Unfortunately, this morning I got the inspection report and saw that he’d gotten suspicious about something and gone to check the foundation.  There he found significant bowing and a crack, which may indicate serious problems.  Apparently this is a huge problem that can cost tens of thousands of dollars to fix and make the house very undesirable to future potential buyers.  We’ve got a civil engineer scheduled to look at the place tomorrow to give us a definitive answer, but based on our current bad luck, it’s looking more and more likely that we will have to walk away from this deal (after we paid for all the inspections, too…).

Guess we gotta look at some more houses and places to rent now…

• Already-done-house (ADH) sellers finally formally rejected our offer.  I don’t think they were ever really planning on selling, because we put in a very attractive final offer (since Bunky loved that house so much).  Bunky and I felt used, and the chase put us behind in our search and likely cost us quite a bit of dough.
• Place we were planning to sublet got rented out 2 hours before we were going to check it out.  We didn’t immediately just plunk down an offer for it because we weren’t completely sure we’d need it, since we were waiting on ADH.  This was partially my fault too, since I didn’t realize how hard it was to get a sublet that ran through the end of August, and so I said we should look at the place first.
• The reason we wanted a sublet was because if we bought the fixer-upper-house (FUH), we had to do extensive renovations.  The contractor we want couldn’t start until late July, so we needed something through August at the very least.
• Since we were waiting on ADH, we didn’t immediately put an offer in on FUH.  This allowed someone else to put an offer in on FUH, putting us in competition.  Our offer was countered at about $5k higher at 9:00 PM of the final night before our offer expired.  While it’s encouraging that we finally have a measure of control, we’re a little peeved that we don’t feel secure quibbling for a few extra thousand dollars because of the other potential buyer.
• Restored most of my computer.  Lost about 2 weeks of data, which is not so bad, considering the next oldest restoration point was about 2 months old.

We’ll probably accept the counter-offer just to put the search behind us.  There’s still the search for a place to live during the renovation period, and the renovation itself.  Fortunately, we qualify for a second mortgage so we don’t have to spend all our cash on the renovations.  This process is much more stressful than I expected… Buyer’s market my ass!

• Housing search continues to progress slowly.  Made final offer to seller of the house we wanted before, gave them 2 days to respond.
• Checked out a fixer-upper house that is very cheap, but requires vast renovations.  Too bad that would require a lot of cash up front, unless we could somehow get additional financing (which apparently is harder to come by now).
• Came back from seeing houses to find that hard drive had completely died.  Had not been backing up at night for the last few weeks because Bunky wanted to see if turning the computer off at night lowered the electricity bill.  Have to wait to see if I can recover any of the data from the dead hard drive (ordered a cheap SATA to USB adapter, since the other SATA clips are all broken from shoddy shipping).
• Brother got in bad car accident, although he seems to be ok.  Car is in bad shape.
• While on the phone talking about car accident, Sydney started puking.  Usually I toss him off the carpet towards the tile (I know, not ideal), but he was too far away from tile this time.  I made the mistake of trying to pick him up and carry him to the tiled area, which resulted in him spewing chunks of food in a wide fan pattern all over the carpet as Kiwi cried bloody murder.

Apparently the sellers are now looking at leasing an apartment Downtown, which (in theory) would get them out of their house before July.  This would save us the trouble of moving twice if they rent an apartment and accept our offer.  Unfortunately, they won’t get around to apartment-hunting until Saturday.  Furthermore, apparently when you sell a condo you have to get a certificate of resale, and this gives the buyer (of our condo) 5 days to renege on the deal.  I don’t think this will happen, but it’s just another variable.  Of course 5 days puts their last day to renege right on Tuesday…

We’re in a real tense holding pattern now, as things can either go so right or so wrong.  The most likely worst case scenario would be if the seller doesn’t take the apartment and the apartment we want gets rented by someone else while we are waiting to hear from the seller.  However, there is a chance everything could work out perfectly, and so we have no choice but to wait it out.  Tuesday seems so far away!

The house we went to look at was in the perfect location and had been renovated beautifully.  There was even a wonderful backyard and space for a man cave in the basement.  The bedrooms were a little small and the second floor (and basement) ceilings were a little low, but the house was much nicer than any we had seen, and it was on the low side of our budget.  The woman who lived there had shown it at a higher price a few months back, then took it off the market because of some family issue, and was now looking for houses again.  Our realtor took this as a sign that she was ready to sell, and so we put in an offer for essentially full listing price.  The house had had a hefty price reduction, since the reception at previous showings had been cold.

We figured that they might counter for more money or more time before closing, since July is pretty soon.  Bunky and I planned on subletting for the summer if necessary or increasing our price slightly, since the house was in turnkey condition and needed no immediate major renovations.  Unfortunately, the next day we learned that the “seller” wasn’t planning on signing anything and was worried about finding herself a place.

Even after offering a later closing date and with the realtor offering to waive commission on the sale (basically putting the house at much higher than she could reasonably expect to get from anyone else), the seller was wishy washy about the whole thing.  Bunky and I were really bummed out about this, and I take this as a sign that the seller is not serious about selling.  You’d think that someone who would go through the trouble of showing their house would be serious, but I guess that lady is such a neat freak that it doesn’t take her nearly as much effort to get her house ready for showings.

I think we’ll give her a week to decide, but we’ve begun looking at apartments.  We’re hoping to sign a 6-month lease, but there aren’t as many good apartments that offer 6-month leases.  We’re hoping to rent for a short time while we continue our search.  I’m glad we were able to sell our own condo, but it would have been just perfect if we could have moved into that house immediately.

Creepy as hell

Bunky and I were excited to go shopping with Kiwi this weekend, but as soon as we started up the car, we started hearing this squealing noise, mixed in with a scraping metal sound.  Obviously this is no good, so we turned right back around and then I took the car to Pep Boys for repair.  Now I should mention that I really hate Pep Boys.  The workers act like they can’t see you, they never call you back, they always try to rip you off, and everyone in the store is generally rude.  However, it’s close enough for me to walk to, so I keep going back for more.

I dropped the car off around 3:00 PM, expecting I’d get it back that night.  The PB employee said right away it sounded like the brakes were at fault, and wanted to convince me I’d probably need the more expensive ceramic brake pads.  This kind of subtle scam is pretty typical, and I was glad that the problem didn’t sound more serious.  I was told the car would definitely be finished early that evening.  Of course, I never got a call, and when I called to check on the car I was told some of the cars ahead of me turned out to be real “nightmares” and so my car was only half done.  I was a little annoyed, but I figured I’d get it early on Sunday.  On the plus side, my brake pads were only 1/3 worn out, so all I needed was a slide change (cleaning out the dust and lubricating everything).  I also asked for an oil change.

When I called on Sunday, no one picked up the phone until 30 minutes after the store was supposed to open; apparently there had been crazy black ice, and all the employees had had trouble getting into work that day.  Still, I was assured that the car would be ready by noon.  Naturally, noon rolled by and when I called later that afternoon I found out my mechanic had totaled his own car on the way to work (due to the black ice).  Since there is no sense of teamwork at Pep Boys, no one picked up his jobs and so my car sat there all day.  When I complained about this to a manager, I was told it would be done first thing tomorrow (Monday!  Argggghhhh!) and I’d get 50% off the brake service ($45 off).

Although I was pleased about the discount, I was still wary.  The car was indeed ready that morning, but because the price reduction counted as a coupon, I couldn’t use any of the coupons I had with me.  Also, I noticed that the price seemed a little high.  On my way out the door, I went through the many small line items on the receipt and found out why: I had been charged a $40 towing fee, even though I had driven the car to Pep Boys myself.  WTF?!?!  I marched right back in there and pointed it out, and the manager just handed me $40 in cash from the register so he wouldn’t have to go through the effort of crediting my card.  His way of explaining the erroneous charge was, “Haha, sometimes those SKUs just get on there!”  WTF?!?!?!?!?!  So it took 3 days just to get my brakes cleaned and my oil changed, and if I hadn’t gone through the receipt thoroughly, Pep Boys would have charged me for services I never even received.