Thursday, November 11, 2010

House #3 - St. John

At this point, we were hoping that third time would be a charm. However, we didn't know which house would be lucky number 3...

We waited about a month to see if anything else was going to come on the market, and during this time, M's father passed away. We continued to look, but realized that time was moving fast and we were going to be wanting a place of our own pretty soon. J had accepted a position in Central KS, but M & J were still living in their house in Manhattan at the time. This led to J (and occasionally M) living with J's parents (and occasionally M's mother). Although this worked out just fine, and M & J were VERY thankful to have a place to stay, we were ready to have our own place. We had to be out of our home in two months, and we needed to get the buying process started.

After waiting for more options that it seemed were never coming, we decided to re-evaluate the homes we had already seen to see if there was something that could work for us, whether on a temporary basis or a situation where we could flip the house and get something else in the future if we didn't love the house we purchased. There were no quality options for renting, so this led us to re-evaluate past options.

We narrowed it down to two places we thought might work - both homes we had already seen at least once. One was located on Clark St, and was a former veterinarian's home. It was very custom-built - picture a weird layout, carpet in the master bath, walking through an open master bath to get to the bedroom, etc. To top it off, an awkward red and black checkerboard carpeted wet bar area and a linoleum tiled rec room were not at the top of our list. This home had large rooms, a main floor laundry room and the most updated kitchen we had seen, but these things did not make up for other things we would have to fix, much less the price. Given its need for remodeling and its age, we felt it was way overpriced and didn't think we stood a chance to buy it at the price we were willing to pay.

Clark Street

Our second option was the house we never really considered the first time around. We were so taken by the interior blemishes that we hadn't really looked at potential - all we saw was what was there. The price was below what we were willing to pay, but it still had issues. An awful 18" back door. Lots of holes and scrapes down doors and woodwork that was scattered with multiple colors of paint. The basement was finished, which was great, but it seemed that the kitchen and bathrooms would have to go immediately, and this entire home was going to need lots of TLC to get back to what it should be and even more to improve it. It was in a great neighborhood, with a large back yard and had lots of potential to become a great home. We just had to decide if we were willing to put in the work, the time and the money to make this home a great home and our home.

St. John
After visiting both homes again, taking family to have them share their opinions, we decided to put in an offer. (Hopefully) considering all things and weighing all the pros and cons, we chose to put in an offer on the house on St. John. We called our realtor, and after talking through our options, we put in our offer and waited. We received a counter-offer, and then chose to counter-offer one time. If our offer wasn't accepted at this point, we were willing to walk away. We had done it twice before, and the third time would be no different. Now all we had to do was wait...

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