. The other day I dreamt that I had to meet the contractor but I couldn't because I went into labor. I was trying to find someone else to meet the contractor while sitting in my hospital bed arguing with the nurses that I couldn't be in labor because I had a house to renovate. Clearly I've got a lot on the brain!

15.5 weeks - So busy!

Oh man, it's been such a busy couple of weeks! It's still early stages, but E and I have officially thrown our hat in the game to buy our first house. As exciting as it is, it's also kind of terrifying. SoCal has an incredibly competitive and expensive housing market and trying to break into that is not easy, especially at a price point where we're comfortable.

For starters, our current neighborhood is totally out. The properties here are all well over a million, as are in they in pretty much every other neighborhood we'd like to live in. To find a place in a "normal" price range,  you know, half a million (can you feel my sarcasm from there?) we're having to stretch both our budget and our location comfort zone. A good school district is pretty much out of reach as well, so we're looking at a charter, private school or moving in 5 years.

We've been trying to avoid falling into the usual pitfalls of first time home buyers. The market here is so competitive that most people need to offer on 5-10 properties before they get accepted. We told ourselves this over and over but of course, we ended up getting caught in the most obvious, giant, glaring pot hole. We fell in love with a house. It was gorgeous, the neighborhood would work for us, and we wanted it, bad. 3 beds, 2 baths, hardwood floors, a gorgeous, spacious kitchen and a huge yard I could picture our baby and dog playing in. Since this is SoCal, it already had two over asking price offers on the table, so we put in an offer 5k higher with super appealing closing terms. Then we began dreaming about where furniture would go, made an appointment to bring our dog to walk the neighborhood and show our parents and.....

We didn't get it. 

Of course we didn't get it. 

In this case, there's nothing we could have done to get it. The owner was a real estate company who was acting as their own listing agent and who we're pretty sure was representing their own buyer. Super, super sketchy. They let over asking price offers pile up, told their preferred buyer what to offer over, and then accepted. We didn't stand a chance and predictably, I am heartbroken. 

We're now back at square one and none of the other houses seem to measure up. There are so few in our price range to begin with that finding something to look at is difficult enough, let alone finding something you actually want to offer on. Luckily, we're not in a huge rush to buy and we still have 5 months before we need to start moving if we want to get settled before baby comes. Although there doesn't seem to be anything special out there now, I'm hoping that our new home will be among the properties that hit the market over the next 5 months.