Jessy and I moved this past weekend. We decided that after a year of dating we would try living together. After weeks of packing we had all of our stuff moved to the new place this past weekend. It still looks like a war zone and I’m sure it will for a while. I also have some repairs to make after the movers dinged a couple walls pretty bad. If this had been a house we bought, I’d have been much more upset. The house is okay, it wasn’t my first choice; and I think after moving in and realizing a few things, it’s not Jessy’s first choice anymore either. But it’s a nice house, and it will be good enough for a year or two.
House
Long time…
I guess it’s been a bit longer than I had planned. A lot has happened over the last few years. Jenna and I divorced; we abandoned the house; we filed for bankruptcy; I reconnected with some old friends; I met a girl; and I took a trip to Ireland, Wales, England and Scotland (partly with my cousin and partly solo). Now, a little more than a year after meeting, I’m getting ready to move in with that new girl. Hopefully over the coming months I’ll start posting a bit more, about the trip, about the girl, and about our adventures together.
Offer is in
After months of hardly any showings on the house, we finally started to get some traffic. After a few weeks of multiple showings a week on average, we got an offer today. It’s a little below what we have the house listed for but it’s a good offer. Now, we just have to play the waiting game (2-4 week possibly) to see if the mortgage company will accept it. If they don’t, I’m not sure what we will do… So, fingers are crossed and we’ll see what happen.
Boring
There isn’t really anything to report. Nothing that good anyway and I don’t really feel like writing about the bad. The house is still on the market and we’ve lowered the price about $50K. We have had more showings in the last week than we have in the last several months though so maybe something will finally give. We are having an open house on the 15th of this month so maybe our buyer will find and fall in love with the house then.
Nothing eventful happened this summer. No trips. No vacations. Mostly just work and more work for me, and work and school for Jenna. My uncle retired from UPS which was the excitement for the family. But boring can be good. Right?
House for Sale
Well, we met with the Realtor last night. It was a semi-tough choice but it’s the best one. We will be doing a short sale on the house so that we can unload it start to focus on more important things. When the market crashed a few years ago we lost about 25K in value on the house. A house that was only a year and half to two years old at the time. We cannot refinance and we obviously cannot sell it for what we owe due to the crash. So, we were sort of forced into a corner. But it will all work out in the end.
Stupid housing market
We were going to refinance a while back but we couldn’t do that. So we decided we would sell the house. Now it looks like we cannot do that either. With the value of the house having dropped would either have to do a short sale or have about 13K cash to bring to closing to cover closing costs and Realtor fees. We don’t have it. So, now we just have to hope that maybe we can get approved for one of these special programs that the government is making mortgage companies provide. The problem with that is we are not in danger of loosing the house. We are current on all of our bills. We just want a lower interest rate so we can lower our payments. And it’s not a small amount either, we could potentially save $400 a month. But with our luck we will just be one of the families that falls though the cracks because we don’t qualify under the idiot programs.
Decisions, decisions, decisions
After talking about this weekend we may be selling the house. Jenna is not happy with the way the neighborhood is turning out and I’m not happy with our debt. So we may just sell the house and go into an apartment for a little while to pay off some bills and find a house in an area in which we will be happy to live. But nothing is definite yet.
We’ve got grass! Yeah! We’ve got grass!
It has been 1 year and 3 months since we have moved into our new house and we just got grass yesterday! Excitmenet! You know, we have never really had grass, our yard has always been just dirt and weeds. Don’t get me wrong, our weeds could eat a small child! Our weeds brought in black widows and wolf spiders. Our weeds were the talk of the neighborhood. No more! We have beautiful sod, our entire yard! I love the smell of freshly turned earth!
Die, spiders, die!
So we were having a bit of a spider problem at the house. Usually I’m all for mother nature so long as she stays outside. But once I started finding black widows around the outside of the house, well, man vs. nature had to occur. So we called a bug guy and he came and sprayed stuff around the house. Hopefully the little bastards will die. Or at least if their food dies maybe they will leave.
New pictures are up
The new picture of the back yard are up:
http://thecaddellfamily.com/wp-gallery2.php?g2_itemId=949
They didn’t turn out nearly as good as I wanted them too. The view really it nice. The reds are nice and deep and the yellows are very bright. We still don’t have grass yet but hopefully they will seed and sod before spring. With the drought whatever they did would have died and now it’s getting too cold to do anything. It is nice to not have to worry about the yard quite yet though.