Back towards the end of September, my dad sent me a picture of a house that was for sale in Camillus. It was a small two-story house, that was close to the hills that I love to run, and it was reasonably priced, so that the estimated monthly payment did not seem like it would be too bad. I really liked it, so I put in to ask for a tour on Zillow, and minutes later, I received a call from a realtor. From the call, I quickly found out that the house had set a best and final offer time, which I had missed, so I was not going to be getting that house, and I also found out how intense the housing market is. Apparently, the house was listed for $135,000 and ended up selling for $171,000, which is clearly well above the asking price.
This was also the point where I learned that if I wanted any chance of getting a house that I needed to get preapproved, so the realtor sent me to his guy to get preapproved. I had no intentions of spending over this $135,000 mark, but when I was talking to the lender, he tried to convince me that he could approve me for closer to $200,000, and I assured him that this was totally unnecessary. So he kept my approval to around $150,000. This would not be the last time where someone tried to convince to put up more money than I wanted to help me get a house.
The next house I looked at was in Onondaga, New York, and it was also listed for $135,000. It was farther away than I wanted, but the one thing Onondaga has is tons of hills, and it is closer to the forest that I fell in love with over the summer, so I was interested. It had some renovations done, which was nice, and it had A/C, which was one of the top aspects of a house I was looking for, and from the pictures, I loved it, but when I showed up, it was not quite what I was expecting.
It clearly showed its age, which was over 100 years old. The paint chipping looked way worse in person, and the walls were scattered with old nails and the house was not quite level, there was a slight tilt in the floor where the living room was. The new kitchen and bathroom did look nice, but the upstairs was just odd. It had an incredibly small space at the top of the stairs, and then there was a small bedroom attached, and the only bathroom was the new one downstairs, so it would be a hike to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, which I do frequently. Also the carpet was stained upstairs. Not to mention that it had a dungeon for a basement. My realtor did not want to go down into the basement, because it creeped him out, but I went down there, and it was definitely a creepy looking place.
To top that all off, when we were done looking at the house, my realtor told me that he had heard that the house was haunted. Not by an angry ghost or anything, but that the owner had reported some weird stuff happening and some sightings. Oddly enough, this intrigued me, and it both made me want the house more and not want it all. Either way, I decided not to bid on it. It had some aspects to it that I liked, but mostly it was not quite what I wanted. So my vigor for finding a house dwindled a little, because I felt like I would not find much of anything in the range I wanted.
A few days later, my realtor sent me another house in Syracuse, and I said I would give it a gander. It was yellow, but made of the popcorn looking material, and it was also old, like most houses in Syracuse. It was close to work, which was another one of my main criterias. I wanted to be within 20 minutes of work, but preferably closer. From the pictures, the house looked decent, but again the excellent realtor pictures were distorting reality. The downstairs had many walls, which made it feel constricted, and there was no A/C, so when we went upstairs, the heat could be felt. It did have a pretty stained-glass window on the way upstairs, which I really enjoyed. The deck looked like it needed some work, and so did many other parts of the house. So while we were outside discussing, I showed him a house that had just been put on the market, so he quickly made an appointment for us, and we headed over.
This house was in Strathmore, and it was just off the Mountain Goat course. It was close enough to work, it had air conditioning, and it had plenty of hills nearby to run, plus it was yellow. I loved it, and I was probably one of the first people to see it. So we discussed it, and I decided I wanted to put an offer on it. It was listed at $135,000, and my realtor was convinced that we had to put in a big offer to get the house, which was accurate, but I was not quite there yet. So we ended up bidding $152,000, with an escalation clause to $157,000. I really did not want to go over $150,000, but here we are just four houses in throwing out all the rules, because I really liked this house, so might as well go for it. We failed, but we were one of the closest offers allegedly.
The worst part of the house buying process is the blindness, and it is so unfair. People are forced to make an offer on the house, and they have no idea what other people are offering. This should be like eBay. There should be a page where the bids can be seen, so if a person wants a house, they know what they have to offer. It is ridiculous that these houses are being listed at $135,000 or whatever price, and then they all turn into blind bidding wars. I feel like sellers could get more money if there was a visible bidding process as well.
Then one Saturday, we went on a tour of three different houses in the North Syracuse area. One, again, looked good in the pictures, but it had some serious red flags that were not shown in the pictures, that made me lose interest quickly. The second house we went to on Turtle Street was perfect, and I fell in love with it. It had a beautiful enclosed front porch. It had A/C, and it was close enough to work. The space was nice. There was enough room for a living room, there were two bedrooms, and a pretty kitchen. Basically, everything was on the ground floor, but there was an unfinished basement, and there was an attic that said it could be converted into a room. It was the perfect amount of house. So I knew I would be putting in an offer on this house. There was one more, and it was nice, but there was no bathroom on the first floor, so the option was either to go upstairs, or go downstairs to the unfinished basement that had a toilet in the middle of it. I also did not like the location, it was next to some apartments that did not look the nicest, and it was a little loud, but I did love the wood paneled ceiling in the living room, and the colors of the walls, a forest green, were also nice.
So the Turtle house it was, and I wanted to go all in with my bid, so we skipped the escalation clause, and we just went for it with $162,000, which was $30,000 over asking price. A strong offer as my realtor would say. They closed the bidding after a day, and we were told that our offer was good, but if we increased our appraisal gap, that we should be good and have our offer accepted. So we did, but it felt a little weird. Then they started asking for my proof of funds, because they did not believe the amount I would put down, so despite this being unusual, we sent them the pictures of the funds. After being jerked around, they told us that our offer was accepted! I was going to get the house I wanted, despite paying much more than I wanted too, which made me nervous, I was super excited. So on Sunday, I told my family that I had gotten the house, and that we were good to go.
Then on Monday, the seller’s agent said that they were going to accept more offers, but ours was still the best they had. Then they asked us to up the appraisal gap even more, which seemed really odd. At this point, my realtor and I both decided that something seemed off, so we said no, that we were going to keep our offer where it was, and then on Tuesday, just like that, the house I thought I had was gone. It was no longer mine. Apparently, the listing attorney had some bad reviews, and he had done this exact thing to others before, telling them that the deal was done, and then canceling it on them. Also there was some stuff about the appraisal gap money going to him, so there was something not right going on with the transaction sadly.
So the hunt continued. My relator sent me a house in Van Buren, and it was a little farther away from work than I wanted, and the set up was weird. It was all one story, but there was an odd, raised hallway, that I did not like, and there was also a storage room that took you to the garage that was weird, so I could not convince myself to bid on it, and I was feeling pretty down from losing the other house. It was very deflating.
I kept searching though, because I did not want to reup with my apartment, they kept raising rent by a decent amount each year, and I was done with that, and I was hoping to be able to find a place that would be a lower monthly payment as well, which paying $160,000 would not help with, and of course, I wanted to start building some equity instead of paying into the void. While I was looking around, I found a condo for sale. It was listed for $130,000. It was smaller than my apartment now, but it was nicer. They just redid the floors, and the appliances in the kitchen were new as well. Plus it was only ten minutes away from work and Green Lakes, but it did not have A/C. I requested a tour anyways. It was a short and quick tour, because it was so small, but it had a balcony, and it was nice. Additionally we thought there would not be too many bids, which meant the price would stay lower.
So I put in an offer, my agent was trying to get me to go closer to $140,000, but there was only one other offer, and so I went lower, and we ended up compromising at $134,000, and we won! So after all of that, I did not end up getting a house, I got a condo, but my payment will be over $100 less per month than it is now, and I will still have someone plowing and doing yardwork, which is more money that I would have had to spend, if I got a house, so it ended up working out well, but that is not where this story ends.
When we did the paperwork, it said that our closing date would be December 1st, and this was on October 21st. So from my understanding, this is when the paperwork would be done, and I would be able to move in the next day. Shortly after my offer was accepted, I had a ton of paperwork to fill out, and the loan people needed paperwork from work, and all that good stuff.
One day, they reached out to me, because they were having a hard time getting a proof of employment form filled out, and it took a couple days to get done, and over the course of those two days, the loan guy and my realtor were both riding me to get this paper filled. I emailed the guy, and I went to his office, which is not even in my building, and eventually they got it done, but the pressure from them was so unnecessary.
So fast forward to November 26th, last Sunday, well over a month after my offer was accepted, and I asked about where and what time the closing would be on Friday, the first. They told me that they were still waiting on paperwork from my attorney, so I called him, and he told me that he had not gotten all the paperwork from the seller’s attorney, and so for the next three days I was on him asking him if he got it, and he had not. So we were no longer closing on the first, no one knew when we would be closing, but no one thought it was important enough to tell me that we had not actually gotten all the paperwork. I had movers set up, I had all my stuff packed up, and I had other things scheduled as well to get this move done, and just a couple days before we were set to close, I found out none of this could happen yet. So here I sit, not in a new house or a new condo, waiting. With everything packed. They could not wait a couple days for my employment verification form, but they had over a month to get the information from the sellers and failed. Buying a house sucks, and I am not good at it, and I hope I do not have to go through anything like this again soon.
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