House-Hunting, Again
Nov. 7th, 2013 08:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madwriterSome of you may remember that from the late summer of 2010 to the spring of 2011 Laurie and I went about the business of house-hunting because my employer, who is also my landlord, told us they were going to try selling all of their rental properties. What followed was a massive education in the game world of credit and finance, along with learning the convolutions of hoop-jumping to get a house loan. Part of this involved some heel-digging work on my part to get credit mistakes resolved.
Ultimately we did not get the loan because my score wasn't high enough. Not that it was bad (at least not after I had the mistakes fixed, jumping my credit scores up 50-60 points each)--and one bank said that if we'd applied a couple of years before, before the banks got so tight, we could've gotten the loan with no trouble. But by intention I didn't have a credit card, and the only thing I was making payments on was a student loan, and all of Laurie's loans had been paid off, so all of that was considered bad juju as far as the lenders were concerned. At the time it didn't matter, though, as the idea of trying to sell the houses fell through.
Deja vu: I got the notice a few weeks ago that the houses are going to go back up on the market. They'll be selling as is, and we've had too many water and mildew issues with our basement for me to want to take that on as an owner. (In fact our basement just flooded again today when the drain backed up.) And the rental market in this area is no better than it was in 2011.
On the other hand, the house next door to us is awfully appealing. Better layout, no major water or dampness-related issues that we could tell, and everything looked in pretty good shape aside from some of the rain-facing windows, although I think the only problematic thing might be one deteriorating window that doesn't have a storm window for protection. It still has forest as back yard, and in fact the layout of the lot, with trees and hills and a berm, makes it feel remote (which I like) even though it's in a neighborhood. And what would be my Writing Room has a fireplace. :)
So it looks like I'll be jumping into the loan applicationfray shark-infested pool process again. Which I'm not looking forward to, but there's a stubborn little part of me deep in my head that hopes we didn't get the loan in 2011 so that we could buy this house instead.
(And this time I have a credit card. A medical credit card which I had to get to pay my hospital bill, granted, but a credit card nevertheless.)
In the meantime, here is a picture of a cool tree that's in the house's back yard. It's exactly what it looks like: a birch tree that was engulfed by a maple, but still growing just fine despite its partner's clingyness.
Ultimately we did not get the loan because my score wasn't high enough. Not that it was bad (at least not after I had the mistakes fixed, jumping my credit scores up 50-60 points each)--and one bank said that if we'd applied a couple of years before, before the banks got so tight, we could've gotten the loan with no trouble. But by intention I didn't have a credit card, and the only thing I was making payments on was a student loan, and all of Laurie's loans had been paid off, so all of that was considered bad juju as far as the lenders were concerned. At the time it didn't matter, though, as the idea of trying to sell the houses fell through.
Deja vu: I got the notice a few weeks ago that the houses are going to go back up on the market. They'll be selling as is, and we've had too many water and mildew issues with our basement for me to want to take that on as an owner. (In fact our basement just flooded again today when the drain backed up.) And the rental market in this area is no better than it was in 2011.
On the other hand, the house next door to us is awfully appealing. Better layout, no major water or dampness-related issues that we could tell, and everything looked in pretty good shape aside from some of the rain-facing windows, although I think the only problematic thing might be one deteriorating window that doesn't have a storm window for protection. It still has forest as back yard, and in fact the layout of the lot, with trees and hills and a berm, makes it feel remote (which I like) even though it's in a neighborhood. And what would be my Writing Room has a fireplace. :)
So it looks like I'll be jumping into the loan application
(And this time I have a credit card. A medical credit card which I had to get to pay my hospital bill, granted, but a credit card nevertheless.)
In the meantime, here is a picture of a cool tree that's in the house's back yard. It's exactly what it looks like: a birch tree that was engulfed by a maple, but still growing just fine despite its partner's clingyness.
