Tag: house hunting

An offer has been made

by Ariana Peters, posted in House/dating/life

…….and accepted, we have a house!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It currently has renters who are being given 60 days notice today. So we should be in it in a maximum of about 70 days, if they move out sooner than 60 days we can get in it sooner. I can’t believe it! We have a house!!!!

Brandon and I are finally moving in together!!! I cannot wait to make this house our home. It is 3 bed, 1 bath about 1300sqft on .3 of an acre. I am going to plant so much food!!!! And we should be getting in there just in time for me to start direct planting some great stuff.

AHHHHHHH I am so excited, I hope the next 2 months fly by.

January Monthly goals

by Ariana Peters, posted in books, healthy lifestyle, House/dating/life, school/studying, training

January

The goals for the year broken down for this month:

Blog at least 3 times a week- so I need a minimum of 14 blog posts including January 31st

PROPERLY train for and run a half, full and ultra marathon- half marathon training is up first, the minimum number of miles I need have run this month to keep up good training is- 60 miles

Revamp my diet and STICK TO IT!!!! –

Breakfast-juice and muffin or toast and coffee (I dropped my muffin this morning, sad face, so leftover slice of pizza and juice it is!)

Midmorning snack– Slimfast or smoothie

Lunch– Soup or salad

Dinner– Anything I want as long as it is make at home

After dinner– tea or hot chocolate , popcorn is ok too

 

Get A’s in all my classes this year- Keep a running tally of my % in my class(es)

Drop two clothing sizes, go from a 10 to a 6 –Stick with the aforementioned meal plan and marathon training and I should be golden

Stop overspending!!!! – I am not keeping any forms of payment on me at work so that I cannot pop next door to the little market whenever the desire strikes and I only get to eat out once this month so I better choose well.

Take a few minutes every day to sit in quiet reflection, meditate, and do something spiritual –I have a 5 line a day little diary and a 366 day devotional I am starting to use. (the first of the year was about setting your intention for the year and sending it out into the world, my intention this year is FOLLOW THROUGH!!! I am terrible about this)

Continue to work on and grow my relationship with Brandon – we need to get out and do something every week, we currently have Thursday evening through Sunday morning together and I don’t want us to just sit on the couch the whole weekend so my goal is at least one outing a weekend (they just need to be free outings lol)

Read 1 non-school book a month- I already met that goal this month ( I read online yesterday because work was dead) so let’s see if I can squeeze in a second one before school starts.

House Hunting: A Possible Ray of Light

by Ariana Peters, posted in healthy lifestyle, travel

There might be a house in our future, the details are all being looked at and calculated. We are weighing our options. Nothing is for sure at this point but I should know more details in the next few weeks, so fingers crossed!!!!!

On a fun relationship note my end of year bonus came at work which will allow me to buy plane tickets for myself AND the bf to fly down to Southern California for my friends wedding in April…..meaning he will meet all my family that is down there AND my friends, Yikes he is going to have a fun 4 day weekend in April hahahahaha. I’ll tell you all about it then. Wish him luck!

See the source image

On the market less than 12 hours

by Ariana Peters, posted in healthy lifestyle

The house hunting “fun” continues.

We are using the Redfin app to look for houses and keep up with new houses. Redfin lets you share a list together so you can favorite a house and your partner can see it, and you can leave comments for each other. Redfin also tells you how many new homes have been listed since you last logged on and emails you suggestions (so far only about 1/3 of their suggestions have been close to what we are looking for but that is still good).

So I get a notice yesterday morning, I think I was already at work, that a new house is on the market, I pulled it up, looked at it and favorite it. I got home after work, took Artemis for a walk and as I am walking out the door I get a notification that the same house is now pending!!!! This house was on that market for all of 9 hours!!!!!!

We have plans to look at 2-3 houses this weekend so I will update you soon!

 

Well one of the houses we wanted to look at has an offer in so we are readjusting and looking at others. It is so frustrating! Houses are literally disappearing before my eyes.

Update from the weekend: We ended up only looking at 2 houses and by looking at I mean driving by.

1 of the houses we were going to look at was a manufactured home on a nice almost .4 acres, but we got the ever so polite correct ummm you might want to consider a different one. Apparently manufactured homes only have a “shelf life” so to speak of about 30 years and this one was over that (even though it was so beautiful inside) also I guess housing requirements are in the process of being updated and in a few years this would not meet requirements for us to resell it. So on to the next one.

Image result for house hunting meme (image from bing search)

House 2 had an offer previously but it fell through so we wanted to see it because he had liked it before. Turns out the realtor wasn’t showing it again until Monday. Oy. So we decided to just drive by it and see the neighborhood and the lot, wow was the commute so much worse than we thought it would be so that was out. I would spend no time at home, it would all be work, school, commute, sleep and start all over. So no.

House 3 is something a friend told us about, it isn’t actually listed yet but a family friend is considering selling it so we drove by to check it out. It had a good size lot and was in a decent neighborhood and is 2 streets away from the freeway to get me to work and 10 minutes from Brandon’s  work so it is situated in a good area for us.

For now that is where we are at. Things are hopping off and on the market and we are getting our earnest money and down payment and closing costs together so we are ready to jump when the time comes. I will keep you posted.

Where are all the good houses?

by Ariana Peters, posted in healthy lifestyle

Since my last post we have gotten the previous inspection report on one house and would basically have to gut it from the inside out and pay crazy insurance until we got all the electrical fixed in case it suddenly burst into flames…..I am only half kidding.

Image result for house on fire meme (picture from nytimes.com)

so on to the next one. We saw one in the middle lower end of our price range that didn’t jump out at me as amazing but would be fine. The yard was small enough that I probably couldn’t have chickens but could do a halfway decent food garden.

The bf wasn’t feeling too great this weekend so we kept it low key. he emailed the realtor to get some info on the house and we decided to drive by it on Saturday to give us something to do that wouldn’t make it much worse. Don’t worry no one is living in the house right now so we didn’t creep on anyone. When we got there the house was being shown to someone so we drove by, went to lunch and Red Robin then headed back. I kid you now as we pulled into the driveway the realtor replied and said it was not financeable (probably because there is a hole in the roof) so there goes another one. We drove around the block deciding if we just wanted to head back home or what and as we came back around someone else was looking at the house, that is how fast these houses are going. It’s crazy.

Image result for competitive house market meme (image from pinterest)

I think we are going to go back to the bank and try and get preapproved for 25-50k higher so we can get something that is actually livable. We originally asked for a low amount to keep our payments as low as possible but I guess we are going to have to go up a little bit. I will keep you posted, wish us luck!

 

House 1 down the drain + could this be any more confusing?

by Ariana Peters, posted in healthy lifestyle

We thought about making an offer on the cute little house I loved and Brandon asked some friends of his parents that buy investment properties and rentals all the time and they basically told him the land is worth more without the house on it and it’s a piece of crap. They had actually looked at this house to buy months ago and had done all the research on it. It even had leans on the property.

Image result for house buying issues

UGH and they told us that we can buy houses that say cash offer where as the real estate agent said we couldn’t. Also why would you list a property that has leans on it?! No bank will finance that? And why can’t people just be truthful? If you don’t want a piece of crap house what makes you think I will???

Why can’t it be as simple as they make it look on HGTV? Here is a house at the bottom of your budget, one in the middle and one at the top, lets tour all 3, ok now pick which one you would like? And none of them have leans or hidden disasters.

Image result for house buying problems memes

I had totally already started planning our life in that house and oh the yard and the garden and the chickens…… sad face.

Image result for house hunting memes

Oh well, onward and upward. I wallowed last night and now I am ready to start again.

 

This has nothing to do with houses but I saw this and loved it

Image result for house buying problems memes

 

House Hunting: It’s so much worse than I thought

by Ariana Peters, posted in healthy lifestyle

My boyfriend and I have taken the plunge and decided to buy a house together……YAY!!!! Our monthly rent payments will now go toward mortgage payments and we can do whatever we want decoration wise to the house and really take care of our house and have pride in it, and of course get to see each other every day (we currently live an hour apart). What they don’t tell you is how stressful home buying is and that it can really test your patience and possibly your relationship.

Image result for house buying Image result for house buying memes

First things first, we are both adamant about not only sticking to our budget but trying to be as far under it as possible. We agree 100% on this which is wonderful. What we don’t agree on is patience and mind over emotional. I do not have patience, I try soooo hard then 5 minutes goes by and I am frustrated and he is drag his feet McGee so we are polar opposites. I understand that buying a home is a HUGE step but at some point you have to bite the bullet, no house is going to be perfect (especially not in our price range) and you can never guarantee that something wont go wrong the day after you buy it, the week after, 6 months after and so on.

Image result for house buying memes

I like to think that on this we are balancing each other, I am nudging him forward a little faster and he is reigning me in so I don’t sign papers on day 1.

Mind over emotional……….The 2nd house we saw I was in love. It was cute and charming and on some land and almost 90 years old which brings a whole new set of fun things to deal with, and in a rural area which has much less guidelines on bringing things up to code. All in all I still love this house, it would require a little work but it has charm and character and is on the lower end of our budget, a total win right???? He doesn’t think so. All he can see is the work that needs to go into it and I would sign the papers today if I could. So once again we are balancing each other.

Image result for house buying memes

The other joy we are facing is that months ago when we were still deciding if we were staying in Oregon or going and if we would buy or rent I told my roommates I would be out by the end of January, now here we are in November with limited time and options. This is also causing me to feel a little bit resentful toward my love, he does not have this time constraint so I don’t think he feels this time pressure as much as I do, which means his dragging his feet, examine everything from every angle is driving me more mad than usual. Breath in, breath out.

Image result for house buying memes

And that is just the interpersonal issues! Now factor in the actual houses themselves! More than half of which are sold for cash only because there is so much work to do on them, or the ones that are so gross I am not sure we could even live in them while we slowly fixed them up. It is maddening. Buying houses is maddening, I have a new respect for people who flip houses and don’t know how you don’t all have ulcers; on the other hand I hate you all a little bit because you buy the half way decent ones in our price range, flip them and sell them for 50-100k more and now I can’t afford anything.

Image result for house buying memes Image result for house buying memes

I just need to remember patience, not to take my frustrations out on my partner and to pray we find the right house in time.