I need to post more often...

Looking for a home:
Angela & I have spent much of the year looking for a new home: At first we were looking at a short sales, which require a lot of time and patience. Since they take so long to go through, it made sense to look at them early on - while we still had a lot of time left before we have to move out.

I’ve seen a few that don’t need repairs as much as HAZMAT demolition and disposal. After that’s done, you can build a house.

So far, my tips for people looking at buying a new home:
  • If a house makes your eyes and nose burn after a few seconds, protect your health and leave immediately. Believe me, it’s not worth it just to see if you like the layout of the home.
  • Homes aren’t always priced realistically. The error seems to always be on the side of priced far higher than its actual value.
  • If a house is suspiciously cheap, there’s a reason. It’s usually because it’ll cost another $50-80k to make the home livable again.

We finally closed on a home yesterday, but are waiting for a few things to finalize before we can start to move in. It’s a weird feeling knowing that I’ve pretty much signed papers that will transfer ownership to me, but I can’t move in. There’s this horrible thought of “what if it gets trashed before I can move in” - that sort of thing.

Still, I’m excited to have a home to move into.

Yesterday was not a good day for me. The stress of closing, going to set up some utilities, only to find that I had to go do a different office entirely, having an hour less to do a final inspection than I originally thought (due to my agent having an appointment go long), and then - when we were speeding along on the interstate on our way to closing, my right rear tire blew out.

I was able to get over and stopped without incident. Next, we called our agent, to let her know that we had blown a tire. Next, I called up my mom & dad - mom brought her car, and stood vigil over mine while Angie & I raced to close on our house. Dad came and put the spare doughnut on, and drove to a tire shop to have new tires installed. My top tip of the day: Verify your spare tire has correct tire pressure. It paid off for me yesterday.

The flat wouldn’t have been a problem by itself I had the wheel jacked up & was about to loosen the nuts when my mom showed up - it’s just the timing way really bad… my parents really helped us out yesterday as well.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to begin moving in tomorrow.