Awards and Adventures in Real Estate

Last week Sonja over at 30 Before 30, gave me an Awesome Girl award! Also, Alison over at life: unqualified gave me an Honest Scrap award. You guys are so sweet! It just amazes me that people I have never met in real life found my little blog in this big, bad blogosphere, read my words, and actually like what they read! Seriously, you don't know how much this means to me...I feel overjoyed with every comment and awards just send me over the top!

I am supposed to share 10 things about myself. I feel like I have already shared everything imaginable on here, so I am going to change the rules. Since my new found brokenness, I find myself craving more and more things. So here are 10 things I am itching to buy but can’t afford right now:

1. An I-phone
2. A new flat screen TV (the one I have now if this wood monstrosity from 1992)
3. Hardwood floors
4. Stainless Steel appliances
5. a tile back splash in my kitchen
6. granite counter tops
7. a new kitchen sink and faucet
8. a new light fixture for my kitchen
9. a maid
10. new shoes- amazingly I want some flats. I used to not buy anything but heels because of my height challenges, but flats are so much more comfy!

So that’s it. Can you tell I REALLY want to re-do my kitchen? I’ve wanted to for a while now. That’s why it is on my list. With my funds now down to nothing, I was starting to look at just re-doing a few things in my bathroom, but that is not going to satisfy me. The kitchen is what I really want to re-do. I must find a way.

As far as passing this award on, I need to think about this some. I read so many blogs everyday and I am the worst bloggy friend. I never comment, I never email, I never update my blogroll, I just follow along on your life silently because I never have time to sit down and actually do the things I think about doing for my bloggy friends. So I am going to put together a whole post highlighting some of these girlies more in-depth than just a random link. So be on the lookout for that!

Back to what's been going on with me recently...another reason all this house stuff is at the top of my mind is because for the last month I have been house hunting with witty guy! Not for me and witty guy to buy together…I already have a house. But he has never bought a house and I convinced him he just could NOT miss out on that $8,000 tax credit! I mean I didn’t get $8,000 when I bought my house!

So we looked and looked. His first love was a little detached house with a one car garage. It needed some owrk, but it could be a great deal. So he put in a low offer. But the bad thing was that it was a short sale situation. For those of you who don’t know, a short sale is where you are behind in your payments and up-side-down in your loan. Meaning you owe the bank more than the house is worth. So the bank must “forgive” some of the mortgage to avoid you going into foreclosure. The bad thing for buyers trying to buy a short sale is that the owner AND the bank (or banks if they have more than one loan) must approve the offer and it can take forever! Like up to 90 days! He didn’t have that kind of time to waste, so on to the next choice.

The next choice was a really nice end-unit townhouse. It had hardwoods and was really, really nice. These sellers though were apparently smoking crack and priced their house about $5,000 more than what the highest comp in the neighborhood had sold for. And they were not budging on their price. They were using a discount broker who could not talk any sense in to them and so he walked away from that one too. I will be watching that house and I doubt it will ever sell at that price and even if it does, I am betting there is no way it appraises, so they will have to come down anyway. When that happens I so want to knock on their door and sing “Told you so, told you, told you. Told you so!”

His third choice had been withdrawn from the market, so back in the car we went to continue the search.

He had had his heart set on an end-unit townhouse or a detached house, but in his price range in this area of Raleigh, there was really nothing. So he agreed to look at interior unit townhomes. Miraculously, he found The One! It is a townhouse in the same neighborhood as house #2 but way better. It has HUGE bedrooms. The kitchen is to-die-for (thus my obsession for updating mine!), and hardwoods on the whole first floor. It is SO NICE! And last night, they worked out the offer! I know it is not my house, but I am still super excited for him!

And the Wake County Parade of Homes starts this weekend. I LOVE the Parade of Homes! So now I can go view million dollar houses and feed my need for updating some more!