I'm home with a sinus infection today--already got the antibiotics, but the fatigue's just wiping me out and the sinus pressure's threatening to trigger a migraine . . . but I can type with my eyes closed, so you're getting updates. Woohoo! On the plus side, it's the first sinus infection in five months, and only my third of the year, both of which are near-records for me (at the very least, it's the first time I've been in this situation in some years)--so all the word medical professionals have been doing with me to get to the root of the problem seems to be helping.
So . . . there is a house. RH saw it driving by a historic B&B for work and noticed the For Sale sign months ago. But we've been having financing problems (the "temporary" status of my contract job and a couple places he's never owed money to deciding to send him to collections and then failing to clear it up properly), so we've been moping. Without pre-approval, we didn't have any good way of getting a recommendation for a realtor, and without a realtor, we didn't have any way of seeing the inside of the house.
One day, maybe 3.5 weeks ago, we were having brunch in a diner around the corner from it and I was moping and asked if we could drive by the pretty house. And we did, and saw there was an open house scheduled for the following day. We went and instantly knew we were in trouble (we were standing in the basement while the seller's realtor was upstairs with another couple, and I confessed to RH that I was already in love with the inside as much as the outside and we hadn't even seen the upstairs, yet). But we also came away with a recommendation for a mortgage broker (you wouldn't think that would have been so hard, but we'd been having a devil of a time finding one who'd return our calls).
The mortgage broker took our information over the phone, and three days later had us pre-approved for an FHA loan. We had one recommendation for a realtor from her and a couple others from RH's and my co-workers. A week from sitting in that diner, we'd picked a realtor. The following day, we went to a couple of open houses for similarly-priced homes in the area to make sure we weren't getting fleeced on the one we were interested in and that we really were in love with it (as opposed to just finding it in our price range and livable). The day after that, we put in a bid, and at diner+10 days, we'd accepted the seller's counter-offer.
We've now been through the horror of the inspection (which wasn't really that awful, but sure scared the heck out of us at the time) and we're embroiled in the back-and-forth where the seller agrees to do the couple of repairs we can't get an FHA loan without (safety issues) and decides what other things she wants to repair, and we see what kind of a credit against the price we can agree on for the issues she's not going to/doesn't have the funds to address. There are definitely issues with the place (if there weren't, we couldn't afford it), but it's structurally sound, and most of them, we can address on a piecemeal, ongoing basis.
In the wonderful world of serendipity and/or the gods looking out for us, in early September, I was offered the opportunity to cash out stock I had an an ESOP for a place I used to work. On the one hand, the stock was worth a good 25% less than it had been the previous year (when I wasn't yet eligible for a disbursement). On the other, I know enough about how that ESOP works and what their market share is like to predict that a) stock prices will continue to drop for another year or 18 months after the economy really starts to upswing again, and b) they will freeze the share price for those of us no longer employed there at the low point. So I took the cash-out, and even after a chunk was held out for taxes, we probably have enough to handle most of the unanticipated repairs the house inspection turned up that we think the seller will credit for, rather than repairing herself.
The big question mark right now is the loan. My status is still as a contract employee, and as far as the client company is concerned, I'm hired indefinitely and they're trying to convert me to a permanent, direct employee. But the company I sub-contract through is a mickey-mouse operation that may just have randomly picked an end date six months out or something--I have no way of knowing. I'm just trying to remind myself that one can generally obtain a loan up to 2.5 times one's annual income, and RH and I are only trying for
once our annual income. And my mother was officially on contract with IBM for 17 years, with her contract sent to end or be renewed every December, and they never ran into trouble with houses or car loans. I choose to hope for the best, and see how I might deal with anything else if and when the issue arises.
We love the house. And we really want to move out of what passes for a ghetto in this area. (I came home to a very low-key stand-off between six cop cars and the house next door to ours last Friday). I'm bringing home boxes like a prayer, spell, or simple good luck charm. Positive thoughts are appreciated. :)
