Homeowners Insurance

So today I met with my lender to sign my life away on a bunch of forms. He told me that I needed to start shopping for homeowners insurance to be added in with my escrow account. The first quote I got was with Progressive. Our auto and renters insurance is through progressive, so I thought it would be simple. Yeah right. The quote was over $3000 a year...and everyone - and I mean EVERYONE I have talked to has said that it should only be about $600 a year.

I checked out USAA and State Farm - which were both about $1200 a year.

Geico was $850.

I still haven't found a quote for ~$600. I did, however, request that a Cotton States provider contact me. There's an agent in Auburn who is endorsed by Dave Ramsey, so hopefully I'll have some better luck with him. In the mean time - if any of you have ideas on who I should check out, let me know. Thanks!

Wish List

Well, Jonny and I have been talking about things we've got to do to the house, and making our wish list.

Paint Living Room
Paint Master Bed/Bath
Carpet for Master Bedroom
Remove Wall Paper and Paint Guest Bath
Paint Dining Room/Kitchen
Blinds/Curtains

Funny story about the living room...I wasn't planning on painting it, because it looks like a light tan color....to me anyway. Jonny said "Um, no, it's pink." So when we were at the inspection on Friday I looked at it close, and I have to admit, it's one of those weird colors, that *could* be pink. You all know how much I DESPISE pink. When it was tan, I didn't care, but PINK? Heavens no. If there's any chance it could be mistaken for pink, it's gotta be changed.

So, we've decided to paint the dining room and kitchen a yellow color, the living room will be green - like guacamole green, and our bedroom will be a blue color. I'm not sure about the guest bathroom color yet - probably a tan or off-white color.

Also, because we're moving from an apartment to a house, we have a wish list of furniture and decorative items and other things that we will need:

sofa table & mirror
leaning bookshelf or bakers rack
art for over fireplace
area rug (pref 8*10 but 5*8 will be okay too.)

Eventually, I'd like some new dinnerware, cookware, and flatware, but those are further down on the priority list. For everything else, I am planning on yard-saling it, and trying to find super deals between now and then. I do NOT want some ugly flower based area rug. I prefer something modern or contemporary - circles, stripes, squares, whatever...and hopefully something with some green in it to go with the walls. I found one at Lowes that I'll be okay with if I don't find something else soon. If you guys know of anywhere I can find these things in a great deal - please let me know!!!

It's becoming VERY easy to dream big right now, and the temptation is definitely there to go out and overspend on things we "need," but we aren't going to let the dreams consume our lives. Okay, so I may have some flimsy ugly blinds with no curtains for a little while, but eventually, I'll be able to acquire everything I want.

Just doing the waiting game now....

We're buying a house!

UPDATE!!!!

Those of you on FB already know this but...we found a house!!!

So after some hiccups with prequalification, we finally got word on how much the bank was willing to give us right now. We weren't sure if we wanted to hold off and wait until we could pay more debt down, so we could qualify for more, or look within the parameters they would allow us. We decided to go ahead and look, because there may be something perfect for us, and at this price range, the payments would be low...

We found one last Thursday that was slightly out of our price range, but we decided to put an offer in on it anyway. We thought the seller might be motivated to sell, and maybe we'd be lucky. Nahh. We were a little bummed, but figured it wasn't meant to be. In fact, we turned around and went looking at houses again on Sunday, and THAT is when we found "the one..."

It was the second house we looked at on Sunday. We both were very impressed. Pros about the house? 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, a separate shower and garden tub in the master. Covered Carport, hardwood (okay, parquet) floors, Vaulted ceiling, BIG kitchen (yes!) Separate dining area from the great room, fireplace, storage shed...and something we just found out today after getting a layout of the ploy of land...a BIG BIG YARD. I see the clearing of some trees in my, er, Jonny's future....

So on Monday, we put in an offer, and after some back and forth banter, we became official. So then we started jumping through the VA Loan requirement hoops. the house is a Fannie Mae foreclosure, and they aren't paying for anything extra...They are taking care of the termite letter and that's about it. We ha to get septic records from the county, and scheduled a septic inspection. If the inspection comes back good, we're good, if not, we'll have to pay to get it pumped. Our buyers inspection was today, and everything was minor fixes that we'll be able to handle easily. So the next stop is the VA Appraisal. Our inspector informed us of a few things the VA appraiser may ding, but then again, s/he may not. So at this point, we're still in the waiting game. Once the appraisal is done, and we know what the VA requires to be fixed (if anything) then we plan to ask Fannie Mae to do the repairs, but we figure they probably wont, so more than likely, we will have to pay for those things to be fixed before we'll be allowed to close.

The crappy part of this whole thing, though, is that Alabama is a right to rescission state - which means that for foreclosed homes, the original owner has a year to pay up to be current and then they can reclaim their home. Say WHAT? So in order to protect ourselves, we have to buy title bond insurance, because we don't know how long its been since the house was foreclosed on. And...it's 1% of appraisal price....which is 121K. So I have to have $1210 at closing for title bond insurance. Crap. Well, in the grand scheme of things, that's not so bad. We're already shelled out our escrow and the payment for the septic inspection and buyers inspection....if things go well, we wont have to do anything else until closing, with the exception of any repairs the VA appraiser may require, which we anticipate will only be a few hundred bucks, if that.

So that's about it. We're now in a hurry up and wait situation. 34 days until closing. I pray that the VA appraiser doesn't find anything that we aren't already aware of, and that the septic is not in crappy (no pun intended) condition. Hopefully all will go well, and we'll close on time.... Weee!

Here's another one

Lunch is over, so I don't have time to really comment on this one. Just going to shake my head in disbelief.... STUPID. How do you not know how mcuh student loan debt you're taking out????

http://finance.yahoo.com/college-education/article/109701/placing-the-blame-as-students-are-buried-in-debt?mod=edu-collegeprep

Irresponsible Home THIEVES

If you've read my previous post, you'll see that I cannot qualify for [clarification: as much home as I would like] due to lenders tightening up their reigns. Why? Because of asshats like these:


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Owners-Stop-Paying-Mortgage-nytimes-4276925797.html?x=0


Foreclosure has allowed them to stabilize the family business. Go to Outback occasionally for a steak. Take their gas-guzzling airboat out for the weekend. Visit the Hard Rock Casino.

“Instead of the house dragging us down, it’s become a life raft,” said Mr. Pemberton, who stopped paying the mortgage on their house here last summer. “It’s really been a blessing.”


You know what? If you buy a house, and you don't pay on it, guess what that makes you? A THIEF. Yes, a THIEF. You promised to pay, and then you stopped. HOW DARE YOU???


And yeah, I know there are people who may be reading this who have either gone through a foreclosure, or know someone close to them who has. I'm not one bit sorry for my comments. Yeah, the economy sucks, but there is ALWAYS a way to work on your obligations, even if you cant quite meet them. To stop paying on your house so that you can have fun on your boat, or go to an upscale steakhouse is DISGUSTING...

Actually, I should be thanking you. Thank you for forcing the lenders to not be allowed to sucker me into buying more home than I can afford. Thank you for forcing the lenders to hold me responsible, and for me to have realistic expectations on a home I can afford so that if something ever happened to me in the future, I wouldn't be so down on my luck that the only way to go boating or out to eat would be to take on the personality of a thief and STEAL from the lenders.

Good GOD I'm in a mood. This article fired me up. These selfish people are going to get what's coming to them...one way or another.

Grad School had better be worth it....

Those of you who follow me on facebook may already know most of what this post is about. Thursday evening, we went to look at houses with our agent. We looked at probably 10 houses. We found one that we loved. It didn't have "everything" but it had almost everything, and we were happy with it. We wanted it, and we wanted it badly. Asking price: $129,900.

Jonny and I discussed it Thursday night and decided that we wanted to offer the asking price, if the seller would make a few updates for us and pay all closing costs. On Friday, I called a lender to get preapproval so we could put in an offer. Long story short, we didn't qualify for that amount. Collectively, between the two of us, we *should have* qualified, but because of the housing market, lenders have toughened their criteria. Jonny not being full time, and only working at his part time job for 3 months meant that they would not count his income in the approval process at all. So therefore, it was all on me. Well, I didn't qualify for that amount by myself because of my student loans, and when they are going to come out of deferment and be due. Gee, thanks grad school.

I really do understand it from the lender's point of view - I just wish they would have counted Jonny's income because that is how much on the fence I was being able to qualify.

But I guess it's a sign that it's not meant to happen yet - or at that price. Truthfully, that was just a smidge over what I really wanted to pay. The problem is that of the other homes we looked at Thursday night that were lower in price, I was really not impressed. I don't mind a little bit of elbow grease, but it needs to be almost move in ready, and if I'm going to have to replace ALL the carpet because it smells like cat piss, it had better be a bargain. I'm not going to pay alot of money if I'm going to have to put alot more money in to it to make it work. I don't mind ugly paint. I don't mind ugly 70s wood paneling on the walls. I dunno - I really don't think our wishes are unrealistic in our price range. I know there has got to be something out there in the low 100s that has potential. And I'm determined to find it.

I thought our realtor would be upset with us, but she wasn't. In fact, we saw her at church this morning and said she would be in touch with us later this week. She said she had other agents looking for us, and she said she is determined to help us find what we're looking for.

Nonetheless, we're going to keep on plan of paying as much of our 2 remaining non-student loan debts off as quickly as we can (hopefully by Christmas) so that if we haven't found a home by the first of the year, those 2 debts will not factor into our preapproval process, and hopefully we'll have more options available to us. On one hand, I've learned that the kind of home we "really" want,is probably most realistically in the 130-150 price range, but on the other hand, there just might be a diamond in the rough out there....perhaps a foreclosure that the bank just wants off it's books....with some cosmetic upgrades, it would be good as new.

So, we continue to look, while continuing to pay down our debt. The right one will come along, and when it does, we'll be ready for it.

House Hunting

It's been a while since I wrote, but I wanted to give you all an update. Jonny and I are still hard charging to get out of debt, but we made a decision to go ahead and start looking at houses. The market is awesome right now for buyers, but things are starting to turn back up - thankfully. However, we realize that we really do need to go ahead and start getting our feelers out there if we want to make this happen before the buyers market goes away.

We're going in with a mindset that we're not going to settle. Our goal is to get something affordable on my single income alone, especially since his full time job status is up in the air, and we still don't know for certain what he will be doing a year from now. I am hoping that whatever we get, with taxes and everything, our payments will hopefully be about $850 a month, if not less.

We wanted a realtor who was experienced in this area, and we wanted recommendations. I got rec for a lady at our church and we sent her our mile long wish list. She replied "No Problem," and she also understands that we aren't pushing hard core to get into a house right now, unless the right opportunity presents itself. Yeah, we just resigned a lease at our apt, but it's only a 1 month fee to break it, which we could handle.

Miss Mary (the realtor) has already sent us a few listings that she matched to us based on our preferences, and Thursday night, right after work, we are meeting with her to go look at these houses, and maybe a few more. I'm so excited. Jonny's in May-mester right now, and his classes are in the mornings, so we both have the evenings to go look at these together. YAY!

I hate that we've pushed up our plan...I really did want to wait until next Spring. but something - a gut feeling I guess you could say, is telling me that now is the time to do it. The market is picking back up, and I don't want to miss the train. We're not going to get more house than we can afford, but I'm ready for a place to call my own.

If it's meant for us to get one sooner rather than later, we'll know. Just because we're looking doesn't mean it's going to happen right away.

I'll keep you all updated. More to come - I promise.