I looked over the page and I was … well … shocked. This guy is quite on the conservative side. Okay, very much right winged. Yeah, he would have a slight panic attack living under my roof, but I gave him my number anyway. I wanted to gage him based on a phone call and not purely on his MySpace page. Hey, you never know.

Well, he called today and we talked. I told him about the place, and I was as honest and straight forward as I could be. He asked about running the AC; I told him the truth: I run the AC, but keep the place at 80 when I’m home to save on energy — he wasn’t too pleased about that. I told him I was looking for a roommate that was outgoing, somebody to really kick my ass and get me outside more. He wanted a place where he could crash overnight about once or twice a week per month. And of course, I asked him about his MySpace page and how right winged it came out to be. That was his real person. I was straight and told him he wouldn’t work very well in my atmosphere giving my family.

After all that, he still wanted to talk more about the place. So, we decided to set up a time to meet on Monday at a local hamburger joint. So be it from me to stop somebody still interested in seeing the place.

Not 10 minutes after we hang up he calls back. Guess why? You’ve guessed it, he changed hit mind. Well, duh! I could have told him that. I’m glad he did, too. I would have told him no anyway just based on our phone call. It was very obvious this wouldn’t have benefited both of us anymore than financial. I don’t want that. I don’t need a roommate. I’m doing this for myself as much as them.

On with the saga…next up, if you or your girlfriend is allergic to cats, don’t check out a place that has two of them…

You can view them all through my handy flash viewer or you can jump over to Flickr and view them there. Feel free to leave any comments or even any names of the plants (if you can see them well enough).

I have my frig bought, a nice Whirlpool contoured fridge. While I can’t open the freezer side 100%, it’s good enough to get stuff in and out. It is a side-by-side fridge with a built in water filter and whirlpool’s unique in-door ice dispenser. I like this feature; it’s unique and it does open some extra self space.

For microwave, I just got a basic GE over the top microwave. Nothing to special about that. I still need to connect it.
Now, since I also have an official dinning room I figured I should look into an actual dinning room set, too. I’ve been checking out Furniture.com and found one I really like. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to locate it on their site now…I sure hope they didn’t take it down! They do still have a thumbnail up of it, but I can’t the set itself anywhere. ugh!

Oh yes, and picture of the new place. Well. I have pictures, bunch of them, but they are on my camera’s card and my whole computer system is currently taken apart. On top of that, my cable won’t be connected until next week the 27th. Which means, I’ll be SOL of connection for a little bit. I should be able to print some out though. I do have the printer and the paper. We’ll see.

I still have until Friday. Boring week, wasting time until I can finally start doing work to the place and moving in. Maybe I’ll work on some of these Costa Rica pictures people keep bugging me about. Yes, the DVD is in and yes, it does work.

Check this out, I have already came up with two designs I want to put on the walls of my place. First one being in the dining room and the second one being in the from room.

Here’s my plan, what do you think?

In the dinning room, I’m going to slightly mimic the design pattern from this rug and put it up on the far back wall from wall to wall. I’m debating on getting the rug, too, and use it to create a visual connection someplace, maybe in the front room?

Second one is a bit harder to explain as I can’t find any images that easily describe what I’m thinking of. It’s going to be a bit of a wave type design, similar to this image on DeviantArt, but rounded and a few more waves. Small on the sides, large in the center. Then I plan to colour the wave parts top and bottom, stopping at a hidden line right in the middle. I plan on placing this on the front room main wall, after I repaint the current wall.

Colours of the two patterns will match. What do you think?

Update: I have created a depiction of what I was talking about above.

I tell ya, this place has more cracks than dry paint, but nothing is serious or foundation worrying. Heck, to be honest, some of the stuff it was hard to tell if it was the wall or just the paint itself drying out. Some of the walls has some pretty thick coat of paint on them.

Over all the inspection went smoothly. Just a few cracks here and there, nothing as serious as to be caused by a major foundation shuffle. I’ll have to cock up a few areas; tighten a few bolts; destroy the crappy wall cabinets I have no use for; throw some paint down; and do something about that green carpet. Looks like it’s time to get a Lowe’s card! Just kidding, although it might be worth while, I’ll have to think about it a bit more.

The only major thing we found was a needed electrical inspection. It is not a show stopper in my book. This place is as is after all and this is not a foundation threating problem. We did find a few outlets with reversed ground and neutral, couple with open grounds and some exposed wires in the attic which need to be cleaned up. I was also informed that my electrical box was an old federal box and due to the spring loaded style connectors, those were known to cause problems over time. I think it’ll be worth while if I get that fully checked out, if not replaced.

And that’s it really. This place will be a nice learning experience for me. I’ve never bought a fixer-upper and I think it’ll be cool to build things the way I want them.

The papers are signed, mortgage is underway, appraiser is hitting the place tomorrow. All we need is the title and we’re good as golden to close on Friday. I’m ready!

We finally got the deal closed last night, all verbal agreements with just a few initials required by myself on the document changes. I tell you, my agent’s just great. He played his cards well in the negotiations. He knew exactly what I was welling to go to and we knew exactly what the finished place we lost out on went for.

Alright, so Agent Shadow, the one I post about in my previous post, had finally came back with a counter-offer. The counter was definitely too much; 117. He told her, not just no, but hell no and reminded her knows the value of the place as she just sold the last place. Given this is a fixer-upper, it’s worth much less. So, she called back her clients and got 116 from them. My agent still wasn’t going for it; “I know what my client’s bottom line is and you better to better than that,” as he put it. She called her clients again, dropped to 115. He still wasn’t going for it. He did say it’s better but still needs some work, “You’re still not close; I know he won’t go for that.” So, she calls her client back, gets them to drop 114 and then informed my agent if they dropped any lower, they would have to bring money to the closing. My agent was apparently just having a ball giving her a hard time; “Well, it’s still not at my client’s bottom line, but let me check with him and see what he says.” We already hit my bottom line. haha … I told my agent earlier that morning 114-115 was my cap. Talk about playing hard. That’s just awesome. So, we got the place for 114, up from my 109 bid but down from the 119,900 original price. For a point of reference, the last place sold at 118.
Now, we have a contract, finally! I have inspections tonight to go over everything. The foundation is known, but within specs — been told by multiple parties. It is a fixer-upper, so I do expect to get a laundry list of things that will need fixing. I was referred the inspector and my folks told me he was really good and extremely detailed. I found out this morning he spent over 4 hours on my parent’s place. Now that’s detailed.

I’m glad to see things are finally coming together now. With any luck, we should be closing here on the 10th. It all depends, now, on how fast my mortgage guy can get things rolling…and how hard my agent pushes. lol

I will let everybody know of the address and post some photos once closing is finished. I don’t to get people’s hopes up just yet. Besides, I will have plenty of time to convert everything over. Providing we do close here on the 10th, I’ll have that weekend and the following weekend to get moved and shifted over before the Thanksgiving get together in Colorado Springs.

Remember that place I spoke of in my earlier post about how the agent (we’ll call her Agent Sweeps) of the last place I was trying to get was trying to pit us against another potential buyer? Well, when putting down the offer of this other place, we found out this agent (Agent Shadow) was the very agent Agent Sweeps was pitting up against. What a small world it is after all.

The story goes like this, Agent Shadow was showing a couple her place for sale and casually mentioned there was another place like this just a couple streets over for sale, too. The couple checked out that place and decided they liked this one better (who’d could blame them, I did, too). I’m not sure who their agent really was, but from my understanding Agent Shadow went ahead and represented them for this other place. They got their bid in to Agent Sweeps the day before us. So now you come to the previous drama I talked about in my previous post. Then comes to the final day, when we pulled out due to Agent Sweep’s flakiness. As it turned out, the owners of that place decided to take Agent Shadow’s client’s offer at 2pm that day. For some reason, when my agent called them at 3pm, Agent Shadow couldn’t straight up say no. She had to go some round about “well, it’s a hard choice. But my client has been leaning towards .. ” blah blah blah. That’s when my Agent just told her, you’re flaking out, we’re pulling out.

Now it comes to this place. We put in a bid to this place and my agent calls up Agent Shadow. They got to talking about the previous place and came to find out she was the very agent Agent Sweeps was pitting us again. Wow, small world after all. And talk about benefit; this agent got the contract of the last place which means she knows exactly what these places are selling for.

The story gets even more interesting now…It turns out this Agent Shadow and my agent use to work in the same office(s) (unsure on the details here — he was talking fast and brief). They didn’t know each other personally, but they knew a lot of the same people. They apparently had a nice talk exchanging stories of the office and just talking about how much of a flake Agent Sweeps was. Even Agent Shadow couldn’t believe some of the stuff she was doing or saying.

Any case, my agent also got the full story about the current place for sale. Another fun story; So, it turns out the current tenants are really tenants. They bought the place two years ago and started doing some work fixing it up (they replaced the floor and added a door, etc) but never completed it. The husband took a job as a truck driver and was always away. The wife, and my details are etchy on this one, decided to ride with him on his “adventures” driving the truck.

Well, now these people have an unused house they get back to no more than a couple times per month, they decided to sell it. They’ve already moved out before hand. This is beneficial for me. My agent asked about a quick closing date, and Agent Shadow informed him they would love a quick close (ding! bonus for me). Then my agent asked about the condition of the place, if they were going to fix anything up. Turns out they are not in town and have no plans to fix it up. Okay. Next question; will they accept a lower bid then due to needing to fix up. The answer was yet (ding again for me!).

Now we’re at where we are today; we have a bid in; Agent Shadow already knows they won’t accept that bid and we’re just waiting for a counter offer. My agent already knows my max bid for the place. Giving this agent is the one that sold the last place, my max bid should be perfectly acceptable — if we get up to it.

Another small thing … An old friend lives up in an area not to far from here, but a mile away, and he’s warned me about issues of crime, guns, etc. That got me a little concerned. I checked out the City of Dallas interactive crime map and from the most part, it looked okay. The stolen car part I’ll have to watch out about; there’s only one within the neighborhood itself. I don’t know how this compares to other places. I do know this area is the place I was l planning to move to, before I decided to buy a house, which shows many more problems; however, I’ve herd nothing but glowing reviews of that area. It is a really nice area, too; a place I would recommend others to check out. I plan on getting a insiders opinion sometime soon about the area I’ll be moving to as my father actually knows a couple people that lives within the very same community. Heck, from the sound of it, one of the people he knows is on the very same street I will be on.

Over all this deal looks like it might actually work. I hope it does and hope nobody comes in and under-balls us like we tried to do to them. Karma. I think we already paid for our karma when the last place decided not to take the bid.

Oh yeah and that one other place I spoke of being a mile from my place — they are being drama queens again. The agent came back saying “We’ll do your offer” but when she tried to get the contract signed, the girl told her agent she’s not agreeing to it. Big drama queens. I’m so glad the negotiations didn’t go through originally.

This has sure been an interesting weekend for me. Three offers, so far, has fallen through, and none of them by any fault on our own.

I swear, people can be such babies when put into a corner. Lets see, a slight recap on what’s happened.

First off, we have place number 1, in a quiet community of Chimney Hills, right across the street from Richland College (actually, most of the places are in this community). This place was on the market for over 70 days, and we couldn’t quiet figure out why. I took a look and immediately fell for it. So we dropped an offer. After talking with their agent, we found out the place was under contract for a couple months with a contingency. Apparently the contingency fell through and the house was put back onto the market. Great, we thought, we got the jump! Well, little did we know, the owners had a chat amongst themselves. It was taking a while to get a reply, we thought it was going well. It turns out, the owners decided not to sell. Their agent was no happy. She went back twice trying to convince them otherwise, with no luck. So, there goes offer number one out the window.

Well, back we go to the market. Saturday we look at four more places. Only one of them really appealed to me and we put an offer down. This place is actually about a mile from where I currently live. It’s in a nice, highish priced neighborhood with very apparent developments coming in that will only increase the value. So, basically, it was a good investment, even though the location is farther than I desired (where I currently lived). Little did we know, however, there was a whole drama episode going on between the owner and her mother. Here’s the story; we put an offer down and got talked up to a certain amount. The two agents agreed and supposedly the seller also agreed, but when her agent went to get her to sign the papers, she refused stating she wasn’t going to sign unless it was x amount (more than agreed). Her agent called mine, in attempts to raise our price but no go. As a matter of fact, it just infuriated my agent and myself. It turns out the seller does not want to sell the place but is being pressured to by her mother because, from what I can gather, her mother does not like the guy she has shacked up with her in the place. And to cap that, her mother dropped a huge chunk down on the place and wanted that back (I assume it’s related to her dislike of the guy). So, her mother was pressuring her to sell to get her money back and to kick said boy out. Two birds, makes sense to me. My agent and I decided this most definitely would not be a good investment to go forward with. We have a feeling even if we did get her to sign the papers, she wouldn’t have shown for the closing.

Back to square one. We had to start searching all over again. This time, since I originally like the Chimeny Hills community, we focused in there without a garage requirement. We have a good handful of places, 7 total. We checked out each one, but one which we knew before hand wouldn’t suit my desires.

First place, was good. Just like the floor plan of the original place I looked at. I didn’t care much for the colour scheme, but that’s changeable. It was on my list of possibility. Place two and three were a different floor plan, they had two full floors with a low celling on the first floor. This something I didn’t care about. I wanted a big open living room area. The next two places were awesome. They were place one with an added four hundred square feet but no garage. The last place was just a duplicate of the middle two, with water damage.

So, I choose the second place with the larger floor plan and this one was finished up nicely. The other one wasn’t as finished and had a very apparent foundation shift. Place one, we’ll call Chimney Sweep place, is what I wanted. We called up their agent and she has informed me there was an offer put in. Her clients (sellers) shot back a counter-offer and they were waiting for reply saying they were still open for offers. Well, this place was cheep, my agent and I both agreed and went in at full price, no strings attached. And now let the drama begin!

It would seems the sellers were shunned at the time frame we had. I mean, we had a two week close date and the sellers hadn’t even found a place to move in yet. What the hell? Let me let you in on a little known fact; their place has been on the market for over 70 days. And they have not found a place yet? What the hell have they been going the past 70 days? Now that’s know, the sellers are unable to decide which offer to take. Ours or the previous offer they countered on. You know what they do next? Oh, they do reced their counter offer, but then they tell both parties, “Make your best offer” and we have until 1pm the next day. What the f*?! Talk about fishing for money. Oh, their agent denied that, but we know that is what they are doing. It is funny, we had my mortgage agent call her up to put the bug in her ear while faxing over an official pre-approval letter. He managed to talk to her and he, himself, wasn’t impressed with her apparent knowledge of the business itself.

Well, the deadline goes by and we hear nothing from them. My agent calls her, an hour later, trying to figure out what’s going on. Her reply was like in indecisive child — “well, you know, it’s a hard choice..” at which point my agent trying to figure out why? And told her straight up, no it’s not, it is a yes or no answer. She said she was going to talk to the sellers and call us back an hour later. Two hours later, we hear nothing. My agent calls her and she doesn’t answer. He picks up another cell phone, calls her and she answered right away. Talk about avoiding him. Wow. Pressure is on and she just told him “We’ll we’re gonna go ahead with the other offer.” At this point he and I are just fuming at them and decided go for it, your loss.

Now we’re at where we are today. Fall back place is vacant, which is a good thing, however, the foundation needs to be closely checked out. My agent’s son actually own a foundation rebuilding company and knows these things. So, today, both of them are suppose to be taking a close look at this place to insure everything is in the up and up before we decide to put an offer down. And of need be, write something in as a conditional in getting anything fixed. This place isn’t too bad, same layout, but does need more work inside done. It has green carpet (omg?!), walls are painted difference colours in each room (wtf?!) and the top loft has a bunch of cabinets which I have no clue why. Another “bonus” or disadvantage, however you look at it, is they shrank the master bedroom to create a giant walk in closet (that looks half finished) to make room for a giant bathroom that any woman would die for. I mean, it has a pedestal sink, plus the original one, corner shower, spa tub with jets and a built in vanity. The vanity, imho, is ugly as hell. IF I get this place, that’s either getting pulled out or being made into a self (but placing a giant sheet over it). No word back from the agent yet, but the day isn’t done either. If this place doesn’t work out, I have one more fall back, but I have a feeling she’ll have problems with our close date, too.

So far, I have had three offers fall through for some reason or another, all due to excessive drama by the seller’s part. It’s ridiculous. What makes these all worse is I am on a deadline, too. I have to be out of my current place by Nov. 30th. On top of that, I’ll be out of town the final weekend making the middle weekend, of the 17th, the only weekend I will have for moving. In essence, pushing up my required move out day up by 2 weeks.

Oh the drama. When will this end. I’m almost to the point where I’ll just take something to make all this end….