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!

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?

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.

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.

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-

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.

So you know how I mentioned that our neighbors were driving us fucking nuts with all of the noise? It went on until well into the morning on Wednesday of last week, and then just two days later started up again at full force on Friday night. Normally on a weekend night we would just ignore their hooting and screeching as much as possible, but I was way overtired already from all of the sleep I had lost due to their noise and inconsiderate behavior earlier in the week and I was dead set on calling the cops. Andy tried to stop me but it was not going to happen. I was so pissed. The noise died down about an half hour or so after I called and I finally fell asleep.

Interestingly, a guy that works with Andy was over at the house next door when all of this occurred. He said something to Andy yesterday like, "So you don't like your neighbors much?" Andy was very diplomatic and explained that the excessive noise goes on constantly and had kept us up just two days prior with wild screaming and music until the wee hours of the morning. He explained how even when we were laying in our bed with all of the windows closed and the TV on, that we could still not drown out the obnoxious niose produced over there at our neighbors' house. The guy he works with had gone inside the house (from the back porch) during the wild partying because it was too loud for him (too loud for one of the guests, but yet we were supposed to live with it). He was the one who had answered the door when the cops banged on it and they marched straight into the house and turned down the music. The assholes on the back porch started yelling to turn it back up until they realized it was the cops that had turned their music down.

I still have no regrets about calling. If they do not realize or remember how freaking obnoxious they are, then I will remind them every time if that is what it takes. It is weird because these people are about my parents' age, but still have no common courtesy toward those that are unfortunate enough to have to live around them. One day I will escape them and their noisy ways.

It must be nce

All I can do at this point is to express my frustration at being stuck with Movable Type when all I want is the freedom offered by Wordpress that would allow me to post protected posts among other things. But alas, no luck there. I am stuck with cumbersome MT and all of its problems. Help!

You may not have met her yet, but Dawn is one of my blog friends that I really admire. She is a single mother who has been pursuing her dream of a better life by getting a nursing degree, despite the difficulty of balancing school, work, and family. It has been wonderful reading about her experiences in school and seeing her develop into a quite capable nurse. She is what I would call a "nursing geek"- she really loves what she does and is motivated to learn. She gets all excited about diagnosing illnesses and assisting with medical procedures. At the same time, she is very compassionate toward her patients and is the kind of nurse we would all want to have taking care of us or a loved one in the hospital.

Dawn is only one semester away from achieving her goal, and the source of financial aid she was receiving just notified her that they would not be getting government funding for the summer term. She says, "If I can't pay for this semester then I will go back on the waiting list for re-entry into the program. I waited for over 2 years to get in last time." She has only a couple more weeks to come up with the rest of the money she needs- only $749- so I am including a button in case anyone wants to invest in a great nurse. I would say it is a donation, but it is really more like an investment towards better healthcare in this country.

There is still no news on us getting a mortgage. We got a lender to give us a written offer, but they have their own internal limit on what your debt ratio can be and we are just slightly over it. We have no debt other than out house and the land, but they have not taken into account the rent that we will be receiving by renting this house out once we move out. We have asked them if they can apply that figure to lower our debt ratio, and they still haven't decided. It is fairly standard for the industry for them to take the market rent value for a house and allow for 75% of that value, assuming a 25% vacancy rate, but they act as though they would be doing us a huge favor or something.

So, if they won't allow for the potential rent to lower our debt ratio, they have another possibility for us, a crappier deal that is adjustable and we would be forced to refinance later. At this point, what-fucking-ever, we don't care. The other problem is that it has now been so long since the appraisal of the new property was performed, that the lender wants it to be reviewed or redone, at our expense, of course. The market is even crummier now than it was a few months ago, so I fear that it will come out even lower, and then we will be back to square one with finagling the numbers. I just can't believe this crap.

I have been racking my brain trying to come up with anything that could make this work, just so that we can get started. One of my crazy ideas was for us to buy a cheapo house that is for sale with seller financing, move in there, and then rent out our current house in order to bring our debt ratio down. There are lots of low priced houses on the market that people are practically giving away, so that could be a possibility, but would probably take a while to orchestrate. I also thought of just picking out a nice vacant house and moving in and changing the locks. Someone did that to a house owned by one of my co-workers- broke in, changed the locks, and moved in, and there is nothing he can do to get the guy out. I shit you not. It was on the news and everything. Probably not the best idea, but it is a thought.

What sucks is that this is all the fault of the damn county, who screwed around with us for so long that the market went to crap. The idiot lenders that were lending to people with terrible credit, bankruptcies, and so on are now so scared that our mortgage broker says they are finding reasons not to lend to anyone, no matter how perfect their credit or how good the loan to value or debt ratios are. I don't see why they are worried; the government is bailing them out anyway. But no, people like us with excellent credit are now not able to get a mortgage under any circumstances it seems, through no fault of our own. That pisses me off something fierce.

People just tell me that we should wait until summer, or wait a year or two to build. They don't understand. They don't realize that we lose money every single day that goes by simply by holding the property. They don't realize that all of the permits that we worked so hard to get will expire and have to be resubmitted and we could go through the same ordeal all over again. They don't understand that even if we were to try to change our plans and build a smaller house that it wouldn't change anything, because the appraised value would go down so much that we would end up in the same boat, and we would have to go through permitting with a new design all over again which would cost a fortune. Most of all they don't understand what it is like to have fought every day for two and a quarter years to be able to build only to be held up again and told that we should just wait. It makes me want to scream until I can't scream any more when people say that we should wait- what in the fuck do they think we have been doing for the past 28 months?

As an added insult to the problems with getting financing, our neighbors next door have been particularly obnoxious lately. This week, on Wednesday night they were yelling and hooting and blasting music until after 12:30 in the morning. We had to get up at 4:30 in the morning for work, so we were less than amused by their idiotic behavior. They are in their 50s and should know better than to act like assholes, but they do not. Then, last night, they did the same thing again, only louder. Ordinarily I would have ignored it because it was a Friday night, but I was so overtired from the sleep I had lost due to their noise earlier in the week that I called the cops. The party broke up after 11:30 this time, probably because of my noise complaint. I would give anything to get out of this house and away from them. Pretty much my only criteria for a house is that it isn't near them and it has a fenced yard.

*Sigh*

My little happy dance from my last post was very short lived. Mr. Negative reported to the area he was supposed to be working in only to find out that they were on hold waiting for parts and don't need him yet. So he came back. Ugh. Now I get to hear all of the nasty phlegm rattle around in his chest as he hacks and sighs all day.

Yeah, maybe you think I should feel sorry for him, but I don't. He got sick with a terrible cold for over two weeks, and never, ever went to the doctor. Instead he chose to self-medicate by drinking quarts of Nyquil and coming in to work to spread his germs to all of us. We have very good health insurance, so it would have cost him next to nothing to go to the doctor, but no- he's too damn stubborn to do that. Instead he chose to make himself as sick as possible (he probably has pneumonia from the sound of things), and come back to work spreading bacteria far and wide. Ugh.

Mr. Negative that shares the same office with me at work has been sick for the past couple of weeks. Of course, he insisted on coming to work and hacking phlegm and nastiness everywhere. He finally got too sick to come in and took a couple of days off, then came back sounding worse than ever. The phlegm was rattling in his chest and the sounds was really icky. We have unlimited sick time, so there is no reason for him to come to work and infect us all, but yet he did. Finally some of my co-workers and I were able to guilt him into going home, saying we didn't want his germs- which is very true. I was constantly disinfecting everything he touched.

The good news is that he is much better now, and that he is going off to another area to work on a project for an undetermined length of time. Yay! No more fighting him over the thermostat, no more listening to his gloom and doom. Today we are having probably our last little snap of cold weather for the year, which I love- and the best part is that Mr. Negative won't be there to bitch about the cold weather. :)

Blog friends, I need your help. If you shop at Target in the next few days and want to do me a favor, please check the housewares section where they have drawer knobs and pulls. Look on the endcap for the clearance items and see if you can find any of these Venetian bronze outlet covers. They are on 75% off clearance, and I have been to 3 Targets buying up all I can find.

I need a bunch more of these for the new house. I can also use any double outlet covers (I haven't seen any of these at the stores so they are probably only available online) or single switch plate covers in the same design. They are about $1.48 each right now and if you can find some and purchase them, I will pay you for them plus the shipping to get them here. I have plenty of the GFCI outlet covers and plenty double switch covers, but those regular outlet ones and single switch covers are harder to find. Thanks!

We finally got an update this afternoon on how our mortgage underwriting was going. Even though we have lowered the amount we are asking to borrow, our lender is balking at our debt ratio, which is still fairly low even though it includes our current house along with the amount we will be paying per month on the new mortgage. We are planning to rent this house out after we move, because the housing market is crap, and we don't want to give our house away. Renting it out for a few years will allow time for the market to recover. They had not figured in the amount we could get for rent for the house in doing the calculations, and we are not sure that they will accept that logic. We have a few more tricks up our sleeves, but the options are dwindling rapidly.

The other problem is, now that we have a lender that might be interested, our appraisal is too old, so they want it redone. I fear that it will come in even lower than before, and then we will be back to square one. The hits just keep on coming. Sometimes I really feel that we will never get this house built and that we will be stuck in our horrid neighborhood forever listening to our POS neighbors cackle into the wee hours of the morning and smelling the nasty cigar smoke that wafts over from their back porch. What a horrible thought.

It seems that lenders should change their names from "lenders" to "rejectors" because they are certainly not interested in lending to anyone right now. Our mortgage broker said that it is a very strange time- that he could turn in the paperwork for a "perfect mortgage," one that was well within the loan to value, borrowers with excellent credit, etc. and still they would sometimes not get past underwriting. The underwriters would just never get back to him; they are all running scared. That, to me is stupid and ridiculous. How do the mortgage companies expect to stay in business if they won't lend to ANYONE? No wonder the housing market sucks; no one can get the mortgage they need to buy anything. There is no end in sight unless things change, either.

The idiot mortgage companies and their stupid ass sub-prime loans got themselves into a huge mess, and now Andy and I, with near perfect credit, can't seem to get a mortgage to save our lives. I don't see what they are so worried about- they are going to be bailed out of their financial woes by the government. We, on the other hand, have no one to help us with funding, even though it was local government that put us in this predicament by costing us a small fortune and then delaying us so long that the market fell apart in the process.

I want to scream and strangle someone all at the same time. What has happened to this country and will things ever return to normal? I truly can't see how they could at this point.

The entire time I was growing up and even on into college, I think, we only had one phone book for our area. I remember that there were two phone books at Grandma's house when I was little, because she lived in South Florida and the population there was much greater, so it was split into two volumes.

The area I live in now has fewer people than the one I grew up in, yet we have FIVE phone books. That seems a bit excessive to me, what about you? We just got another new one today, and a stack of them is piled up waiting for me to recycle it at some point. We have The Real Yellow Pages, Yellow Book, The Talking Phone Book (that doesn't talk), A Verizon phone book, and The Real Yellow Pages Companion. We rarely use any of them because we look up phone numbers on the internet anyway. It just makes me wonder why anyone would think that people need five phone books for the same area.

Are you bombarded with phone books in your area too? I am wondering if it is just this place or if everywhere is overrun with the darn things. I would love to be taken off the phone book distribution altogether. Then I wouldn't have to figure out how to get rid of a pile of them every year.

I have been busy all weekend working on schoolwork, cleaning, cooking, and making more bead jewelry. I hope to be back tomorrow with more to report. Right now things are just calm, but that is okay. Here are some of my latest creations:

Our *wonderful* neighbors have gone out partying for the night and left their psychotic dog, Cooper, alone in a dark house with the windows open. He will not shut up. He barks the entire time they are gone when they do that. I have no idea why they would leave the windows open while they are gone (or at all, since it is gross and muggy outside). They left him there barking with the windows open one time on New Year's Eve, and he barked until about five am. Our bedroom is on that side of the house and it just reverberates off the side of our house, so there is no way we can sleep or anything. I really can't stand those people.

Tuesday evening I got an email from our mortgage broker. He was finally ready for us to resubmit all of our documents. It has been so long since we started to try to get financing, that we have had to submit all new pay stubs, bank statements, etc. We originally provided all of that stuff back in August, then again in November after we were delayed further. Hopefully this will be the last time we have to do so.

I sent pdf files of everything that night, and then yesterday I got an informational email from my credit monitoring that my credit report had been accessed. I looked at the report and it was the mortgage company, so that is a good sign that we are getting close- they pulled my report for underwriting the mortgage.

We worked with our builder to manipulate the numbers to make them work with only a minimum out of pocket for us. We still aren't sure how much we will have to bring to the table, but it should be much less than we were looking at before. Cross all your fingers and toes and pray that we get to closing day soon and everything will go smoothly. We are so ready to start construction. As it is it doesn't look good for us to be able to move in by Christmas, but it might still be possible. I sure hope so. That would be the best Christmas present ever.

It has been an extremely busy week, and I simply haven't had time to post. Things are looking up on the whole house building project; I'll have to post about that when I get a chance.