Random Bob Pulls Roof out of... Somewhere

So, yeah. I haven’t really spoken about it here, but we’re looking into buying a house. In fact, we sort of have been since mid-December.

We have been watching the market pretty closely for some time now. Since before we moved up here, in fact. Housing cost was an important factor of where we wanted to live: we have aspirations of a farm life for us someday, and if I have to work to 99 years old to afford it, well suffice to say that my farming years are long gone by then.

We’re still in California, so it’s not like we can buy 20 acres right now though. It’s expensive compared to, say, Oklahoma still Always will be. But, it is California, and not Oklahoma.

Housing prices have indeed tumbled here as they have in pretty much the rest of the country. For us, the real thing we were watching for was, are mortgage payments less than or more than rent payments? Well, for a decent-enough house (that still needs some “pefecting touches”), we’re at the point where we can rent to own, and for a hundred or so less a month. It makes sense now. Because at this point, if we wait a year and housing prices tumble an additional $10K or so – keep in mind they do have to bottom out eventually – we’re still sitting pretty, as instead of “throwing away” $1100 monthly for a rental house, we’ve paid down $900 a month on ownership rights, plus we get to write off the interest on our yearly taxes. So we come out ahead during that year anyway.

But that’s all boring. Here’s the good stuff.

In early December, a few properties caught our eye. They were still high, but we felt it was the right time to start actively looking, instead of being passive watchers. So we walked to our nearest realtor (next door), and made some appointments. Next thing you know, we’re trying to low-ball a nice house that’s in foreclosure, and damned if they didn’t drop $20k right off the bat. Still was rich for our blood, but it got us to really think about how much a buyer’s market it could be right now. Low-balling is in. It’s the new acid jeans. It’s the new bell bottoms. It’s the new internet porn. It’s in, it’s hip, all the cool kids are doing it.

There’s myriad things to consider, though. First, our market didn’t have the extreme highs found in So Cal, so we don’t have as far to drop. Second, we’re an isolated market. There’s only so many homes, and so many people to buy them and live in them. We’re not really expanding nor contracting, so a home might sit and drop to a certain price, but it’s not going to drop and drop and drop (like Detroit). At some point, it’ going to get eaten up, because dammit, people need a place to live. There’s also the issue of financing. The rates are pretty low right now. But in actuality, they’ve gone up a smidgeon from the end of last year (a month ago). The markets, they are volatile. What happens if we wait for a price drop that isn’t all that much, then the rates go up a point? We’re actually losers on the deal then, no?

We’ve been mulling all this over, looking at homes that we felt were close to our price range and we could low-ball a little and get a better deal on. And damn if we’re not this close to it right now. Yeah, we are. We made an offer on a house that’s a short sale property. The bid was accepted, sort of. If the bank wants the money.

See it’s weird. We were told to start escrow by the listing agents. Then 3 days later, we get an addendum to the sale paperwork from the bank, essentially saying that they “tentatively” accept our offer, but reserve the right to keep it listed until February 6th, at which point, if they don’t have any higher offers, and maybe if they feel like it, and jupiter is in Saturn’s moon or some sh!t like that, they’ll take our offer and begin escrow. Those chummy guys, those bankers!

It looks like it’s going to go through though. That same day we signed the addendum, we drove by and saw a “Sale Pending” sign on the lot. And lo-and-behold, the property has been de-listed from the MLS. Folks, it looks like Random Bob might get his roof over his head.

Which is a far cry better than where it has been, which we won’t discuss here.