Our New House...

Well I think this time is it!! We have a house.

This whole thing is actually a very funny story, as if our entire experience hasn't been one to look back and laugh at! So we were looking at houses one day and our realtor took us to this one. He told us that right now it is priced above our price range but there hasn't been interest in it recently and he expected the price to come down. So if the price did drop, he wanted to know if we would be interested. So we looked at it quickly (we had many others on the list to sift through) decided sure we could live here and moved on. We had found another home that day that we were placing a bid on and were excited about.

So we placed the bid on this other house and of course was outbid and didn't get it, we were used to that it was a weekly thing at this point. Then the next day we saw that this house had dropped in price, and the bidding period was ending in 24 hours (we didn't have time to go back and look at it or anything) Our realtor calls to ask us if we want to place a bid. Matt and I looked at each other shrugged and said "why not?" (of course we were fully expecting to NOT win the bid). The next day we get a call from our realtor, we won the bid!?!?!

Matt calls to tell me we won the bid and asks what house was this again? Where is it? I vaguely remembered the house, all I remembered was that it was in a good neighborhood, close to Matt's work and close to the mountains, but I didn't really remember much about the house. We decided we need to go look at this house as soon as possible to make sure we want to move forward with this contract.

We go back to look at the house and I am a little overwhelmed, it needs a lot of work. Matt is excited and thinks this is perfect for us and he sees all the work he gets to do and thinks it's just wonderful. Structurally it's in great shape and with some paint and carpet, and a few maintenance things it will be just perfect.

So now we have gone through the inspection and are sure this is our house and are moving forward with everything! We have been able to get an fha 203k rehab loan, that just goes in with our fha loan, to help with the expenses of fixing it up. We are working with a great mortgage broker who lined up a general contractor for us. We get to meet with him on Monday and talk to him about what we want to do and how we can do it all in the budget we want to work with. At first we weren't working with a general contractor and things were so overwhelming since we don't know what we are doing... so this guy is such a relief and will make everything go so much smoother.

We plan to close and move in towards the end of October. Then all the fixing up begins. Unfortunately since this was a HUD foreclosure home we aren't able to start on any of the projects until after closing, but right now we are gathering bids and lining everyone up to get the work done soon after closing. We will post some before and after pictures as we go through the process. We don't have many pictures of the inside yet, the ones I took just didn't come out very good. The house is 3 bedrooms, 2.75 baths, has a nice open floor plan for the upstairs living area. The deck in the lower picture comes off the master bedroom, but will be replaced soon, it is falling apart right now! There is a basement family room that has an entry into the garage. There are quite a few trees on our property with a nice secluded feel in the backyard. We have also met some of our neighbors and really like them.

Climbing Mountains and other Labor Day activities!

Over Labor Day weekend we hiked our first 14er!! For those of you who may be asking, what is a 14er? it is one of the many mountains in Colorado that are above 14,000 feet in elevation. For comparison, Pikes Peak is one of the 14ers in Colorado. After a relaxing overnight stay in Breckenridge we took off with our friends Diana, Jordan and their one year old Seth to Mt Quandry.


Diana and Jordan have climbed many 14ers, but not with a one year old! They were very excited for the challenge and joy of sharing this with their baby.

We took many breaks including diaper change breaks! Changing diapers on the side of a mountain is a little more challenging, luckily we found an open area off the path.

Just as we are coming above tree line you can see the peak for the first time. It is the far shadded one in the picture above and it looked very far away...

Oh but the views were just tremendous and more rewarding when you are climbing them rather than driving. These views are some that you can't drive to though, only a few 14ers have access to the summit by road.After we came out of the tree line we were pretty much just hiking on rocks for 3 hours. Very tiresome on the poor ankles. Even more so on the hike down!

So after 4 hours of hiking we made it to the top. It was no easy feat, especially for Diana who carried Seth on her back pretty much the whole way! It was only 3.5 miles up, but with 3000 ft elevation gain and very little oxygen it took us a long time.

Diana, Seth and I summited the mountain first. We sort of caught a second wind and cheered one another onto the top. She was so proud of her accomplishment, everyone passing us on the trail was taking pictures and making comments about little Seth.

Seth was such a trooper he really likes riding in his pack, but by the time we reached the top he was getting very tired and hungry!

Not too long after we summited Jordan and Matt joined us. Matt was quite certain that he would never climb a 14er again at this point but at least he did one! He is much more sensitive to the altitude and does not tolerate being at 14,000 feet much less climbing rocks at this height! But we celebrated for a few moments, until we looked around at the storms that were coming in. 14,000 feet is not a good place to be when lightening strikes.

It started sleeting on us and we had to pull out our rain gear, but luckily there wasn't any lightening.

The hike down on the rocks was actually very difficult. Your legs are already so tired and the rocks are so uneven. We all rolled our ankles and fell here or there. Jordan had a hard time keeping balance with Seth on his back.

Seth in his rain gear! Still looking tired.

After about 30 minutes the storm had blown over and we were once again blessed by blue skies! And mountain goats!

It was such a relief to hit tree line again. Even ground with dirt trails was so much easier to walk on. With each step the air was getting thicker and the green cover of the trees was welcoming.

At the end of the hike we were all very tired but we accomplished our task. Now it was off to Beaujo's for some well deserved Colorado pizza!!The next exciting thing this weekend was that Matt bought his snowboard! He is SO very excited for ski season. Labor Day is when everything starts to go on sale for ski season. We opened a new bank account at Wells Fargo and recieved a buy one get one free voucher for season passes to three ski resorts. So we are ready for snow to come and Matt could not be more happy with his snowboard find!Trigger posing to give advice out to his fans on Facebook!

Daniel and Robyn were in town on Labor Day, it was so good to spend time with them. Robyn had never been to Colorado before, so we welcomed her to the mountains that we love.

The first night we had dinner at Aunt kay's, yum yum...

Then I took them to Mount Evan's the next day so Robyn could get a good view of the mountains.

We did our fair share of some bouldering and hiking.

Their last evening here we drove up to Greeley to see Aunt Zoe, Uncle Randy and Anna. It was a lot of fun. Good food and good times with lots of laughter.

Well that was our busy Labor Day! It was great to hang out and get our mind off work and house hunting. We definitely spent some good time in the hot tub this week as our muscles and joints are still healing from the hike. We may have some house news coming soon...

Other than that I hope everyone is doing well and happy September!! That means fall is coming soon, very soon. I Love the Fall it's my favorite!

Ahhh...Glenwood Springs

Last weekend Matt and I celebrated 5 years of marriage!! We went to Glenwood Springs to soak in the hot springs pool. It was so relaxing and beautiful. The water is the perfect temperature and the silkiest feeling water ever.

The pools are huge' they have two main pools. One is a comfortable temp around 90 degrees and the other is hot tub temp around 110 degrees. The hot one was great for nighttime in the cool mountains.
This is the original spring. Water in here is 122 degrees, very hot! They used to drink this water, it is super strong sulfur smell. I couldn't really stand the smell let alone think about drinking that stuff. The other pools don't smell as bad because they are more dilute.


We just basked in the sun and the water, very relaxing.

Then for the marriage building part of the weekend we rented a tandem bike and went biking into Glenwood canyon. It was the first time we had rode a tandem and it can be challenging. We asked the guy in the store if there was anything we needed to know about riding a tandem; his first response was good communication and patience!

We survived our ride even though the gear shifter wasn't working! Just to make things more difficult. Then they tried to charge us for the repair even though it never worked from the beginning. Canyon Bikes in Glenwood, do not use them! They were not very friendly. We mastered riding the tandem but we decided we prefer our own bikes.

Learning to not become emotionally attached (honestly I suck at it!)

I have decided that this buying a house thing is quite possibly one of the worst experiences I have ever had!

We basically had to loose the house again this week! We were just getting ready to interview some new realtors and slowly get back into things when the house we lost came back on the market suddenly with 4 days to place bids... We ended up only having time to meet with one new realtor. He had come recommended as someone who knows a lot about buying a HUD property. So we placed a bid, then the winning bid was only 36 thousand over the asking price this time! Ouch so we definitely did not win.

Our realtor is waiting, though. He says it can be very difficult to close on HUD homes with that much of an overbid and he still has hopes of ours being a back up bid. I have no clue, but that could take as long as a month to find out! So in the meantime we are back in a buyers contract with this guy, whom we are still trying to get a feel for and aren't completely sure about. But we are giving him a try... we went out to look at houses on Saturday.(it was the first time since our big fiasco)... and it was quite disappointing. Nothing that was too promising at all and the only one that might have worked is a short sale. UGH!!

Short Sales are really popular right now. It is when people are about ready to foreclose on a home but instead of taking the credit hit they basically strike a deal with the bank and try to sell the house for less that it's worth to be able to cover their mortgage balance at least. The difficult thing is that the banks are in control, they say what offers can or cannot be acccepted and they run their own timetable. These homes can take up to a year to close because the seller and buyer are waiting for the banks approval. Our realtor and lender have both said that they get very ugly and they have not seen very many go well. I guess you have to have a lot of time and patience and hope you don't wait around for 9 months just to have the whole thing fall apart! Which is the risk...

Today our realtor first took us to one neighborhood in Denver city limits and we basically had to tell him no before we even walked in the house! There was graffiti everywhere and the area did not feel safe at all... run down. If that is all we can find we will have to choose not to buy. One house was in a great location, but the square footage wasn't very good and it felt cramped, or a little constipated as our friend Greg would put it!... then we found out it was a short sale. Another house was newer, had a better layout but ended up having major cracks in the basement floor as well as structural and settling issues... and the stories go on and on. We looked at 7 homes today and were left with very little.

It seems impossible to find the right house in the right location... We know that location is probably the most important but it has to be a livable space as well. I don't think our budget is that unreasonable for a first time buyer. Our lender says we are better off than the average first time buyers they work with... So where do we give? Are we expecting too much? So much of the market is foreclosures. It can be very difficult to work with the banks. And on top of that we are competing with a lot of investors who come in with cash offers. Who can compete with that?

That is my ranting I know it's long, sorry!!

Putting things in to perspective:

Really, in perspective things are going very good, and what can you complain about when we get to live next to the mountains? We are happy to be in Colorado and Matt's new job is going well. Last week the students came back for the semester so he is adjusting to the change and had a really long week. Next week is our 5th wedding anniversary!! Yipee and we are going to Glenwood Springs to hang out in the hot springs pool.

So we are learning a lot about buying a home, I know a ton more about the neighborhoods in Denver... and we'll just have to see what happens over the next month or so.

And now our realtor is FIRED!!

How do I begin to explain this! It has been a bad week... to say the least. We found out on Monday that our realtor did not have his facts straight about appraisals with a HUD owned home and thus we lost the house. We even asked him specifically about this issue and pointed out in the contract and he assured us that we would be able to get a separate appraisal. He went on to explain the appraisal process, we compared house sales for similar houses in the area to get an idea on how to bid and what the appraisal may come out to be yada yada. Well monday when we went to talk with our lender we learned otherwise and we had to cancel our bid and lose the house. It's sort of complicated but we are very upset and hurt. If we would have lost the house for a legitimate reason that would be one thing but this was not one of those situations.

So where do we go from here? We are going to take some time to recover and decide whats next... included will be a new realtor for sure!!

Our House!!!

Here are pictures of our new house! We just went under contract 7/28 and as long as everything goes well we will close within 45 days!! We will be in Englewood, CO just blocks from my hospital. This house was built in 1950, it is a bungalow style with a lot of charm. 4 bedrooms and 2 baths and plenty of space for entertaining guests!

This is the front living room

Front hallway

upstairs bathroom, it has been remodeled so it is clean and shiny!

There are two bedrooms off the living room and one off the kitchen

The third bedroom has a wall of bookshelves built in which would be fabulous for a cozy office/library space!

The kitchen is definitely a highlight, it has new tile counters and floors and a nice open layout. Plenty of counter space and cabinets.

Dining area

These are stairs to the finished basement. It was once used as a separate apartment. There is a separate entrance and a small kitchenetee down there as well.

Washroom
Downstairs bathroom

A fourth bedroom and another living space in the basement

The backyard space, all fenced in with mature trees

A convenient shed and then the back alleyway! We really like this neighborhood and hope to grow to love it once we move in and adjust to the area. Englewood is a quaint suburbu with a small town feel. The hospital is just South of this are and there is a college just north.

So now we are just praying that everything goes smoothly over the next few weeks as we go through inspection, appraisal and the loan processing. We'll let you know when moving day comes!!