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So about a month ago, my husband and I bought a house. Honestly, while the payoff has been pretty great, the actual house buying experience was one of the most aggravating things I've ever been through. I don't ever want to do it again.
Part of the problem is that Tom and I tend to like different things. He wanted a big house that was in rolling suburbia with a big giant yard, because he said it was like being in the country (except you know, he couldn't do all of the redneck things he wanted to do around prissy suburban neighbors). I wanted to be in a city and close to a walkable downtown. He tended to like modern houses especially ranch homes built in the 70's and 80's and I like older, turn of the century homes. I also tended to be very coldly rational about buying a house, and Tom was pretty emotional about the whole thing which is weird, because he's a pretty level headed guy, except when it comes to this one thing.
Anyway, you can see which one of us won the fight about style. :P
On top of all of that, there was the absolutely batshit crazy real estate market, short sales, foreclosures, as well as all of the government incentives and obstacles - all of which make it very difficult to figure out what houses are actually worth. Then there were the insane property taxes (and the messed up way that Michigan calculates them) in some areas that had to be taken into account. So, just finding a house that we agreed on, could afford easily and didn't have super high taxes took us nine months and probably going inside 70-80 different houses all over Metro Detroit. This was the third house we'd offered on.
Then there was the nightmare with the financing, which due to the government changing all of their requirements and paperwork on Jan 1, the banks tightening up their lending standards by the week and our mortgage guy and real estate agent behaving like they were in high school - well, it was a pretty frustrating experience.
But in the end, we ended up buying an awesome house in Grosse Pointe, which is a city that I never, ever, in my wildest dreams thought I'd be able to afford to live in. I'm about three blocks from Lake St. Clair and there are two city parks that are right on the lake itself. It's got one of the best school districts in the city of Michigan. I'm also right across the street from the public library, which is pretty damned convenient.
We moved from a 950 square foot ranch house we were renting to a 2750 square foot three story house (not including the full basement - another 900 square feet - and the two car garage), so this was quite an upgrade. And just to illustrate how far housing prices have fallen here, our monthly payment (which includes the bank payment, property taxes and insurance) is only $100 dollars more a month than what we were paying in rent.
Partially that's because there's some work that has to be done. We need to replace the roof in a few years, replace the electrical box as well as shore up the front porch. And there are definitely cosmetic things that I want to do too, but one of the things that I love about it is that while there's a lot of improvements that can be made, the house is perfectly comfortable the way it is. So if we don't have the money for awhile or are just feeling really lazy there isn't anything that really has to be done.
Anyway, more pictures and less bitching.
So this archway is really cool, but it's really tight and you have to be careful not to sideswipe your car. It's a good thing that our cars aren't very wide. Then again, it was built about the time people were driving things like the Model T.
Front hall - which has this wallpaper from the 80's that looks like something from Laura Ashley. Needless to say, it's got to go. So does the shitty light fixture. Still, once the walls are painted, we get a new light and we finish refinishing the wood, it'll look rather nice. There's actually a second set of servant's stairs that come up through the kitchen and meet at a landing halfway up.
One of my favorite things about this house is this hall closet. Which is kinda stupid, actually, but we really didn't have any place to put coats in the old house. And this closet is freaking huge. I love it.
Living room. Which, as you can see... we don't have enough furniture to fill yet, lol.
There's one of the radiator covers. This house has a steam boiler, which with all of the clanking and hissing of the pipes and vents, makes it like living in a Steampunk novel.
Most of the windows in the house have these custom, vintage cloth blinds. I think they're pretty cool, and they were hidden under these hideous curtains that I took down the first day we were here.
One of the windows. You can see the cool curve plastering they did with the ceiling.
Dining room:
Those screens over the window are really cool and can be opened.
One of the built in cabinets.
One of the sun rooms. The other is piled with even more of our stuff and sports a shag blue carpet and hideous pink walls that all have to be redone, lol.
The kitchen which sports a really awesome set of hardwood cabinets, but overwhelming wallpaper and a rather crappy counter top that needs to be replaced. The former owner really loved floral wallpaper.
These huge pantry cabinets are another one of my favorite things in the house. We had almost no storage space in our old, dinky kitchen.
Upstairs hallway. One of the things that sucks is that before they put the house on the market, one of the relatives must have gone through and taken out all of the cool light fixtures. The only ones that are left in the house are the crappy ones like this. So they well all need to be replaced or added at some point. I can't really bitch though, we bought this house at about 90K off of the asking price and missing lights were one of the ways we got the price down.
I do think the built in is pretty cool though.
Ivy's room, which is actually almost put together.
Erik's room, which is an unholy mess and only half put together. It also has a cool sun room attached to it.
Our bedroom is too messy to show and it has almost no furniture in it yet other than a bed, nightstand, and a wire rack we're using for our clothes at the moment, but it's huge, which is an awesome change from having to crawl across my husband to get to my side of the damn bed.
The entrance to the third floor - what was probably at one time the servant's quarters.
There's actually a third bathroom behind the door, but it's kind of weird and tiny and difficult to get a picture of.
You can see a tiny bedroom (or what they counted as a bedroom to the right).
I'm not sure what we're going to do with this third floor. Maybe make it a guest room or toss one of the kids up there when they get older or make it a play room. I think the big plan at the moment is to move our comic book collection up there. Maybe we'll make it our nerd sanctuary.
Part of the problem is that Tom and I tend to like different things. He wanted a big house that was in rolling suburbia with a big giant yard, because he said it was like being in the country (except you know, he couldn't do all of the redneck things he wanted to do around prissy suburban neighbors). I wanted to be in a city and close to a walkable downtown. He tended to like modern houses especially ranch homes built in the 70's and 80's and I like older, turn of the century homes. I also tended to be very coldly rational about buying a house, and Tom was pretty emotional about the whole thing which is weird, because he's a pretty level headed guy, except when it comes to this one thing.
Anyway, you can see which one of us won the fight about style. :P
On top of all of that, there was the absolutely batshit crazy real estate market, short sales, foreclosures, as well as all of the government incentives and obstacles - all of which make it very difficult to figure out what houses are actually worth. Then there were the insane property taxes (and the messed up way that Michigan calculates them) in some areas that had to be taken into account. So, just finding a house that we agreed on, could afford easily and didn't have super high taxes took us nine months and probably going inside 70-80 different houses all over Metro Detroit. This was the third house we'd offered on.
Then there was the nightmare with the financing, which due to the government changing all of their requirements and paperwork on Jan 1, the banks tightening up their lending standards by the week and our mortgage guy and real estate agent behaving like they were in high school - well, it was a pretty frustrating experience.
But in the end, we ended up buying an awesome house in Grosse Pointe, which is a city that I never, ever, in my wildest dreams thought I'd be able to afford to live in. I'm about three blocks from Lake St. Clair and there are two city parks that are right on the lake itself. It's got one of the best school districts in the city of Michigan. I'm also right across the street from the public library, which is pretty damned convenient.
We moved from a 950 square foot ranch house we were renting to a 2750 square foot three story house (not including the full basement - another 900 square feet - and the two car garage), so this was quite an upgrade. And just to illustrate how far housing prices have fallen here, our monthly payment (which includes the bank payment, property taxes and insurance) is only $100 dollars more a month than what we were paying in rent.
Partially that's because there's some work that has to be done. We need to replace the roof in a few years, replace the electrical box as well as shore up the front porch. And there are definitely cosmetic things that I want to do too, but one of the things that I love about it is that while there's a lot of improvements that can be made, the house is perfectly comfortable the way it is. So if we don't have the money for awhile or are just feeling really lazy there isn't anything that really has to be done.
Anyway, more pictures and less bitching.
So this archway is really cool, but it's really tight and you have to be careful not to sideswipe your car. It's a good thing that our cars aren't very wide. Then again, it was built about the time people were driving things like the Model T.
Front hall - which has this wallpaper from the 80's that looks like something from Laura Ashley. Needless to say, it's got to go. So does the shitty light fixture. Still, once the walls are painted, we get a new light and we finish refinishing the wood, it'll look rather nice. There's actually a second set of servant's stairs that come up through the kitchen and meet at a landing halfway up.
One of my favorite things about this house is this hall closet. Which is kinda stupid, actually, but we really didn't have any place to put coats in the old house. And this closet is freaking huge. I love it.
Living room. Which, as you can see... we don't have enough furniture to fill yet, lol.
There's one of the radiator covers. This house has a steam boiler, which with all of the clanking and hissing of the pipes and vents, makes it like living in a Steampunk novel.
Most of the windows in the house have these custom, vintage cloth blinds. I think they're pretty cool, and they were hidden under these hideous curtains that I took down the first day we were here.
One of the windows. You can see the cool curve plastering they did with the ceiling.
Dining room:
Those screens over the window are really cool and can be opened.
One of the built in cabinets.
One of the sun rooms. The other is piled with even more of our stuff and sports a shag blue carpet and hideous pink walls that all have to be redone, lol.
The kitchen which sports a really awesome set of hardwood cabinets, but overwhelming wallpaper and a rather crappy counter top that needs to be replaced. The former owner really loved floral wallpaper.
These huge pantry cabinets are another one of my favorite things in the house. We had almost no storage space in our old, dinky kitchen.
Upstairs hallway. One of the things that sucks is that before they put the house on the market, one of the relatives must have gone through and taken out all of the cool light fixtures. The only ones that are left in the house are the crappy ones like this. So they well all need to be replaced or added at some point. I can't really bitch though, we bought this house at about 90K off of the asking price and missing lights were one of the ways we got the price down.
I do think the built in is pretty cool though.
Ivy's room, which is actually almost put together.
Erik's room, which is an unholy mess and only half put together. It also has a cool sun room attached to it.
Our bedroom is too messy to show and it has almost no furniture in it yet other than a bed, nightstand, and a wire rack we're using for our clothes at the moment, but it's huge, which is an awesome change from having to crawl across my husband to get to my side of the damn bed.
The entrance to the third floor - what was probably at one time the servant's quarters.
There's actually a third bathroom behind the door, but it's kind of weird and tiny and difficult to get a picture of.
You can see a tiny bedroom (or what they counted as a bedroom to the right).
I'm not sure what we're going to do with this third floor. Maybe make it a guest room or toss one of the kids up there when they get older or make it a play room. I think the big plan at the moment is to move our comic book collection up there. Maybe we'll make it our nerd sanctuary.
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Yeah, HGTV is pretty much a lie when it comes to how easy it is to buy a house now. I think a lot of it though has to do with the fact that many of the shows have episodes that are several years old, and the housing market and lending standards were a lot looser then.
It's changed a lot. Basically you need nearly perfect credit, or really good credit +20% down, or a house that's nearly perfect so it can qualify for an FHA loan. It's crazy how hard it is, and the standards seemed to tighten up each week. One week we could qualify for a 10% down loan - the next we had to have 20%, and now, I don't think even with as good of credit as we had, we have a high enough rating to qualify for the loan one month later.
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It looks very warm inside.
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The house is nice and toasty though - especially with the steam heat and the pipes running right under the wood floor.
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And I agree, it's great to be able to do whatever we want to it. I'm really not used to not having to worry about if the landlord is going to have a snit or if I'm going to get my security deposit back, lol.
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Wow, what a lovely house! Reminds me very much of my old neighborhood in Cleveland. I bet when the kids get to be high school age, one of them will want to claim the third floor as his domain (I always wanted our attic as my giant room at that age.) I played a band concert in Grosse Pointe once and thought it was a nice area. Congratulations!
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::pauses to mock you mercilessly about living in Grosse Pointe::
I love houses with character, and that's definitely got character. There's a grace to that old-world craftsmanship. And those hardwood floors and built-ins are to die for.
Turn the top floor into a toy room, that way all you have to do is shut the door to the attic when guests come over. Later on when they're older, it can become your nerdlair.
OTOH, depending on how the light comes in, you could turn it into a media room haven and keep all your electronics up and out of sight. The point is, you've got potential and room to grow. Congratulations on homeownership. In approximately two-point-three seconds, you'll be able to drive to Home Depot blindfolded.
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We've already made an astonishing amount of trips to Home Depot. I should probably just sign a portion of the paycheck over to them automatically.
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Way cool! Congratulations!
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Maybe I'll add that there's a button in the house that transforms it into giant airship that will fly away - if they could just find it. That might give me a couple hours of peace and quiet as they go looking for it.
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And now you have the fun part of making it yours, or perhaps you just want to kick back and gaze lovingly at the walls for a bit after all the hassle.
Anyway, 'Welcome Home' - and talk soon I hope! :)
best
Tara
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(And I swear, I'm still going to read your fic. I'm way behind on reading everyone's stuff. When I get a few minutes of uninterrupted silence from the kids, that's my plan.)
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