Category Archives: House Hunting

Moving (On)

Posted in House Hunting, Life, Moving by

So you know how a little while back I mad mentioned that we had not only found a house but also had our offer accepted? Well, things have kind of gone down the crapper since then …

One of the subjects of our offer was that we had to sell our home before we could close the deal. We had about a month to do so, and we figured we wouldn’t have a problem selling since the market is hot in Kamloops. We listed the day after our offer was accepted and in the first week we had just over a dozen showings. In two weeks, we had about 20 showings but no offers. Zero. Zip. Nada. Not even 2nd lookers. Our hopes were dwindling, but we still had two more weeks to attract a buyer.

Then, we get word from our realtor that the owners of the house we “bought” received another offer but had not yet accepted it. We removed as many subjects as we could, but unfortunately, it just wasn’t enough to let our offer stand. The owners accepted the other deal, and we lost out. Again.

This isn’t the first time our offer on a house has been declined because of the “contingency” clause of selling our house first. There was another house that we fell in love with and even offered MORE than the asking price, but the seller was nervous about that clause and opted for a different offer.

It’s frustrating, to say the least. We’ve thought about just putting our place up for sale to rid ourselves of needing that contingency, but we don’t want to end up homeless, so to speak. What if we sell our place but there’s nothing out there that appeals to us? We don’t want to settle on a new house because we’re forced to move. Renting for a short period of time isn’t feasible with two big dogs and two kids, nor is staying with family. We have a set list of things we need/want in a house, so settling isn’t really an option.

For now, we’ve decided to stay put. We pulled our house off the market and will wait things out. No more aggressive house-hunting, no more offers, no more showings. Unless an absolute home run of a home comes up for sale, we’re tired of the search. It’s depressing and feels like a game we can’t win, at least not right now.

We’re not moving anymore, we’re just moving on.

House Hunting: Mission Complete!

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After going back and forth with negotiations for three days, we finally reached an agreeable price and after our financing and home inspection is cleared, Kyle and I will be home owners! (Again!)

We’re pretty happy with the final price – really, we got it for a screamin’ deal! Possession is on the 24th of this month! That’s like, three weeks! So – while we finish paperwork, I’ve been crazy busy cleaning my house and showing it to renters. We’ve had four calls and so far, three viewings, and they seems to be interested, so who knows. Hopefully we get a renter soon, just to relieve some of the stress of paying two mortgages. I’m more paranoid of people coming to my house, casing the place, and then coming back and robbing me.

Some people would probably think we’re crazy for owning two homes and only being 25. I think we’re pretty damn fortunate considering the percentage of people who don’t own homes at all.

Anyway – onto my NEW HOUSE! It’s three bedrooms, three (full!) bathrooms, two stories and has a HUGE backyard. The driveway is flat and there’s a double garage (no more warming the car up in the morning!) Really, I think the backyard is my favourite. It’s MASSIVE for the area we’re in. Plus, it backs onto Crown (a.k.a. government) land so we won’t have neighbours behind us ever, which is great. Annnnd, the elementary school is only 1km away, which will be great down the road ;)

It also doesn’t need any work other than paint and some wallpaper removal (not looking forward to it!). There are two rooms that were kid’s rooms and they’re bright green and dark, navy blue, one of them with musical notes painted on a white wall. There’s a country-esque wallpaper boarder in the dining room which will come down eventually and some nasty pink wallpaper in the laundry room that my mom will be happy to see come down (it’s really hideous!)

Kyle and I are both really excited to move into our new place. We just hope we can get the townhouse rented and packed up in time!

Any suggestions for showing my townhouse to renters? (Either as someone who is a renter or someone who also rents out a house?)

House Hunting, Round Bazillion

Posted in House Hunting by

Seriously, it feels like we’ve been looking at houses forever. I guess we have since we pretty much just bought our current place last September and now we’re hunting again. *sigh* Before I bore you with house hunting details, I must show you what I woke up to this morning:

 

Pardon the reflection of my ceiling fan, but it’s downright miserable outside now! Like, 40% chance of snow, miserable. I better get my winter tires on soon!

Now – Onto the house hunting!

I blogged about this before, but just in case you don’t feel like clicking the link to read the post, basically, we’re looking for a detached home because we’re tired of being attached to our neighbours.

Monday after work Kyle and I went and looked at a place on a street that we’ve always wanted to live on, but the majority of the houses are single bathroom, two bedroom jobs, so it wasn’t quiet ideal for us. The house on Monday was a little bigger, had two bathrooms, and was GORGEOUS but – a little too small. Enter our original #3 house.

Back in our first couple weeks of detached home hunting, we viewed a handful of houses and had narrowed it down to our top two (the two I mentioned in the first link above). Well, House #1 sold right before we went for our second viewing. House #2, after a second viewing with my mom in tow, was scratched off the list due to its slight impracticality. It was awesome, but it only had two bedrooms upstairs and really, we want the bedrooms all in one central location, especially in a larger house.

So – after that, and the viewing on Monday, we went back to House #3. House #3 was right behind #1 and 2 because while it has a HUGE backyard, it was way up a hill and the dining room wasn’t quiet ideal (read: smaller). But, it was still amazing, and after a little/5 minutes of thinking, we decided to put an offer on it:

 

The time difference thing? Well, the owners of the house moved to AUSTRALIA so we have an 18 hour time difference to deal with. When we made our offer, it was 1 a.m., assuming they’re on the Sydney-side of the country. (We have no idea) As of right now we still haven’t heard anything back from them on our offer, but we’re not expecting negotiations to go quickly. It’s not like we’re in a huge rush to move either.

Ah, and we finally decided that if we do get this place, we’ll rent out our townhouse for a couple years. We really wouldn’t make anything off it (we’d probably actually take a slight loss) so since we can afford it, we’ll rent it out.

Fingers crossed!