Whirlwind

It's been a little crazy in my head the past week or so. As you know, we were ready to put an offer in on the first house I shared with you. Then someone beat us to it.

Back to the drawing board. We looked at 5 more houses. Found one we liked. Thought seriously about putting an offer in, but for some reason (a.k.a. God hinting to me) I was having doubts about it. Had plans to look at it again last night.

Then we found one online we fell in love with. I got excited. Z stopped by during the day yesterday and somehow the door was unlocked so he got in, took pictures & sent them to me. I got super excited. We canceled the showing for house #2- we just wanted to see this new one. The longer I sat at work, the more excited I got about house #3. This would explain this post. And since I tortured you, let me explain why this house is so awesome.

• Colonial style 4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath (!!!)
• Big kitchen, Eat-in breakfast nook
• Separate Dining room
• Big formal living room PLUS big "bonus"/family rm./den
  
• Full basement
• In a beautiful subdivision
• Great school district (super important in resale)
• Asking $50k under value
• Hard wood floors in majority of rooms
• Tons of potential
  
• 2 car garage
• Nice kitchen cabinets
• We're first time home buyers- which means we'd get the $8k tax credit- plenty of $$ to refinish floors, paint, update light fixtures, put tile in kitchen & baths

Want to know what they're asking for this gem??? $79,500. Yeah. Insane. Monthly mortgage would be almost the same as what we're paying in rent. A-MAZE-ing!

See why I had "ants in my pants"?? I didn't want to tell you though, because I was afraid of something falling through. And really, chances are, you don't care to hear every little up and down in our house-searching journey. So I only wanted to tell you once I'd seen it and knew more. Well, now I do.

The house was just as great as it seemed in the pictures. I FELL IN LOVE with the neighborhood- people were out in their driveways chatting with each other & walking with their kids. Love.

I'm sure you're all waiting for me to say BUT. Well, the time has come.

The "BUT" came when we went down into the basement. It had previously been finished- cheap carpet, cheap wood paneling on the walls, a dropped tile ceiling, & a small wall put up to section off the furnace area. Like most basements, it had a sump pump in the ground to prevent flooding. When the bank foreclosed, the power was either turned off or at some point the pump stopped working. Plus we've had a lot of rain, and warm weather. I'm sure you see where this is going.

Water accumulated a little bit (less than 1/2 inch) in places, and saturated the carpet. The dampness pretty much ruined the wood panels. No biggy. We could gut it-we don't need a finished basement. But, of course, with the hot weather came mold. It got all over parts of the walls, a little on the carpet, and in a spot on the ceiling tiles. Ugh. Freaked me out at first, so we've done a little checking around.

It wasn't enough to deter us from wanting the house. We've learned that it CAN be removed & the problem taken care of. However, it needs to be removed RIGHT AWAY so that it doesn't get into the joices or creep to the first floor. Then we'd be in trouble. My boss said the dropped ceiling probably helped contain it to the basement. We've made the decision that if the bank doesn't take care of it right away, we wouldn't get it.

We'll be getting a 203k loan- it's a rehab loan that allows you to get extra $$ to fix the place up & doesn't require that the house pass inspection at the time of closing (all FHA & conventional loans do). But we were told it would take 6-8 weeks to close. Therefore, since we can't touch it til closing, the bank would have to take care of the mold NOW. In 6-8 weeks who knows what damage the mold might cause. We've been praying for God's guidance in this so much. I figured if the bank wouldn't take care of it, that was our sign that this wasn't the one.

So Z finds out this morning that the bank IS getting estimates for the mold removal & will be doing it. Praise the Lord! But there's another offer in- hasn't been accepted yet, so we still have time. We're meeting with our agent after work to sign an offer a little higher than we planned on in hopes that we get it- with a clause that states that the mold must be removed, of course.

Whew! See why I titled this whirlwind? Seriously, if you read all this, you're a champ. Especially with no pictures! I don't have any on my work computer, so I'll have to show you those later. So anyway, I'll keep you posted on how everything goes! Please be praying that if it's God's will that we get this house, everything will go smoothly. I would love to not have to worry about people jumping in and beating us on getting houses. I'd like to just start breakin' out some handy-woman moves & make that place over!! :)