I cannot believe that we are midway through February already. I still find myself writing 2014 instead of 2015. The past few months have been a whirlwind, and I feel like things are finally slowing down enough for me to catch my breath.
As many of you may already know, we recently moved. In September we decided to list our house, and see how things went. Our previous house was a tad over 1,000 square feet, so it was getting a bit small for a family of 5. I loved our old house, the neighbors, the community, but I did not love constantly tripping over one another, and the layout of the house which was not conducive for a family our size.
So we listed the house, and luckily had a ton of activity for the first month. The feedback was all the same...beautiful home but too small. Many of the people giving this feedback were couples without any children. I looked at them like what do you think we are dealing with? Finally the first week of November, a woman came through with a daughter about the age of my oldest. She was going through a divorce, and loved the house. The same day she found our house, the house down the street from us listed for significantly lower than us. It was very difficult because we had purchased our home during the real estate bubble, and were already selling for 60k less than we had purchased it for& hadn't accounted for all of the upgrades we had done. Anyway, luckily our buyer still preferred our home over the one down the street.
A few weeks later she had a home inspection. She had an inspector who was very detailed, and spent 4 hours going through everything. Just like with any house that is not new, he found some things that needed to be fixed. One of the areas, was the basement. We had put 10k into this when we purchased after finding out the previous owner had lied on the disclosure when they said they had never had water. So as I said, we put the money into fixing the issue and putting in a sump pump & french drains. In the past 6 1/2 years they we owned the property our area of NJ went through 2 hurricanes which unknowingly had caused two of the basement walls to begin shifting. Our buyer wanted over 10k in credits, which we ended up giving her because we realized that this was something that needed to be fixed whether we would sell or stay.
In the meantime we found another home that held great potential for our family. It had 2,500 square feet and a nice size yard. It was owned by the original owner who had, had the home built in 1967, and everything was pretty original to that time period. The owner was a 90 year old woman who did not have email, cell phone, and was very difficult for her realtor/lawyer to get in contact with. Needless to say, things did not move very quickly. We had our home inspection in early December, and our inspector of course had a long list of things that needed to be fixed. Of top concern, termite damage that needed to be remediated& ventilation system for the roof. The house had a lot of updating & fixing, but we kept coming back to it due to the size& potential and decided to buy the house.
So the holidays came& went, and we prepared for a January 15th closing on both properties. Then we found out that our seller had a minor stroke& couldn't be out on the 15th. Meanwhile, our buyer served us with "time is of the essence" papers, giving us 10 days to vacate our home before legal action. We were then supposed to close on January 20th. Had my mover lined up, and found out that the 20th could not happen due to the health of our seller. We were able to agree to a date of the 30th that worked for all parties. Had to find another mover as the original was booked that day.
Packing up was a little challenging with 3 kids, one of which was 20 months, but that really turned out to be the easiest part of the whole process. We moved our items out on the 29th, because our mover offered overnight storage which was convenient.
So the 30th came, and we were sitting in our lawyers office signing papers and found out that the seller had never gotten a Certificate of Occupancy (something that is ESSENTIAL for the sale of a home in NJ and probably in most states). We were told that we would not be able to move into the house until a CO was issued. There were are a family of 5 with no family around we can stay with and we were told we could not move in to the house we wanted to purchase. Luckily my lawyer found a way for us to be able to move our items into the house.
I have no idea how the seller's real estate agent dropped the ball on the Certificate of Occupancy. We worked with the seller in order to get the CO from the township. It proved to be more work than we had realized since the house had no smoke detectors, no carbon monoxide detectors, and didn't have a working stove top. Also had terminate damage, so we had to sign off on a certificate saying that we accept the house with the damage, and will no sue the township. A week later were were able to close on the house.
I know I am leaving out a ton of other stuff too, but at the moment I just cannot remember anything else. It was quite a process, but I am happy that we did this, and in time I know we will love this house and will have it to what we want it to be.
My girls finally have their own bedrooms, but of course at night they still want to sleep together.
This was a learning experience for sure, and the best advice I can give is make sure that you have a great realtor and lawyer. We went with friends, and as much as I love these people personally, professionally it was not a good fit.
Though the past few months were very stressful, I know in time this is the right house for us. All the best luck to my friends who are getting ready to look for homes in the spring!
