theparkerfamily.org

Tag: Home Improvement

  • inspection for monroe

    despite being 97 years young, our home-elect is in pretty outstanding shape.

    we spent three hours pouring over the place on Saturday, and really didn’t come up with nearly as much as we would have thought.

    there was a loose toilet on the first floor which we didn’t want to start leaking, a couple small electrical issues and a joist which showed some possible termite damage — all of which the sellers agreed to fix.

    there are some other issues which we’ll want to fix ourselves in the months after we move in: the boiler was installed in 1982, and probably is a little behind as far as fuel efficiency goes; the attic could use a little more insulation; and there are two code issues with railings on the porch and on the steps to the basement.

    the first two will take some planning (and some $$$$) but the latter i can fix myself on pretty much any random Saturday afternoon.

    oh, and even our termite fears turned out to be over blown. the porch next door does have a small termite issue, but “our” porch has been treated and got a clean bill of health — and they were actually replacing the offending porch during our inspection.

    i think we’ve got one contingency left (our appraisal) but the last week of May seems a lot closer than it did even a couple of days ago.

    MAP: From Baist’s Real Estate Atlas of Surveys of Washington, District of Columbia, circa 1919. “Our” place is #79, located just above the “M” in Monroe Street.

  • inspection for park

    []
    first time home buyers are so cute.

    the inspection for our sale of park was tuesday, and by the end of the day some of the sparkle had started coming off of the prospective buyers for our place on park road.

    i should start by saying that we we’re a little cranky to start.

    part of their original offer to buy our place was “complete flexibility” for our settlement and move out — they were living somewhere month to month, and just needed to give 30 days notice. however, by the time the contract came, that had been revised down to “no flexibility what-so-ever” and we had to move out the same day as we settled on Monroe, which is a logistical nightmare.

    (in the end, we negotiated a scant 7 day rent back, but thankfully it’s all we needed.)

    as a result, we decided to be a little more proactive with their inspection of our place — we tried to gave them a bunch of information on our place up front, in an effort to make sure they got everything they needed out of their morning kicking our tires.

    unfortunately, they still couldn’t find our water heater — even though we had done everything short of drawing them a map based on our own journey of water heater discovery.

    they gave us a provisional list of issues they wanted addressed — including two that to this day i have no clue what is broken (and neither of those are the one where they want something “adjustmented”):

    • tiles near the base of the washer dryer to be regrouted.
    • gaps in the floor of the utility clause to be closed.
    • closet doors in both bedrooms to be adjustmented to close fully.
    • bathroom light to be replaced with wet area rated fixture.
    • high loop for dishwasher to be adjusted.

    (we opted to give them $500 to fix the stuff themselves.)

    as for the “missing” water heater, they asked to extend the inspection another five days — just long enough to put our purchase of Monroe in jeopardy. instead, we gave them a day extension, and Brandon suggested that I be there the next morning to talk them the place everything myself.

    what followed was a lesson in the power of eye contact — as it turned out that they were legitimately nice people, doing exactly the same sort of thing the lady sparkler and i would have done.

    mr. firsttimehomebuyer was detail oriented and focused on making a great investment decision (not unlike my own beloved). mrs. firsttimehomebuyer was a neo-hippie (much like myself) who was excited primarily about the community and the neighborhood.

    we talked about our place, the building and the neighborhood — and in the course of 20 minutes they went from inexperienced ogres who we’re screwing up the purchase of our dream home to people we’d totally have over for dinner.

    if the lesson of the last two weeks to our real estate agent is to take all his places off the market to make them sell quicker, the lesson for us is to meet any prospective buyers ourselves and take them out for drinks.

  • house 3.0

    []
    things are starting to sink in a bit, now.

    the contract on our new place has been fully signed and ratified (tho, i have no clue what that means, unless it involves a 2/3rds majority of the U.S. Senate).

    we’ve got our home inspection this saturday at 2pm, and the lady sparkler has been furiously working on financing and spreadsheets to make sure we’re all good there (and we are).

    assuming that everything goes well with our purchase and our sale, we’ll have a very busy Memorial Day. we’d settle the sale on Park Road on Monday, May 23rd. we’d settle the purchase on Monroe Street on Wednesday, May 25th.

    then we’d rent back our current place on Park Road from the new owners through Sunday, May 29th, so we’d have about 5 days to swap everything between the two places.

    in the meantime, we’ve been watching a lot of tv — the “worst” being holmes inspection on HGTV.

    the basic premise of the show is to find “homeowners facing massive repair bills and dangerous living conditions due to incompetence within the unregulated home inspection industry,” and then call in Canadian construction foreman extrordinaire Mike Holmes to “make it right.”

    about a month ago, we saw an episode of holmes inspection where all the supporting walls of a 100 year old row home had been taken down, causing over $300k worth of repairs to restore the collapsing floors — which is exactly what we thought had happened to the very first monroe place we looked at.

    this week we saw an episode where termite damage had done $150k worth of damage to a the first two floors of a different, but similarly aged rowhouse. the next day, we found out that the current owners of our future place have been monitoring termites on one of their neighbors’ front porches.

    (the current owners have been treating “our” new porch regularly for the past couple years to prevent the issue from jumping property lines, and the faulty porch is “due” to be replaced this year.)

    it’s nice to know that when the real stress starts settling down, we have some good “hypothetical” stress ready and waiting in the wings.

  • photos: monroe street nw

    Assuming everything goes through, this is the place we just bought on Monroe Street in Mount Pleasant, DC.
    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    photos: monroe street nw (photos courtesy of sellers)

  • good things happen all at once

    after two months of dithering, we’ve finally put an offer on a house — and it’s for the same house we were talking about last week.(UPDATED: We got the place. Keep reading…!)

    it would have been a stretch for us at full price, but it’s been sitting one the market without any offers for more than two weeks now. that means that the market has spoken and deemed the price too high.

    so, tonight we’ve put an offer for (effectively) 4% off the list price, with the expectation that will be negotiated back down to between 2% and 3% off list — which is much more in line with what we were thinking for a house budget.

    the place *is* beautiful.

    it was built in 1915, resides within a formal Historic District, has all its original molding and the original floor plan — things that no other house we’ve looked at has had. the view from the porch and the front bedroom is across rock creek park, and just stunning.

    our only real complaint is the lack of a second bathroom upstairs and a kinda small third bedroom, but both of those things can be fixed with a small addition off the back — something that both neighbors have already done so there is every reason to assume it’d be approved by the District.

    (also, if we ever get around to having a “thing #2” of our own, the smaller third bedroom has it’s own porch so the demand between the two rooms will eventually balance out.)

    our target house also has a rental efficiency in the basement that was (at one point) officially licensed by the city — a bit of a rarity as far as basement apartments go — which we can expect to take about $800 or $900 off our mortgage each month for as long as we care to rent it out.

    so, all engines are go — let’s hope this thing works out.

    UPDATE (FRIDAY @ 9pm): We’ve heard back from their Realtor that they’ll be responding tomorrow (Saturday) by noon. Responding is good, because it means our offer hasn’t been summarily rejected.

    UPDATE (SATURDAY @ 11AM): The response timeline has slipped a little bit — from noon to “some point today.” It came accompanied with the story that the new house they’ve bought in New Jersey flooded this week, which seems to be reason enough to give them a break.

    UPDATE (SATURDAY @ 5PM): Now we’re starting to get a little cranky. They reviewed our offer and decided that they wanted some more supporting (eg. financial) documentation. Seems like that was something they could have asked for, oh, say … 24 hours ago.

    Brandon (our agent) said it’s because of how we structured the deal — instead of taking 4% off the price, we said we’d pay full price but they’d have to give us 4% of the value of the house at closing.

    Apparently asking for the cash back can either be interpreted as (a) smart, because right now borrowing money is so cheap vs. having cash on hand; or (b) reckless, because the seller thinks you don’t actually have the cash to complete the transaction without the “subsidy.”

    I don’t have the heart to break it to them that the only reason we asked for such a large number was because we assumed they’d chop the figure in half before the sent it back to us.

    UPDATE (SUNDAY @ 11AM): More waiting. They got the financial stuff, and are going to meet (Realtor and sellers) this afternoon to discuss.

    UPDATE (SUNDAY @ 1PM): They countered. They “kept” our 4% cash back at closing, but upped the price by three percent to take three-quarters of it back. We’re countering at exactly halfway between our initial offer and their list price (which is conveniently enough where we thought we’d end up anyway). Seems like a fair compromise.

    UPDATE (SUNDAY @ 2:30PM): God, this is excruciating.

    UPDATE (SUNDAY @ 2:45PM): The sellers are on their way to New Jersey (to their flooded house, presumably) but Brandon made it through to their real estate agent and she “didn’t see any reason why the counter wouldn’t be accepted.” I think that’s about as good a news as we could get without a formal “yes” — but i’m breaking out the hard liquor to numb the pain regardless.

    UPDATE (SUNDAY @ 3:15PM): “The waaa-aiting is the hardest paaart.”

    UPDATE (SUNDAY @ 6:00PM): they agreed. we just bought a house. in dc. in mount pleasant. what the heck?!? good things really do happen all at once.

  • contract

    we just sold our place … and while it was technically still off the market.

    we pulled the listing on Monday, got our place back to living order on Tuesday night, but then got a call from our real estate agent Wednesday night saying that someone wanted to see the place Thursday morning.

    we proceeded to explain to him what “being off the market” meant, but he was insistent that the showing was a good idea.

    apparently, the prospective buyers had seen our place about two weeks ago, and had bid on another place and lost. now, they had narrowed the next round of their search to our place and one other — and had freaked out a bit when we took our place off the market earlier in the week.

    so, we spent all night Wednesday re-staging our place for the Thursday morning showing.

    and they loved the place. and they put a (nearly) full price offer on the place. and we accepted. and we settle the week of May 22nd.

    which just goes to show you: the best way to get an offer is to take your place off the market.

  • delisted

    []
    we just took our place off the market.

    we’ve been having problems getting people through our doors, lately — and while all the problems are (mostly) fixable, it’s going to take some time to do so.

    our condo fee is too high, and we’re voting to lower it on April 11th. our building isn’t FHA approved, and it takes about a month to go through that process. our common areas are dingy, and the building isn’t starting to do the walls/floors until next month.

    so, rather than beat our head against the wall in the meantime (eg. staging the house every morning, evacuating our place all day saturday/sunday) we’re just going to pull it off the market until next month.

    not to mention, our garden out front looks pretty ridiculously awesome in the spring — which just might help people see past the fact that the carpeting needs to be replaced and the fact that whoever picked the hallway paint colors should be drug out back and shot.

  • or, maybe not

    []
    well, that didn’t work so much.

    shortly after the post about us putting down an offer on a place on the 1800 block of Monroe NW, we got word from our real estate agent that a grand total of two people saw our place over the weekend.

    the market has judged our sale price, and found it wanting.

    they love our particular unit, they just hate our building. and the high condo fees. and the dated common areas. but mostly the high condo fees. which, of course, are the two things we technically can’t control.

    fortunately, i’m on the board of our association and there have been a LOT of conversations about dropping our fees this year. and the dingy common areas are up for renovation this year, too. so, hopefully i just have to nudge those conversations along a bit.

    it turns out that we are actually an old school condo board in that we have pretty consistently high monthly fees, but not a single special assessment in memory (because we always have money in the bank). unfortunately, every other association on the planet has swapped to a different model, dropping their fees dramatically and just expecting that big expenses will mean big(ish) special assessments.

    i know which one i’d prefer — but i guess that’s why i’m trying to move into a house.

    it also turns out that our building isn’t pre-approved for FHA loans, which means that people can’t buy into the building with federally backed loans that require as little as 3.5% down payment. instead, our buyers right now need to get traditional bank loans, which require 10 to 20% down.

    so it looks like i’ve got a couple “special” projects on my hands for the next month.

    regardless, we backed out of making an offer on the Monroe place — and plan on doing what we can with the condo fees, common areas and the fha pre-approval process in (hopefully) the next month. that’d mean we (again) can go gangbusters with the selling and the buying in the first week of April.

    for those of us playing along at home, we’ve now looked at a more than dozen properties, and have “tried” putting an offer down on a five of them:

    … but haven’t actually bit the bullet on any.

    i guess the good news is that places keep coming on the market. now, if we can get that one extra-special one off the market, we’ll be all set.

  • maybe

    it looks like we’re actually going to put an offer on something. this weekend we found another property on the 1800 block of monroe street nw in mount pleasant, and it looks perfect.

    there is plenty of space, a potential rental unit downstairs, and all the little things that make a DC property great (molding, layout, finishing) are still there.

    there are some quirks — one bathroom on the top floor, not a ton of closet space, and no parking — but we could easily see ourselves spending the next couple of decades of our lives there.

    the seller isn’t even entertaining offers until Tuesday night, so we’re in no great rush — just pulling together all the details and hoping it doesn’t get into a bidding war.

    i’m guessing we won’t hear anything until Thursday at the earliest.

  • open house(s)

    well, that was awkward…

    after clearing out of the house to make way for a 5:30 pm showing — and running up a $50 tab at haydees waiting for our place to clear — we suddenly found ourselves with three people standing unannounced in our hall at 7:05 pm.

    turns out that they were running about an hour and a half late.

    the potential buyers were very nice about the whole thing, but spent (maybe) three and half minutes looking around before skedaddling awkwardly. i’m sure they were very interested in not ‘bothering’ us, but i would have rather had them actually see the place.

    the open house this weekend, however, went a little better.

    eleven groups came through — nine with realtors — for a total of fourteen for the weekend. two groups “lingered” according to our agent, and one of them actually came back earlier this week for a second viewing.

    the only negative feedback has been the condo fee (which is a bit steep because of recent elevator and window replacements) and the shabby common areas (they’re due for refurbishment this spring and it’s past due).

    all this puts us in an awkward place.

    part of us is rooting for a quick sale, and excited about the momentum that’s been building. part of us is wondering why it hasn’t sold yet because it’s been 8 long days of continual staging.

    but, part of us is scared to death that it will sell — because we still need to find a place worth buying.

    okay, it’s march, people. let’s get some 3 to 4 bedroom row houses on the market in our neighborhood — preferably at reasonable prices, if you don’t mind.