Friday, May 9, 2008

I'm here, I'm here!

This has been a busy week, and I haven't had much time to post. Thanks to Mike, Tortoise Hollow is now back online after a long hiatus. There were technical problems: Mike said that my installation of WordPress over there had a virus, but he was able to fix everything- except my template, which was destroyed. Hopefully Melanie has a copy of the template though, and can put it back to looking good.

Posted by Jen at 5:56 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Rearrange Mike's house

Mike from absent.canadian posted this photo of his living room mantle the other day, and while I liked the items he chose and the reasoning for them, I thought the arrangement screamed "bachelor" and he needed some help with arranging.

I photoshopped his stuff into this configuration and told him that it would look even better if he had some more items of different heights, because three of the items were all about the same.

We got to chatting and Mike said that a lot of his post-divorce house could use some help. He thought he would post photos of the current configuration and his blog friends could help him rearrange. I think it is a fine idea.

And don't worry, I already told him that the shoes on the hearth have got to go!

Posted by Jen at 5:36 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

Monday, May 5, 2008

Topical

I know I have been a sucky blogger lately. Every time I sit down to post something, all I can think of is the house; how nothing is going right and how it probably won't ever get built and then I stop, because you guys don't want to read gloom and doom all the time. So, instead I post boring little posts about nothing, and then I feel bad because I know nobody wants to read that either, and they don't even scratch the surface of what is going on.

Sorry for being so "superficial" in my posting lately.

Posted by Jen at 5:55 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Friday, May 2, 2008

The picture of good health

This afternoon when I got home, I went out to get the mail. On the way out to the mailbox I stopped to pick up some random trash in the driveway. The garbage collectors around here are somewhat careless and there are frequently pieces of trash that are liberated and blow about the neighborhood.

Today's driveway litter consisted of a single dirty white baby sock and a small list folded in quarters. The list said:

Marlboro Lights x 3
Camel Lights
newport
hershey
Pnut M+M
hubba bubba
cups-

I hope it wasn't someone's grocery list, but I think it was. After all, man (or woman) can't live on cigarettes and candy alone.

Posted by Jen at 7:05 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Meh

Well, the Spanish style house I love is already under contract, unfortunately. They wanted kind of a lot of money for it so it is just as well. Meh.

We still haven't heard anything from the crappy "lender" that was supposed to get back with to our mortgage broker. I think that it is safe to say that lender has followed suit of all of the others and decided to back out, or they don't have any money to lend, but they don't have the balls to say so. These cowards don't even tell you that they are not interested in lending to you, they just never get back to you as promised. We are the customers! Where in the hell do they get off treating customers that way? I hope they all go bankrupt!

Posted by Jen at 9:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Unlucky or lucky?

After driving around looking at houses yesterday, we stopped at an Unos restaurant to get something to eat. When we got back in the truck afterward, Andy realized that it was making a strange whiny sound. The sound ended up being from the fuel pump which is part of a complete unit that all has to be changed at once. We had the thing changed out this morning and paid almost $1000 for it. The part alone was nearly $600.

So were we unlucky that this happened to us? Perhaps. But look at it this way: Andy had another problem with the unit that was changed, and had had this problem for a while. The sensing unit that would send information to the gas gage was intermittent, so he had to use his odometer reading to know when to fill up the gas tank. Everything else worked fine, so he couldn't see changing out the super expensive all-in-one unit for just that. But when the fuel pump started to make that whining noise, we knew that we had to do something.

Here is the maybe a little bit lucky part: the restaurant we were eating at was next door to the place where we have all of the work on our cars done. So we just rode one parking lot over and one of the mechanics came out to listen to the noise and told us what it was. What are the chances of that happening? Normally something like that would find us stranded somewhere when we had to get somewhere else, but this happened on a Saturday afternoon and we were able to get the whole thing fixed this morning. Yes, the damn thing was expensive, but at least having it changed out fixed the other problem that Andy had been just living with.

So, what do you think? Were we unlucky or lucky?

Posted by Jen at 9:10 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Sunday, April 27, 2008

1925 House

I don't have a photo yet of the house I am so enamored of, the one built in 1925, but here is the aerial view of it with the property boundaries outlined in yellow. The area is so quiet, peaceful and relaxed.

I will drive by there again tomorrow to see if there are any more flyers out with information about the property. I sure hope there are.

Posted by Jen at 8:16 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Prospects

We went driving around today looking at the properties that had interested us from the listings- to see if they were viable possibilities. The house with the barn has potential, but they would need to come down even farther on the price for us to bite. The property and house are very nice, though the house is a little lacking in curb appeal, but I could probably fix that. The barn is quaint and the stocked pond is really nice.

The house in the orange grove was effectively ruled out. It could have been really neat, but it has been empty for a while with for sale signs up and people have trashed it. The house had almost all of the windows broken, and lots of other major damage including graffiti on the outside and inside (we could see in through the broken windows as we drove past the house). The warehouse space in the back had been vandalized as well, but those buildings wouldn't be as hard to deal with. The house would probably have to be torn down as it has been open to the environment for quite a while and has probably been overtaken by mold. The orange groves were very overgrown with weeds and needed a lot of care as well. Even if that property was given to us, it would take a significant amount of money to make it viable again. It was such a shame because the property had a lot of potential.

We looked at a few others, some were foreclosures or pre-foreclosures that I had located on the internet, but nothing really grabbed us. There was one brand new house that was in a beautiful setting, but it would have taken a lot to get it to work for the dogs. It had a narrow backyard with a canal, and lots of room on the sides, but no doors opened to the sides, so to have a fenced yard for the dogs with a door that opened out to it would take some serious modifications. It could be done, I am sure, but I'm not sure it would be worth it. The price was a little on the high side as well. So we moved on and looked some more, driving up and down the roads all through the area of the island that we like.

Then we found it. I'm not sure how much of a prospect it will be because we know so little about it, but I am going to find out. We passed this neat spanish style house on a lot full of huge mature oaks and saw a sign out front. I made Andy turn around so we could take a look. The sign out front said "Shown by appointment only" and had a plastic box on it for informational flyers, but they were all gone. There was no phone number or name or anything on the sign itself. It is apparently for sale by owner, because I have scoured the internet and the multiple listing service and it is not there anywhere.

I looked it up on the property appraiser's website, and found that it was built in 1925. This is a big plus for me, because I love houses with history. From the looks of it, it has been fully restored recently, because it seemed to be in excellent shape. The house is only a little bigger than our current house, but it is on over an acre of land, so the possibilities are there for a workshop for Andy and anything else we might want to do. It is also far enough away from any neighbors not to have to worry about noise problems. It is across the street and down a little from some horse riding rings and also a gorgeous natural park that is on the edge of the Indian River with an area for launching small boats or canoes. Judging from the market value listed by the property appraiser's office, it might not be out of our price range, but we will just have to see. I am going to ride past there sometime this week and see if the flyers have been replenished or if there is any other way to get in touch with the seller. I could always write a letter to the owner and send it to the address where he has homestead, but I might not need to resort to that.

We shall see.

Posted by Jen at 8:41 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Friday, April 25, 2008

A nutty idea

We still haven't heard anything from the damn flaky lender. One of the suggestions I got on my post the other day was to check out USAA, which is open to those in the military or that have been in the past. We checked into it and it was a terrific suggestion because they have great rates on home and auto insurance, great bank accounts and even mortgages. Because they are a government bank, they actually have money to lend, unlike the rest of the banks. Unfortunately they don't do construction loans.

We did have an idea, though. We started looking to buy another house with more land than we currently live on, just so we can get out of here. Mainly because our neighbors are driving us up the fucking wall, but also because we need more room to do the fun and creative things we want to do. I really want to get set up and learn to make glass lampwork beads but have nowhere to do so, and Andy wants to get into more woodworking, but is limited to the cramped space between piles of stuff and my Jeep in the garage.

I think tomorrow we are going to drive around and take a look. We would still keep this house and rent it out, and we would keep the land and keep trying to build, but it might have to wait a bit. We have decided to go ahead and see about suing the county, since they screwed us over so badly that we can't build our house, but in the meantime we don't want to put our lives on hold and we don't want to have to put up with the ridiculously rude behavior of our neighbors, so the thing to do is to start looking around.

In perusing the listings, my favorite so far is actually located diagonally from our other land where we are trying to build. It is about two and a quarter acres and has a stocked pond in the back, a barn with stalls for six horses, and RV parking with electric. I love that area and it already feels homey to me, so I really like that one. The house is in pretty good condition with a new kitchen and baths, so it wouldn't need much work. The first two photos are of the barn property. The other photos are of another prospect.

The only other one we have found to be a possibility is one on about five and a half acres that is located on a producing citrus grove, and it has a fruit packing plant and warehouse with an office on the property in the back. It is a fixer upper and a short sale, so it could be a little more complicated, but the possibilities are endless.

The house looks like it probably needs a good bit of work, but it is HUGE- six bedrooms and four baths and over 2800 square feet and then there is nearly 4200 square feet of warehouse/office in the buildings in the back. There is even a little parking lot back there. But seriously, from the photos it looks like it would take some work. The house does have nice "bones," though. It just needs updating.

I can only imagine what we could do with all of that space. We would have to deal with the citrus groves of, course, so I am sure that would take up some of it, but it could be a neat property. Imagine the parties we could have with all of that parking and room! Of course we aren't big partiers, but that is beside the point. The grove property is listed for a higher price than the barn property, but is also a short sale, so who knows what amount the lender will accept. The barn property was just reduced by $85,000 in the last three months, so they probably won't want to come down much, but it has also been up for sale for nearly two years, so maybe they are getting desperate or tired of trying to sell it and would take less. It is a buyer's market now, and people are practically giving their houses away, so it is anyone's guess.

I feel slightly encouraged by the idea of getting out of the house we are in because it would mean getting away from the constant noise fest next door. Sadly, we could be content here for quite a while if it wasn't for them. We could use a bit more room, but we have some attic space that could be finished out to be a craft room for me, and there is a lot we could get rid of to make more room. I have been hanging on to a lot of things for the new place that I wouldn't need if we were to stay, so that would free up some space.

The biggest limitation of our current house pertains to the lack of workspace for Andy. He could do so much if he had a decent woodshop to work in. A corner of our garage just doesn't cut it. But we could make do if the neighbors weren't so obnoxious. It is pretty bad when your neighbors are so awful that they force you to move. Sadly, I feel like we should disclose their behavior to potential renters or buyers of the house later on, like it is a defect that we legally obligated to tell buyers about, but I don't think that qualifies.

We'll see what happens when we go take a look tomorrow-

Posted by Jen at 9:46 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

In search of a private investor

This is just insanity. How is it possible that with credit scores in the 800s, a good loan to value, and stable employment that we cannot get a mortgage at any cost? I still see ads from places that claim to lend money even if you have bad credit or no credit, but those are ridiculous; no one will lend to you even if you have perfect credit, so if your credit is bad there is no way. It is not just us, it is epidemic, apparently. The lenders have gotten so gun shy that they don't want to lend to anyone, unless they already have as much money as they need to borrow. Actually, they shouldn't be called lenders anymore- the name is misleading. It would leave one to believe that they actually lend money. An email from our mortgage broker today said this:

If it makes you feel less picked on, I have a lot loan with this investor that is a 50% loan to value, good quality customers like yourselves and the investor has figured out a way to complicate that and delay the process. I still think the delays could be the result of credit lines being dried up temporarily, but for obvious reasons, the banks are not telling anyone that. No matter who the investor is, the delays are there for weeks and then suddenly the loans are cleared to close and then we hit another period of time of delays after that. It has to be something other than having too much volume. We know there is no significant volume of deals in their pipelines right now.

Our mortgage broker has been doing everything within his power to get us a deal since around November or so. He is just as frustrated with this process as we are. Right now our only hopes of building our house have dwindled down to a longshot from a "lender" that refuses to make a decision, a lottery ticket, and whatever other crazy ass scheme we can dream up. It would take probably take a miracle, but if we could find a private investor that wanted to make a nice, safe investment by loaning us the money and personally holding our mortgage that would be ideal.

I responded to an email this evening about the uncertain status of our loan. My email to our mortgage broker and our builder said:

Andy bought a Lottery ticket on the way home today. That is currently our plan B if this falls through.

Our builder replied back:

Please have Andy pick one up for me too? This mortgage and appraisal business is killing everyone looking to build. I hope they all go out of business starving themselves from the good loans they could have made.

And the mortgage broker said:

I have one too. If I win, I will finance it, personally, at 3% interest, no additional money out of pocket. Maybe that will bring the debt ratio down, right?

Something is seriously wrong in this country.

Posted by Jen at 7:20 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)