(see details below)
Our New Home!!
(see details below)
More photos
Description:
The house has 3 bedrooms, 1 3/4 bath, living room, family room/dining room, a
nice kitchen, a laundry room and enclosed patio. The two car garaged is detached
and in the back. The owners have just re-carpeted the whole house and
painted all of the interior walls. The house is 1365 sq feet, not
including the patio, and the property is 7720 sq. feet.
The Timeline
Last updated 7/29/00
| Sunday, July 16 | We looked at three houses - one of which caught our attention. It has fresh interior paint, new carpet, a nice kitchen & a lot of possibilities |
| Monday, July 17 | We decided to make an offer on the house. After much paperwork, the offer is made and we wait to hear a response. Upon making the offer, we find out that the "seller" is actually three brothers - selling a house by committee... This will take some time |
| Wednesday, July 19 | We received their counter-offer. It is much higher than we had hoped. Oh well... We submitted our next offer to "the committee" and are now waiting for the response... |
| Thursday, July 20 | We received their 2nd counter-offer. They have come down a little. We found out that they have just spent $11,000 painting, carpeting and doing other maintenance to house. We have submitted our final offer to "the committee" and are now waiting for the response. We expect that they will accept this. But, you never know... |
| Saturday, July 22 | Due to a few mishaps (i.e. the power was out on Thursday in Claremont where the sellers realtor is and that she has been ill) we found out that "the committee" didn't receive our offer until late yesterday afternoon. But the good news is: We found out this morning - WE GOT THE HOUSE!!!! They accepted our last offer!! Now comes the fun part of paperwork, inspections, more paperwork, working out the loan details, MORE paperwork, working out the final details and finally signing off the REST of the paperwork when escrow closes on August 30th. If all goes well we will be moving in over LABOR day weekend. |
| Monday, July 24 | Escrow opens... Let the paperwork begin!! Inspection is scheduled for Friday afternoon. Copies of the Purchase Agreement will be sent to each member of "the committee" for signing - just to make it official. Nadine will sign after that is completed. |
| Friday, July 28 | I met the inspector at the house late
afternoon. While the inspector did his thing, I went around and measured
all of the rooms so that we would have an idea where to put things once we
move in. The inspector was friendly, helpful and, above all, very thorough.
He was happy to show me what he was doing and answered my questions. Preliminary results: The biggest problem is the heater ducts. They are made of asbestos and are in bad shape. Basically, all of the heater ducting will need to be removed and then new ducting installed. We will be asking the seller to correct this. All of the other problems are minor in comparison, such as a leaky faucet, garage wiring not to code (but not unsafe), etc. A bit of good news: the plumbing was installed in the ceiling an not in the concrete slab. In the future, the house will most likely need to be re-piped. This will make it much easier to do. Structurally, the house is sound. The roof, walls and floor are in good shape. While there are small problems, (which is to be expected - after all it is almost 40 years old!) we didn't find anything that would stop us from buying the house. Next steps: 1) Sign all of the paperwork that we have receive so far - i.e. Escrow papers and loan documents. 2) Arrange for the appraiser to come out and appraise the property. Once the appraisal is done, we will know if we can proceed with the loan. |
| Wednesday, August, 30 | It's been a month and we are still
finalizing details on the house. We were supposed to close today, but a
couple of minor problems related to the loan held us up a bit. Most of
those have been cleared up, but one small problem relating to Biola
University is still causing headaches - both for us and the lenders. Biola
has been very uncooperative in help us straighten out the matter.
We are scheduled to sign loan documents on Friday morning at escrow and then do the final walk-through at the house. The funding and recording will happen next week. Moving day will be Sat., Sept. 16. Yea!!! It's been a long road to get here, but we can finally see the end. Soon we'll be in our new house!! We can hardly wait... |
| Friday, September, 1 | We signed all of loan documents at
College Escrow today. Both of us had writers cramp when we were done!
(Just kidding - it wasn't quite that bad). Afterwards, we met up with our
agent and my mom & step-dad at the house for the final walk-through.
Everything seemed to be in order. One nice touch: the sellers left a list
of phone numbers for us to call so that we could get the utilities set up.
Plus, they left the towels they used for display in the bathrooms.
We found out later that we got approval from HUD. The paperwork is on its way to the lender. After we sign it, they will be able to fund the loan, probably next Wed or Thu, and we will be able to close escrow the following day. The only loose end at this point is Biola. But, the worst that could happen at this point is us having to pay an additional $171 to Biola to close the account that think is still open. By this time next Friday, we will be home owners!! |
| Monday, September 11 | Our loan funded today. We will be closing tomorrow. |
| Tuesday, September 12 | Escrow closes today. We have the keys to the house. In fact, we are dropping some stuff today. The moving begins. Actually, the big moving day will be Saturday. We are now officially home owners!! Yippee!! |
| Saturday, September 16 | Today was the big moving day. Somehow we managed to pick one of the hottest days of the year. Boy was it HOT!! At least it was cool when we started. But by 5pm most of our stuff was moved to the new house. Unfortunately, we still have more to go. This week we will be going though what's left and we will have to move the rest next Saturday. |