Speeding Along!

We've been frustrated for so long that now it feels like everything is moving so fast! We were told Wednesday that we are officially in contract and need to go apply for a mortgage. AHHHH! Then Nicole became even more anxious about our lease and if we can't get out of it. (It ends February 1, and the last month is paid, so worst case scenario would be paying through December.) Her mind started running away with her, and she was talking about scenarios such as renting out our second bedroom for a few months.

I nipped it in the bud by calling our landlord that afternoon. I'd had so much well-meaning advice from others, which I'd sought out because I was nervous about not presenting it "right" and being mowed over, and all of it just made me even more nervous. But seeing my wife's state of mind made me take the plunge, and I ultimately decided I just had to be honest and straightforward. I called him and said that we were in contract for a house as of that day, and that this had happened more quickly than we'd anticipated and we hoped there would be a way to resolve the lease. He paused and then said if his broker could rent it out, which he tends to do very quickly, we could go. He gave me the guy's name and number, and I called him. 

I told the broker that I'd spoken to the landlord and he'd given me the green light to have the broker list our apartment. The broker offered such sincere and exuberant congratulations and said he would happily list it, and when would we need to be out of there? I told him as soon as possible, and he asked where we would go if it was rented before the house was ready. I told him we'd already planned to move into my in-laws' basement apartment while the floors are finished and the walls are painted, so we can do that anytime, and I would not want any delay if there is a potential renter. He asked if we were okay with having the super let him or his staff in if we're not home, and I said of course, since that will speed up the process. He said, "Ok, I can rent this in 1-3 weeks. Are ya ready?" He said he wouldn't rent for September 1 if he couldn't give us adequate notice, though I'm not sure what would be adequate since that's a week away!

This conversation happened around 4:30pm Wednesday, on his cell phone while he was driving. Thursday afternoon Nicole got off the elevator to see a broker and a young man leaving our apartment. HOLY COW. So we bought boxes and bins yesterday and are spending this weekend trying to pack away everything we won't need. We only want to bring what's necessary for about two months of living into Nicole's parents' house. I don't want to unpack twice. Clothes, toiletries, four dishes, a pot, a pan, etc. The rest will go straight to their garage and won't get touched until we can move it all into the house. 

I'm getting in touch with my inner minimalist. Who knew? For years I tried so hard to acquire (albeit on a budget) because I kept growing into bigger spaces and needing more "stuff" to make it feel like a home, and to make ME feel like an adult. I'm always ticking things off the list - still need a real coffee table (we're using an old TV stand), end tables, a china cabinet, a real dining room table... I'm having a BLAST packing things away, reducing my life to just a few boxes of (perceived) necessities. It's much more fun and fulfilling than it probably should be!

Allowing the Excitement to Grow!

The seller's attorney should have received the contracts today. We haven't heard yet whether the homeowner has signed, but...Nicole just noticed this on Redfin. (Click on it to make it larger.) GIDDY!!!

Happy First Year!

We had a lovely weekend celebration of our anniversary at a little bed and breakfast in Provincetown, MA. We could only afford two nights, so we spent another at a hotel just outside Cape Cod so that we'd be almost there and wouldn't spend our entire Saturday driving. It was a cute, fun town, and it was nice to celebrate amongst hundreds of other queer folk where we could just be ourselves and not get a second glance. It was just so comfortable.

A year ago this very moment, I was an anxious mess. I had been so calm up until that morning, and then my stomach went haywire. Nicole was the opposite - she had been a bundle of nerves and then, that day, was calm and smiling. We reversed roles and she helped take care of me.

We took today off work too so that we could just relax together. We're going to get lunch at the Outback, our favorite chain casual dining restaurant that we very rarely allow ourselves, and then I'm going to see if I can get my eye-rolling wife to watch our wedding video together and maybe go through some photos. :)

And for myself, I will re-read my private journal post that I made after we got back from our incredible Vermont honeymoon last year, written 9/2/11. (Click "read more" below the photo if you want to read it.)

(Almost) Officially in Contract!

I can't believe how everything is happening for us with this house. After the last post where I began to let myself hope again, we had yet another heartbreak - we were told the next day that someone had offered full asking price and that the owner had accepted that offer. We couldn't match that, and we certainly couldn't surpass it in order to be competitive. There was a lot of crying (me) and anger (her) and discouragement all around. We banded together in a way we haven't had to in quite some time, so I guess I can be thankful for that. The support was just as mutual as the grief.

Meanwhile, we resumed talk about the house in Merrick, but we just couldn't regain our initial excitement about that house. It wasn't Tyson. However, we had to move on, so Nicole said she wanted to see it again before making an offer. I was working late the next two nights, but I didn't feel such a need to see it again, so I arranged between Nicole and the realtor. Nicole had her parents meet her there. I got a full report from all of them afterward. Her parents thought it was worth making an offer but told us the highest they would go considering a few obvious issues with the house. Nicole and I talked it over, and on Wednesday Nicole's mom asked if we wanted to make an offer. I told her that I know it sounds silly, but I was holding out some hope that something would fall through with Tyson and it could be ours - and I didn't want to go too far with Merrick and then find out we could have had a chance with Tyson. I knew it was a long shot, but I wanted it badly enough that I didn't want to close the door.

Then John called on Thursday to say that as soon as they had gone into contract, the buyers started trying to negotiate the price down. They had only offered the asking price to get themselves in the door ahead of other offers and were now playing games. The seller was turned off by this and wanted to accept our offer. John told her that they can't keep toying with us, so that she would have to accept it immediately before anything is even written and would have to agree to stop showing the house. She did!

We stayed nervous because technically, even without her showing it, someone could make another offer and she could still accept it over ours. But it all seems good right now. We got an attorney that day, who was a personal recommendation from my brother-in-law's girlfriend who is an attorney, and the seller's attorney sent contracts to ours on Friday. Our attorney was out of the office and called us on Monday, and we went in at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday to meet with him and sign the contracts. We scheduled the inspection for Thursday at 10:00, because I would be off that day for a Saturday that I worked recently, and the lawyer said he would hold onto the contracts and send them out as soon as we call him to say that the home is structurally sound.

The inspection went AMAZINGLY. We used the same guy that inspected a house in Levittown that we'd made an offer on. We'd backed out of that after his report showed some serious issues, such as with electrical and plumbing. He couldn't believe how much better this house was and kept telling us how glad he was we didn't go through with the Levittown house. He raved about things I wouldn't even have known to look for. He told us never to get rid of the toilet bowls because they are really expensive and top-of-the-line - who would have guessed?? He said the renovation of the full bath was a $15 or $20,000 job and that they didn't chintz on it; the cabinets are solid, the plumbing was done in an ideal way that's more expensive, and the fan is a $2 or $300 fan that runs silently. Everything that they did in the house was properly installed and solidly constructed. The owner is a middle-aged widow, and I think they put a lot of money into the work they did because they thought they'd be there for life. But after he died, she moved to Connecticut to live with her son. It's kind of a weird feeling that we are benefitting so much from their tragedy - but I'm glad their home that they put so much love and work into is going to help raise a new family and give them amazing memories.

After the inspection, I called the lawyer immediately and told him to go ahead and send out the contracts. I guess we will hear from him when she has signed, and then we will be officially in contract! Much scariness lays ahead, particularly with applying for a mortgage, but at least we will be securely locked in without the threat of someone else taking it from us. This house is so perfect for us, and worth the tug-of-war on my heart!

Dare I Hope?

The first time I walked into a Jewish synagogue and opened a prayer book, I saw this: "Pray as if everything depended on God; act as if everything depended on you." This is a running theme throughout Judaism, and something I love about this belief system. There is no "let go and let God" mentality. Yes, trust God and continue communicating with God, but don't use that as a reason for inertia.

Anyway, I thought about this last night after leaving a voicemail for the realtor about the Merrick house. We had been playing a bit of voicemail tag in my efforts to make an offer. Nicole's mom asked yesterday if we were going to make an offer, and I told her that I was trying to reach the person but that I was hesitant. She asked if I didn't think it was right for us, and said that if we're set on Floral Park, we shouldn't settle. I said that we're not at all set on Floral Park, especially since we haven't seen anything else decent there in our price range. I said that we had LOVED the Merrick house and were 100% confident in making an offer before we ever saw Tyson, so it wasn't about Merrick not being right for us; it was about not being able to let Tyson go. It's THE ONE. Then I told her that I had this slight fear that we would start to go through with Merrick, be caught up in the process, and find out the offer on Tyson had fallen through and we would have had a chance after all. Nicole's mom asked if I would feel better if she called John the realtor back to confirm that the offer was accepted, that it's going through, and that it's a dead deal before I call back the Merrick realtor. I said YES, please, that would make me feel much better. At least I would know we'd done everything we could and it was out of our hands.

So she called John back and upped our offer a little bit, to just above the other offer. (We shouldn't even know what the other offer is, technically, but apparently John knows the owner and has more information than he should.) We also reapplied online for a new preapproval as soon as we got home from work, and we were granted it. So he said we may actually have a good shot at this. But the catch is - I think he told them we could put 20% down, which we definitely can't. We can do 10%, and even at that would have to borrow some from Nicole's parents for closing costs. (They don't just have it - they would take out a small loan and we would pay it back with interest.) Would this be a dealbreaker if John corrects that misinformation for the owner? I don't know. It doesn't make sense to me that it would, because as long as we're approved for the mortgage, the owner still gets her money. If anyone should be worried about it, it should be the bank, and they already take care of that by slapping you with PMI.

I have no clue whether this will work out for us. There could be an accepted offer already. The homeowner could tell the other person that there's a higher offer and ask us both to give our best (which we've already done!). I'm nowhere close to confident about this. But I'm relieved to be back in the game. If it doesn't happen, I'll know it wasn't because I didn't take action or because I gave up as soon as I heard there was already an offer. After that, it's out of my hands.

Heartbreak

I dared to indulge in a daydreamy, glowing post about the amazing house on Tyson, inviting others to share in my anxious excitement, and a few hours later got a call from my father-in-law that our agent found out there is already an offer on the table. And a hefty one, too. One we can't outbid. We are devastated. We had anticipated the unlikely but possible kinks that could arise, but this is one we certainly didn't expect - he should have done his homework before taking us. We never even should have seen the house. And now Merrick is less appealing because we let ourselves love Tyson.

Merrick is beautiful, though it did have a couple of drawbacks. We came home from seeing it set on making an offer. But we figured we should just see this last one we'd been told about before doing so. And we fell hopelessly in love. And now it's gone. Could we wait it out in case it falls through? Sure, but that's a gamble because we could end up with nothing. We DID love Merrick before seeing Tyson. Myrtle Beach looks like a great vacation and you're completely happy with it until you think you might be able to go to St. Thomas for the same price. Then when no flights are available to the Caribbean, Myrtle Beach is a bit of a bummer. How do you regain that initial excitement? Does this mean we SHOULDN'T be bidding on Merrick? Was this to keep us away from it? Do I even believe in signs like that?

We loved the house in Merrick. We loved how unique it was, how much character it had, the beautiful kitchen, the sweet backyard. But it has nothing on Tyson. We dreamed ourselves right into that house, no matter how much we tried not to. I could picture where the Christmas tree would go, how we'd be able to pull up the driveway in the back and go right into the kitchen with our groceries, where we'd put a vegetable garden.

Will we be happy in Merrick? Sure. But I worry that I'll always wonder how nice it would have been to have that super short commute, to be able to walk up to a sweet village, to make that beautiful home ours. If we had just never seen it, we would be ecstatic over Merrick. That kills me.

I hope I can let it go. Time heals. And who knows, maybe Merrick is gone too and we will just start over.

Holding my Breath

I've fallen in love. Hard.

We've had so many disappointments and near misses when it comes to househunting that I almost feel like it's bad luck to let myself get hopeful - until I remind myself that I'm not superstitious and I need to allow myself to get cautiously excited. And that means being able to talk about it without fear of "jinxing" it, and opening myself up to having to talk about the hurt too if it doesn't work.

We've been looking for a house for about a year, as I've posted about before. Houses in Long Island are so expensive, and the taxes are even worse. It's impossible to get anything livable under $300k, which is insane to me because that could practically get you a mansion where I'm from. This has made the search all the harder; if we could afford $450k, we'd be just fine. But we have to hover between $300-$350, and it doesn't get you much. The few times we find something that seems to be getting us quite a bit for that price, it's snatched up before we can even get a glimmer in our eyes. Mortgage rates are low and it's a competitive market, and our price range isn't. People who have been casually thinking about looking for a house at some point in the future are grabbing at NOW because of the market. We are just starting out and just happen to be caught up in the rush.

We looked at a couple very promising prospects yesterday, which had me feeling more hopeful than I have in a long time. We were actually ready to make an offer on something we saw out in Merrick, when Nicole suggested we look at that one last option that this Floral Park realtor (John) had to show us. He lives in the area, has become very friendly with Nicole's dad over the past six or nine months that we've been working with him, and he said we could just call him up because the houses are empty and he has the keys. Up until now, he's mostly shown us two-family homes, which I'm really resistant to but trying to stay open to since Nicole and her parents are both okay with it (they would go in on it with us and rent out their part), unaffordable single-families, or dilapidated affordable single-families. Floral Park is just expensive. So while it's a nice area, I certainly don't NEED to be there. I've actually started to really like Merrick, and we've continued to look farther out on the island while John shares new listings as they come up.

John took us over to this house but I could tell he really thought we weren't too interested. Nicole's dad had told him we had gone back out to Merrick to look at the other house again (Nicole wasn't with me the first time), and John was pretty sure (as were we!) that we'd make an offer there. So he was informative but relaxed, not at all pushy, and we just absorbed everything.

The house sits about a block off of Jericho Turnpike, the main road. (The Merrick house was only one house away from a main road, so this was actually further off than what we'd already been willing to settle for.) It has a house on each side of it, then some sort of business building (not commercial, but I'm not sure exactly what it is) closer to Jericho. There is a small, two-story apartment complex across the street. The house to the right is on the corner, and there is a stone Verizon building across that street (an office building, not a store). Then there are houses on every other street. So THAT is part of why this house is actually in our price range. If you're looking in that neighborhood, the streets that are all residential are going to be more valued than the street that has a few houses and a smattering of other things. They aren't big commercial buildings, and the street is connected to the rest of the neighborhood where our kids can play, go to cookouts, and trick-or-treat, so it's not a big deal to me. I'm okay with that being our compromise!

It's a desirable, populated area close to the city, so the houses are narrow and long to maximize space, with the bottom floor being railroad style. The house was built in 1925 and has clearly been very well taken care of. You walk into what is either a large mudroom or a small sunroom. It has a ton of windows. Then you walk into the modest-sized living room, and then you walk through to the dining room, and then the kitchen. The stairs (which are beautiful!) go up from the dining room. All the floors and moldings are original wood and they are so gorgeous! The doors are original with these interesting looking cut glass knobs. We both love the cozy charm of the house - we wouldn't want to replace or change any of that! The woman who owns it now does something with blinds for a living, and she has brand new Anderson windows with nice blinds in them (some wooden ones downstairs!). She also replaced the front door recently. So the things that needed fixing are fixed, and the things that don't, she left alone. It's perfect. The only thing needed is a good sanding of the wood floors.

Upstairs is a long hallway with a railing to the left looking over the staircase, two small bedrooms and a GORGEOUS remodeled bathroom on the right, and then the modest-sized master bedroom at the back. There is only one small closet in each room, but again, something I'm willing to compromise for everything else that is perfect. There is room to put in a wardrobe, so I'm fine!

The kitchen could use some updating. It has old, cheap cabinets and countertops. However, they're clean and workable, so that would be a "someday" dream." The appliances are all brand new. And it has my little dream of a window over the sink! I don't know why I want that so much, but it's just always been a part of my vision of a house. Something that has always made having a house stand out from having an apartment is the idea of washing a dish at the sink and being able to look out at the yard. I don't know why it gets me so much, but I look for it in every house, even though it's obviously not a dealbreaker.

There is a half-bath off the back, a door to the basement, and a door to the backyard. The basement is finished and looks just like the other rooms - wood floor, white walls, good shape. It's a nice rectangular shape (we've seen some crazy basement layouts!) that you could easily make into a playroom, rec room, or even guest room once the upstairs rooms are occupied (omg!). The washer and dryer are down there in a little utility room where the oil tank is.

The house is run on oil, but the stove is gas. So there are gas lines in the house and you could convert to gas heat for about $5,000, which would be a much cheaper bill. This is true for the Merrick house too, but most of the houses we've looked at are either fully on oil with the option to convert for about $10,000 (because there is no gas in the house) or without the option to convert because there are no gas lines in the neighborhood. So this is a HUGE plus.

The backyard is small and a reminder that this is sort of an urban house. But it's THERE. There is grass, there are nooks where I can put my vegetable garden, there is an area for kids to play. There may not be enough room for a full swingset like I'd envisioned, but there is play space.

I'm nervous. We've made a low offer, and we know what we're willing to go up to. The realtor knew our price range and still showed us this, making it clear to us that the owner is ready to go. Apparently they already had a contract and moved out into their new home, and the sale fell through because the buyer's own home sale had fallen through, and buying this was contingent upon selling theirs. So the home is empty and they're paying hefty taxes every month while not even living in it.

I'm also hoping that there isn't a lot of activity on it because I don't know of an open house having happened recently. Usually when we make an offer, it's amidst a flurry of other interested potential buyers and we know our offer is competing with people who can probably pay closer to the asking price. I'm hoping that no one is really looking at this one, and that the owner will be so relieved to have an offer, that they will work with us a little. And I hope no one else suddenly comes forward with a better offer. We know now that we can get approved for a mortgage, so if we can just cinch a sales agreement, we might be good to go. I don't want this to slip through our fingers. It's perfect for us. It's sweet, modest, clean and move-in ready, spacious enough without being big and "too much house," and it's in a GREAT location as far as being walking distance to the railroad and so close to the city. I could take any job in Manhattan and have a normal commute, no more than what I'm doing now from Queens. That hasn't been true for anything else we've looked at, because it's difficult to find within our budget.

All prayers and positive energy are greatly appreciated. I'm so ready to build our nest together. We've been frustrated and disappointed so many times, and I'm just ready! This house is so perfectly us that getting it would make me understand why (and be grateful for!) not getting the others.