The Terrible Twos

Three turned 2 a couple weeks ago. The thank you notes from his party have finally gone out. We are making progress on life returning to normal. Other than the buying a house thing.

I am sure some of this is in my head, but I swear, since Three turned 2, the terrible twos have really let themselves out. My darling little boy has become quite the drama prince and is full of attitude lately. He is two, and he is already rolling his eyes at his mother! This does not bode well for the teen years. Perhaps boarding school will need to take precedence over college savings? When you tell him no, he either goes into a full out temper tantrum, or he gives you these puppy dog eyes that he has obviously gotten from his mother and just looks so gosh darn pathetic. Trouble that child is going to be!

Also, he is starting to repeat everything.

At his birthday party he got these toys. They are his absolute favorite thing to play with. You shake them, put them on the floor, and then off they go. Great fun on our hardwood floors. But sometimes, they run into the walls. A couple days after his party, I was getting ready for work and the husband and Three were hanging out in the living room while Three raced his cars across the floor. Every time the cars would hit the wall, Three would exclaim ‘Aw, cwap’.

Once the husband realized what Three was saying, he started laughing, there by reinforcing the phrase to Three, and rushed into the bathroom where I was showering to tell me the fabulous news. I was all, no way, you are making it up. Until one of the cars sped into the bathroom, and hit the tub.

‘Aw, cwap’ a little voice said. Just like his mama says, ALL. THE. TIME. With the same inflection and everything.

Aw, crap, is right Three. Aw, Crap.

House #2

So, when I said yesterday that we started house hunting this weekend, that wasn’t wasn’t entirely true. We’ve been looking on and off for 2 years. We had put our condo on the market earlier this year, but when it didn’t sell before the tax credit expired we took it off and figured we would figure something out later. That something will most likely be renting it, but we’ll see. We have gone to see about 10 houses and townhouses. We fell in love with a 2001 colonial earlier this year, but with the lack of condo selling, that didn’t work out. And the rest, well, they were, all eh, and served to reinforce what I am looking for in a house.

I am sorta picky.

We live in the raised ranch capital of the world. Our area was pretty heavily developed in the 60’s, and 98% of everything that was built during that time was a raised ranch or a split level. Cheap, efficient housing. And honestly, I hate that style house. I could live with a split level if it was built closer to the 80’s, as those tend to have larger hallways and bigger living spaces. But, those are also more expensive, and it seems silly to go to the top of our price range to buy a house that we don’t really love. And everything that is being built today, would be a HUGE stretch for us financially, and being house poor is something I am not comfortable doing - with my expensive hobbies, a small child, and a nontraditional career choice.

Enter House #2. Finding the listing it was what prompted the trip out on Saturday. Its an atypical cape cod. It was built in 1955. It miraculously has all 3 bedroom upstairs, something that seems to be difficult to find. It has some charm. A good size lot. One side of the house gets the most beautiful light. It has hardwood floors almost everywhere.

It has no master bathroom and the kitchen is currently missing a couple appliances, counter space, and general functionality. The 2 full baths that exist need a full overhaul. One is original to the house, the other seems to have suffered an awful 80’s makeover. And that is only the start of the work, really. The boiler is going to need to be replaced at some point, soon. The windows are going to need to get replaced, and in the short term they need to be pried open as they are all painted shut. The basement will need a good overhaul to make it usable space in the future. It will need a new front door. The roof needs something or other so that it’ll ‘breath’ better.

Knowing how much work we saw that needed to be done, we brought a contractor over to the house last night, just to see if it was even worth getting further involved in it. The things he had to say were both encouraging and discouraging. It won’t take nearly as much as I had feared it would take to get the house ready for move in, and even then, pretty much all of that is the stuff that I want to do to it. Like adding a bathroom to the upstairs and re-purposing the one that’s there to be a master, and giving it a much needed face lift. And the kitchen remodel. The stuff that will make it feel more like home.

The upshot is that its all doable, and the house over all seems to be in pretty good shape for its age. And a lot of the problems are things that are going to exist in any house of this age that we come across in this area. A real inspection would need to be done, obviously, but there are no ginormous red flags from what we could see. The downside obviously is that all this stuff costs money. And pouring another 50k into the house in this market makes me nervous.

The husband is ready to go. He wants to make an offer that is higher than I am okay with. He would accept a counter offer that is higher than my ‘walk away’ from it point. He thinks that doing the work would be a good investment short term, and that really it doesn’t matter since the point of this house hunting excursion is to buy a house that we can live in for 20 years. And in order to make it a 20 year house, this is all stuff that needs to be done.

I look at all of it, and I just see one project after another, and that is just the stuff I can see, now. Who knows what the next 5 - 10 years will bring. And the husband is not a do it yourself husband. I have enough worries about him actually mowing the lawn, I know better than to think that any of these remodel projects are stuff we could do ourselves and have them actually get done.

On the other hand, I can almost see my pretty kitchen when its done. And the slight chance of getting in to the new house for Christmas? That might just be priceless. Its a good house for Christmas lights.

Tales From the Market

The stars seemed to have aligned in our favor. For once.

The husband got some unexpected work in August, giving us an unexpected cushion. Housing prices are still falling. We got a little bit of our own bailout courtesy of my parents. Interest rates are low. We no longer fear that I will loose my job tomorrow. There is a possible case of baby fever developing.

And so, this weekend we started house hunting.

And, I proceeded to get pissed off at people. Oh, and MAYBE we found a house.

But first, the pissed off part.

We gave our realtor 3 houses that we wanted to go look at. One of them is a GIANT 3,000 square foot colonial that is for sale for a ridiculous price. We assumed it needed some work. It probably does, but we also came to find out via our realtor that its a short sale. The price was recently dropped by 30k, and will drop again this week if they don’t have any offers in a last ditch effort by THE BANK to get a sale before the house goes in to foreclosure. BUT, the family wasn’t allowing any showings this weekend. Okay, whatever.

So, we go house hunting to the other 2 houses. House #1 has a pool, which Three went nuts over, but the rest of the house was just not going to work. It was a 1500 square foot split level, and it was just too tiny. I felt very claustrophobic the whole time we were in the house. And no matter what my mom and the realtor said, the living room was not going to work for entertaining. It was barely big enough for the 5 of us that were there, forget having a party. I was just not in love. House #2 is on the possible list.

But house #3 and its 3,000 square feet were still on my mind. So since we would pass by it on our way home, we swung by. The reason the house was having no showings over the weekend? They were having a pool party. When they are more than likely headed into foreclosure.

I understand that people need to live and have fun, no matter what their financial situation is. But I feel like there is a HUGE section of this country who refuses to take responsibility for what they have gotten themselves into. Its always the big bad evil bank’s fault they have defaulted on their mortgage. Its the bank’s fault they are underwater. Recently, the New York Times ran an article that featured people who just stopped paying their mortgage for various reasons. They are now essentially living rent free in their homes while waiting for and delaying the foreclosure process. And I am sure they are also not paying taxes on the land that they are occupying in their towns.

I honestly do not understand how and why they get away with it.

Yes, I know that the banks are not always the most upstanding citizens out there. I know that there were a lot of ‘tricks’ played on people. I know that people were loaned more money than they could have ever realistically paid back.

But I also know that in order to take possession of that home, you had to sign YOUR NAME on the line.

Does personal responsibility really mean nothing in this country?

I say all of this as someone who is currently under water in their current home. We bought our condo in 2005 for an amount of money that it may never be worth again. Even after paying off our second mortgage (thanks, Mom!), we owe more on it than we can sell it for. In fact, our monthly payment is probably more than we can rent it for. This is going to directly impact the amount of house that we buy this time around. Its a decision that we will literally be paying for for a long time. And, I know, we are lucky that we can afford to pay for it.

So I cannot possibly wrap my head around the actions of the owners of House #3. They obviously NEED to sell. One way or another that house is no longer theirs. A short sale kills your credit, but not as bad as foreclosure does and they are running out of time. Wouldn’t you do whatever you need to sell? And if I was the bank, I would be pissed. They will get more money for that house if they sell it as a short sale then they will if they put it out as a foreclosure. But as far as we and our realtor can tell, the owners have not exactly been doing what they can to sell it.

I guess the upside for us is that there are dozens of foreclosures hitting the market here even as we speak. So at least we’ll have a lot to choose from.