Well, my house has been taking up a lot of my time, so I figured I might as well tell everyone the very detailed and drama filled story of buying and reno-ing my first house.
I guess I can start at the beginning. In October of 2010 I sold my horse, Jack, to a good friend of mine. Jack (left) was the first horse I bought with my own money. I had owned horses since I was a young kid, but my parents bought me my first horse, Rags. I found Jack as a long yearling and I fell in love. I think he has TONS of potential and I think his coloring is gorgeous. Unfortunately, horses are expensive, especially if you want to compete with them. And for a young person like me, it is extremely difficult to try to save for a house while showing horses. So almost 2 years ago I made the tough decision to get out of horses for a short time so that I could start saving for a house. This meant I had to sell Jack. Over the past 2 years I have only ridden a handful of times. Most of that is my fault, a few friends of mine have offered me plenty of times to come up and ride. But its been pretty busy with buying a house so perhaps in a few more weeks things will calm down.
Fall of last year C and I started talking about looking for a house. We decided that we were going to be in the Chicago area for at least 5 years, and while he can't contribute anything to the house (except rent and manual labor) he would help me look for a house. Another set of eyes is always nice.
I think the first time we went out to see houses was some time around January or February of 2012. The first realtor we used was very new at the whole process and basically knew nothing. So we dumped her after the 2nd time we went out with her to see houses. But the second realtor we used was great.
With him we made our first offer on our first house (left). Unfortunately, our offer was beat out so we didn't get the house. I have no idea how much our offer was beat our by, but I do know that the sale price of the house was only 1,500 over our offer on the house.
Our realtor showed us about 20 more houses. I think the most important thing about the house we wanted to buy was proximity to the EL station and the size of the backyard. The whole reason we wanted a house was because we wanted to enjoy a backyard. Most of the houses within walking distance to an EL stop have very small backyards. We pretty much only wanted to look in a 5 mile radius of houses. By March, I was getting discouraged. We saw something like 30-40 houses, and we didn't like any of them. They just didn't have a big enough back yard.
Then mid March we saw a great house. The lot was 2 PIN numbers. It had a fireplace on the main level AND the basement! It had a wet bar. It had 2 bedrooms (which was less than we wanted, we wanted a minimum of 3) but the house had a "den" that if we added a closet could easily be turned into a 3rd bedroom. It had a 1 car attached garage with room on the lot to add a 2nd car garage in the future. The house was completely out of date. I mean we are talking avocado green stove and baby pink bathtub. But I could see the potential. The rooms were good sizes and the house had a lot of character. :) So C and I decided on March 14 (pi) day to make an offer. :) It was pretty much the start of all the drama.
TBC....
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