We have been living with my mother in law now for...7 months. After selling our townhouse at a bit of a loss--actually we were only about $500 short of paying off our bills for remodeling--we have been trying to save up enough for a down payment.
Our first mortgage company took $ 375 from us and then never returned any phone calls...had to find another lender quick. Have never seen of our money back. Moral--don't go with online lenders.
First house we looked at and put an offer on--outbid by someone else--I thought this was supposed to be a buyers market.
Second house we put an offer in on it was accepted. Then the adventures of flood insurance. This house was not built properly for a flood zone so it looked like flood insurance was going to be $3600/ year. We couldn't do that. We only found out 1 week before we were supposed to close and only after shelling out $1970 for an engineer to inspect the house and for repairs to the house. Now the sellers won't give us our $5000 earnest money back. NEVER pay for anything out of escrow. It's money you just loose if there is a battle concerning earnest money. So...I think we will have to take them to court and just hope to see our money back sometime in the next few years. That doesn't help us any on buying another house. I guess we will be camped out with my mother in law a few more months to recover.
Not that we can afford anything that is currently on the market here anyway. Although we have slowly prepared ourselves for the thought of a $450,000 mortgage...it won't buy much of anything out here. You would think we live in California. Oh wait we do it's California East. The problem in Gardnerville is that so many retirees, vacationeers and investors from California have bought here that no working class family can afford a home. It is so bad that the demographics of the community have changed enough they are looking at shutting down schools because there are no kids to fill them. Try driving through town on a Sunday morning. Everyone is grey haired and moving at 10mph under the speed limit.
We did find another house we liked after our escrow fell through, but weren't comfortable in putting in an offer until we were officially out of escrow on the other one. Someone else bought it the day we looked at it. Basically outbid twice in this market!!
No wonder they say buying a house is one of the most stressful things you will ever do. I would say we are experiencing the worst case scenario and it's supposed to be a buyers market!!!!!! Scott say's it's the Bushey curse and I married into it.
Our last glimmer is a builder who got our name from one of Scott's dad's old coworkers who boards his horses. He wanted us to come see him because he owns a development and they are being very "aggressive" right now. Unfortunately I believe our budget is much lower than what he had thought when he called us. The houses in this development are selling for 525's-800's. He was going to crunch some numbers to see if he might be able to build us a house for our budget. If it works out, then I might believe our awful home hunting experience was for a reason.
Other than that...no attempts at starting a family while living with the mother in law. Still have debt from old nightmares...the RV. Can't get rid of that either. I feel like we are drowning. When are things going to get better. Our entire married life thus far has been one huge problem and stress after another. More than some people see in 30 years of marriage and it's only been a year and a half. I feel like the cosmos are trying to split us up...or maybe just make us stronger. It really has begun to feel like the whole world is against us. It is been really hard to keep up my usually optimistic attitude.
I keep telling myself we should really think that we are lucky to not have gotten stuck in the house and found out later there were problems with the construction and flood insurance. Maybe we are lucky that the three houses we wanted didn't come through because they were not meant to be our home. Maybe we are meant to build our home, where every closet and fixture is exactly where we want it....Just maybe.
I miss all of my family!!! Especially my sisters. Once things settle down and God willing we find a house. I'll come out to see you.
Love
Heather
