Wow, I haven’t posted in awhile! I was on the east coast helping my sister with her newborn twins– they kept me plenty busy for a week.
To top it off, not much new is going on with the house hunt. We are using the appraisal and the inspection reports as leverage to hopefully have the selling bank repair the plumbing and bring it up to code, although there is no guarantee that will work.
In an ideal world, the selling bank will realize they won’t be able to sell the house in the condition it is in, and they will fix the problem, or at the very least, give us money to fix the problem ourselves. We had discussed pushing for 203K, but we really don’t feel comfortable pushing the loan that high.
If the bank refuses to fix the plumbing issues, we might be forced to just walk away. As much as we want a house, it isn’t worth digging a hole financially in a house where we might not get the money back in the long run anyway.
On a positive note, we did receive conditional approval on the loan from Bank of America. Conditional, of course, on whether or not we want the house, and whether the problems are repaired. So now we have a loan and possibly no house to go with it.
Brian and I have been thinking about our next moves, especially if this house does not work out for one reason or another. As much as we both want to keep looking to find our perfect house, we are both getting really burnt out by this process. We knew it would be difficult, but I don’t think we imagined this.
As much as we said we would never do it, we are both leaning toward looking at a few rental properties if this deal falls through. We don’t want to waste money on rent, but at the same time, renting would allow us the freedom to keep looking for a house at our own pace, without feeling rushed.
Renting would also give us some freedom and wiggle room were we to ever need to move in the next few years. Although a move isn’t in the plans, neither one of us plan on staying in our current positions at work forever. If either of us were to get a dream job in the next few years, it would be nice to only have to unload an apartment and not deal with trying to sell a house, especially if the market doesn’t improve.
We aren’t jumping to any harsh decisions– we are still waiting to hear back on the bank’s decision with the La Londe house. We are just realizing that we may need to keep our options further open than we had originally planned.
