Just Keep Swimming

I have to keep telling myself this. We have our conditional mortgage commitment letter so yay to that! However, since this is a 203k rehab loan they keep telling us it takes longer than usual.

We still don't have a confirmed settlement date from the mortgage co, but a little birdy let it slip ( our contractor) that they told him May 10th.. We are supposed to be having a conference call today to get our timeline so fingers crossed that they give us a solidified date but until then we will......

just keep swimming =-)

Very Productive Day

Our contract was ratified officially last week by the seller (the bank) they were dragging their feet a little but everything is good to go as of right now.

We had our 1st contractor come up to do an estimate today and we should expect numbers back by the weekend.  Hopefully the numbers come in where we want them b/c we really liked this contractor. He was very personable yet professional and knowledgeable. We do have a few other ppl coming out over the course of the next few days though so we shall see....

Something Bigger...Soon to be Better

So as I said in my last post the response would always be there is something bigger and better waiting for you guys out there.... Well we found it!

I started looking at houses again last month but re-sales this time.  The area we want to move into ( same town we were originally building in) has a lot of competitively priced re-sales b/c there are a lot of new home builders in the area as well. Along with the market still being kind of crappy your money can go a long way in Kent County DE.

Well in my searches I stumbled upon this gem... Kind of by accident. I had seen it online and thought about requesting a showing but I knew that w/ no stove we could not buy this house w/ an FHA loan. Somehow when we made our appt's to go see some other properties I transposed this house w/ another MLS listing and we actually saw this house by mistake ( a great mistake that was)

In our research we found out that this is a Ryan Homes "Victoria" Model... the new version of this is the Victoria Falls (click the link and check out the virtual tour)

It is a bank owned/REO property that is selling for A LOT less than market value (even in this market) With that being said it needs work! The previous owners got foreclosed upon and took almost EVERYTHING with them before they left. When I say everything I mean, they gutted the entire kitchen cabinets, oven, refrigerator everything, took all toilets but 1 out of the house, took all of the interior doors, "forcibly removed" the central air units ... they even took the deck!

BUT... even with all of that said the house is still a very nice house. So we decided to look into the 203K Rehab loan program to see how we could work rehabbing the house into our mortgage. Well looking into turned into applying for/getting pre approved. Within  2 weeks of 1st seeing the house in person we went ahead and put an offer in on it. After a little back and forth from the bank we are now under contract for this house !!!!! The best part about it is, even after we do our $30k reno job we will still be paying about $225 LESS per month than we would have for the Venice.


So stay tuned as we embark on this new adventure... Instead of "Building our Venice" we are now "Renovating our Victoria"

A Dream Deffered... Well Kind Of....

Hi All,

Boy has it been a while since I have been on here! A LOT has happened since we last chatted.

1. We got married yay!

married life is great!

2. A few weeks after the wedding all of the things with the Venice fell through. We had gotten switched to a second mortgage company from NVR in the beginning of Nov. NVR took us through the ringer to in the end ultimately say they couldn't close us. The jist of that story is, since we signed our contract so many months before we actually started construction we had to get our credit re-pulled a couple of times because the credit reports had expired by the time they went to start construction and then again when it was time for settlement. A couple of times would have been fine but it wound up being about 5-6 times. Because of that they come back saying,"oh we can't close you b/c the credit score has dropped too low"   -_-... are you serious!?! So there was a whole back and forth about that, they were very nonchalant through most of our process.  It actually took us being passed off to another company before anyone at NVR acknowledged that someone had messed up. I think we were a few weeks into the process with the next company before someone said they were trying to pull strings and call in favors w/ the new company b/c a few ppl at NVR had "dropped the ball on our case" ...right =-/

Any who the new company tried to make it work for us but one of their stipulations was they needed 6 months reserve of mortgage payments ON TOP OF what was needed for down payment and closing costs. So essentially they were looking for close to $19,000 to be sitting in our bank in order for us to close....Ok that was all well and good UNTIL Nov 17th.... b/c we were paying for a majority of the wedding ourselves we had the money in the account, but once we needed to pay vendors that money was going to disappear quickly. So then it became a game of trying to get to settlement before the next months bank statements came out that were going to show that the full $19,000 was not there any more (keep in mind we only expected to have to come out of pocket about $8500 so this extra $10 grand was a crazy stretch). In the end it all fell apart b/c ....Wait for it... I work for family WHICH HAS BEEN THE CASE SINCE WE FIRST WENT INTO RYAN HOMES AND SPOKE WITH AN SR!!! I am a w2, full time employee, w/ tax returns and the full 9 it s just that the new company said "it's not at arms length employment and must be looked at the same as being self employed" ...Umm what? if that was the problem why did no one who has known this information for AN ENTIRE YEAR  by that point say anything?!?!?!?!?

Needless to say I ran the gamut of emotions during this time, furious, heart broken, annoyed, disappointed ...you name it I felt it.

 After we started telling ppl about it falling thorough we always got the same response...If it was meant to be it would have worked out... don't worry there is something bigger and better out there waiting for you guys... at the time I was a little skeptical but now I'm thinking they might have been right... wanna know why...read my next post =-)