Closing in One Week.

Okay, it's been a long time (over a month) since my last post. I'm sure those of you who are already home-owners know why... this process is crazy and hectic! There's all of the back-and-forth over the inspection when you make peace over and over again with letting the house go, the conversations with the mortgage broker, digging up a tremendous amount of paperwork, signing another tremendous amount of paperwork, negotiating the best home owners insurance (which we'll talk more about in a minute) and finally sitting around for a little while thinking "there must be something I'm forgetting to do", watching HGTV and researching appliances online.
So, about that home owners insurance. First important point: you need it to buy a home. Second important point: Andrea and I have been burglarized three times over the last three years.

1. 30 days after we moved in someone reached in the 2nd floor window while we were asleep and stole my laptop (and a $2.99 Ikea lamp. Chumps.)
2. 30 days later someone actually kicked in the bottom half of the front door of our apartment, crawled through, and stole my new laptop and a bunch of jewelry. And sorted through our stuff, leaving via the back door which they left WIDE OPEN so all of my cats got fleas.
3. Maybe a year and a half later someone cut Andrea's bike off of the fence outside during the middle of the night and hauled it away.

• Important point: we had renters insurance - yay! We made claims for each of the incidents to replace the laptops and the bike.
• Second Important point: apparently actually having a need to use your renters insurance means that no one will give you home owners insurance.

That's right - everyone we called said "oh, I'm so sorry, I wish I could but it's against our policy to insure you." Now, you can't buy a house without home owners insurance so we were in a bit of a panic. I did get a quote for $2,000 (which is double what we'd be paying without having made claims with Allstate). Finally, Andrea whined and complained to an agent who was in the process of rejecting us and her "charm" prompted him to call his friend at Nationwide, give her a heads up, and have her look at our file by credit report and not by insurance history. Thank god, because we now have HMI for $979/year and are also saving another $45/month on auto.

So, with HMI taken care of, we've been procrastinating packing until we close (stupid, yes, but until just this weekend I really felt like this could fall through at any moment and we'd be jinxing it if we packed anything).

We've also been dealing with the fact that our apartment is being shown almost daily by Philly Apartment Company (in fact, there's a showing today at 2:30) so we've been trying to keep the apartment as clean and good-looking as possible so that someone rents it asap. It's getting exhausting.

And in the middle of all of this Hedgerow celebrated its 85th Birthday April 25-27th (complete with front page article in the Inquirer) so I've been completely insane. And Andrea's been working at Borders on Wednesday evenings and all day Saturday (in addition to her FT position at the Mazzoni Center) so she's been completely insane. We'll be on to greener, more insane pastures in just one week and there's some Sullivan family coming to help us out! Now, anyone reading this is also welcome to come help pack, haul or organize (although we've already charged Kendra with organizing the hallway closets in the new place). Let me know if you want to help!

Holy Crap

We're buying a house. They're fixing what we need them to fix (minimally, but alright) and we've told them we'll take it. Next step: mortgage. Final step: you all help us move and paint the walls in our current apartment white.

Yippeeee!

One Step Closer to Homeownership

Okay folks, we had the inspection yesterday morning and the results are in: the house is not haunted and we didn't get any really bad news. Sure, there are a couple little roof issues and the bathroom door doesn't actually close all the way (still want to come over for dinner?) but it's in solid shape altogether.

So now we finish all this crazy paperwork for the mortgage, do some negotiation around some of the issues we did find (dad, can you un-reverse the polarity in a couple of outlets for me?), and keep our fingers crossed until our May 16 closing date. In the meantime, I'm going to try to stop going to Ikea once a week (I've been there three times in as many weeks) and try to unload our apartment. Anyone want a 1.5 bedroom with back yard in the Art Museum area?

We took more pictures and updated the album - click on the slideshow below to check them out!

Inspection Tuesday Morning...

So we're on to the next step with the house. The inspection is Tuesday morning, and I'll be there taking pictures (this time I'll remember). Of course, I'm worrying that something is wrong with the place (like haunting or structural damage) but in the meantime I'm dreaming about the wardrobe system I'll be installing in the little bedroom of the place and organizing the kitchen in my head. For now, here's the link to the pictures I took on my iPhone when we signed all of the preliminary paperwork. Closing date, by the way, is May 16th!

New House?

Cross Your Fingers...

We made an offer on a house at 1350 N Palethorp. That's about a block and a half north of Girard between Front and Second Streets. The offer's in to the seller, so let's all keep our fingers crossed that:

1. they accept the offer
2. the inspection does not reveal some crazy structural damage, horrible plumbing, and/or dead bodies in the basement
3. all of my careful budgeting pans out

Here's the link to the listing, please don't outbid me!

http://www.solorealty.idxco.com/idx/2902/details.php?idxID=072&listingID=5275333

x,

Arin

I found it!...

...but it's out of our price range.

So we went to a couple open houses today. We looked at houses for $239,000 in the Queen Village and Bella Vista neighborhoods and discovered that they're not very big and tend to have wildy windy oddly carpeted stairs. Andrea hates these stairs and I broke the railing in one house (or it came off in my hand and I shoved it back into position on the wall...). Anyway, it turns out that even if we could afford these places we don't want them. They are small, cramped trinities and violet would have a hell of a time with the stairs. And our furniture wouldn't fit in the living room.

After our open house adventure we went home and I took the lovely Violet for a walk. We ran into an open house at 2214 Brandywine and I decided to see how the other half lives. Well, they live well. In fact, they live exactly how I'd like to live. $625,000 would buy me the perfect house. Although I told the woman that it was "just" out of my price range it is obviously well beyond our ability to buy it. I'm including the link so that you can fall it love with it and then slit your wrists just like I did: 2214 Brandywine Street.

Urine Soaked Crack-House

So remember that house that we were excited about? Yeah. It's seriously been used as a crack house. It was in a really awesome location (938 N Randolph Street in Northern Libs). Unfortunately it was was saturated with urine and Andrea was afraid we might fall through the floor. There were ominous dark spots on the carpet and holes in walls, floors and doors. It was in such bad shape rats and squirrels wouldn't even inhabit it. Needless to say we won't be putting an offer in on that one (and our realtor was horrified, which I thought was a good sign).
The other two had so much wood paneling that we were immediately transported back to our grandma's houses. In the 1970's. They were also way too far south (we're using Tasker as our furthest point south... we'll see how that goes.)

This evening Andrea and I looked at 1210 Gerritt Street... it's super fabulous but has some ominous cracks in the walls and uneven floors. Like, it maybe all tilts west. Also, the kitchen upstairs is basically fake. It's got a stovetop and a sink, but the real deal is in the basement... along with a little toilet in a small saloon to the left of the water heater... Uh, this is clearly our new home. Seriously, it's the right size, the right location... it just will need lots of wallpaper, carpet and kitchen love... We're going to try to find out if it's the money-pit and we'll keep you posted!

Here's the link to the house:
http://www.prufoxroach.com/search/search_results_profile.cfm?propID=52ef30a1-ea00-444a-a1ae-0f5739609482&propNo=1