Hi, I'm Tommy...Like the gun

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Buying a home sucks...until you're done

I'm about to turn 31, I'm about to buy a house with my wife.  It's been a pain in the ass to say the least.  I told her most of the things I was feeling during the whole process, but not all of them.  95% of the houses we looked at sucked.  Plain sucked.  I mean they were shit holes.  She kept saying that I should picture the house after some love.  And those houses we saw could use a lot of love and then some, more than I was willing to give.  I wanted to improve houses, not repair them.  But after looking at a bunch of ugly houses in depressing neighborhoods, we finally found one we really liked.  One that we could see ourselves living in for a long time.  It had everything I wanted.  Almost everything.  It had a pool, it had the square footage, it had the open feeling I've become used to.  It had a great southwest feeling in the front yard and the back yard.  It was the type of place where we had already mentally taken ownership and fallen in love.  Now at this point, the whole experience of becoming a homeowner has gone as expected. 

We talked to our loan officer, Cory.  Great guy, seriously great guy.  Almost too great for his own good it seems at times.  But we were approved, and had the go ahead to talk to a realtor and start the process.  But nothing was set in stone.  We knew this house we liked wasn't going to be ours overnight.  But we ended up putting an offer in on 4920 Milky Way.  Still, everything was going as expected.

Denied.  Offer wasn't good enough.  Heartache.  Disappointment.  My first experience ever with finding a place I wanted to move to, and then being told I can't do it.  I don't take that well.  This house got away from us.  Well, not really.  It was just a little out of our price range.  So maybe it was for the better.  But that's also like saying that you asked the prettiest girl to the dance and she said no.  Only to turn around and tell your friends that it was for the better anyways, because she would've broken your heart.  I don't buy it for a second.  We would've figured it out.  We always do.  We're unstoppable.  Heather and I can do anything we want to do.  We just couldn't buy the Milky Way house.  And it sucked.  All was not going as expected.

After losing Milky Way, we obviously kept looking at more houses.  We were bound to find one we loved.  Only thing was, we work opposite schedules.  The only time we could look at houses together was on the weekends.  Our sacred time with each other.  So we would scroll through 20 or so listings during the week, and meet with Carol, our realtor, on the weekends.  It took a while, but there was finally a time where we said it was ok for me to go look at a place without Heather.  I didn't want to do it, but I obliged.  I wanted her there.  I wanted to see her reactions, not hear them over the phone or text.   I met Carol at a place Heather and I had overlooked, and wasn't really excited about seeing it.  But once we got there, I really started to like the place.  It had decent curb appeal.  It had a great open floor plan.  It had a big back yard for the dogs.  But no pool.  I'll get to that later.  It had 3 great bedrooms.  There were some weird things about the house that bugged me, but not enough to pass on it.  Heather had to see this place.  It was the first place that I had actually liked in a while.  One that would work for our lifestyle.  Yikes...we're gonna buy a house aren't we?  Everything was going just as I expected.

I have to take a break from writing this post.  Even writing about this experience has gotten me a little pissed off.  Be back soon, I promise.  You wait there.

Ok, I've slept on it.  I can now finish this entry.

Lots of things had been done to this house, but they were half way finished.  Things were missing.  Parts of baseboards were missing.  Trim around most of the windows were gone from the outside and the inside.  The patio door was new, but it was missing trim, and on the outside it looked like someone took a slingshot full of cement and spattered it all over the trim.  But this house definitely had potential, and I wasn't ready to let it go.  So we put the offer in on the same day that we both saw it separately.  We signed bid papers while I was working.  Yes, I signed paperwork at table 13 on a Wednesday night while my realtor, wife, and loan officer all had a beer.  Here we go again.

Our bid was accepted, and I was awfully happy.  Now what?  No one told me about all the BS that came after this part.  The appraisal, the FHA appraisal.  Then the inspection.  I knew all this stuff had to be done, but I didn't understand that it had to be done in a certain 10 day time period, or else.  Or else we had to pay 1% of our price, or some BS like that.  Ugh.  So the appraiser gets there and says that the trim around the windows had to be finished, the utilities had to be turned on, and the roof had to be fixed.  Great.  The seller was cash poor.  And he's a hyperactive retard.  I humored him when I was around him.  I really hope I never see him again.  Dude just pisses me off.

WE payed to get the roof fixed.  Highly abnormal.  But whatever.  It's done.  But we don't own the house yet.  YET.  Then the inspector comes out.  He tells us all the things we need to do to our new home.  The list just got longer and longer.  But overall, he said it was a great house.  It just needed some love.  Sounded more like it needed money.  And lots of it.  It was overwhelming.  I was already whelmed, and didn't need to hear ALL the stuff that the house needed.  Especially since we were spending $800 bucks to fix a roof that wasn't ours, and the seller was acting like a dumbass.

I'm gonna stop this post here because I get a little frustrated when I start thinking/writing about this whole situation.  I'll post more when I have keys in my hand.  keyskeyskeyskeyskeys!!!!