Looks Like I'll Have To Sell The House

[Grogan]

That would be nice to ditch the gimmicky loan conditions but man... I would not envy you staying in an air BNB.

I should think that you shouldn't have to "ask" if you can have a folding table. Just bring it. I can't see how that could cause anyone any problem. I wouldn't give them the chance to say no.

[Zema Bus]

It looks like the only way to avoid that is to rent for a year. Renting for a year would cost about $20K (in AZ, it would be much higher in California). 2 months at an AirBnB would cost $2K to $5K (excluding the luxury ones and the shacks).

You're probably right. I read a few threads by some hosts not liking it when guests brought their own furnishings, though they were also criticized for taking issue with it.

[Zema Bus]

Just when I thought I knew what I was going to do, a loan originator in AZ I've been in contact with (who is not tied to a single lender like the one in CA is) told me about a different kind of bridge loan he found. This one doesn't have the bridge loan fees because instead of doing that type of temp loan they do a standard cash-out refinance on the old property to provide the down payment on the new property. The last time I refinanced I did it as a cash-out to pay for my solar install. That being the case I also shouldn't need temp housing, I could just move directly to the new place. He also said they do portfolio loans (meaning they service and keep all of their own loans so they have their own guidelines), so my mortgage wouldn't get sold to another lender, who in turn may sell it to yet another lender, which is what usually happens, and then I have to create a new account at another site. I sent him a few questions on the specifics but it sounds like this may be the definitive way to go.

[Grogan]

That sounds a lot better than having to get temporary lodging. Hope it works out!

[Zema Bus]

I haven't been having the gardener come by the last several months to save money, figuring I'd have him come by one last time before moving out. But today I found a notice from the local city about the state of the lawn, the weeds and the pine tree they want trimmed. I have a week and a half to be in compliance so I got a hold of the gardener to have him stop by. My automatic sprinkler system stopped working over the summer, I wasn't aware of it until I noticed the lawn not looking healthy. It just needed to be reset again (occasionally it'll go through the motions of watering but fail to actually turn on the water), and reprogrammed. In the process of testing it I discovered I have a broken sprinkler near the driveway, like maybe someone used my driveway to turnaround and ran over the sprinkler. One month later it still looks like most of the green is coming from little weeds rather than grass, so hopefully I don't end up with a huge fine anyway, or dragged into court like they're threatening. I can't wait to get out of here and into a place where I don't have to pay a lot of money to maintain a green lawn in the desert under the threat of fines and court appearances.

That bridge loan I mentioned before sounded good at first but it seemed too complicated, and it would mean doubling the interest rate on my current house for the duration of the bridge loan, which would make the payment insanely expensive. I think I may have found a solution that would allow me to buy a house and move before selling this house, so that I won't have to rent and move twice or get an expensive bridge loan. It's a pretty cheap solution too compared to a bridge loan or a 2 month stay in an AirBnB. It's not actually a loan in of itself, but they allow for a 3% down, then buy and move into the new house. At that point a 120 day window opens to sell the departing house, and in the unlikely event it doesn't sell within that window they will buy it and sell it, and return 90% of the selling price. Total cost of their program is $2,500. What I'm thinking of doing is getting a small loan for a minimal down payment (and enough for any other expenses like buying a refrigerator for the new house) and then recast the mortgage after the old house sells. I showed it to my listing agent and he agreed it looks like a good program.

[Grogan]

That's fucking bullshit that they dictate how your lawn etc. has to be. You would want to get that in order to sell the house anyway, though.

That sounds worth $2500 if it solves the problem.

[Zema Bus]

Yeah they're kind of like a governmental HOA.

[Grogan]

I think every civilized community has some ordinances like that. Here, they aren't going to tell you how to be, what landscaping you can have, what colour you can paint your house, how nice your lawn is etc. but if you let the grass and the weeds all go to seed, and a neighbour complained, you'd get some sort of notice, otherwise they'd fine you and/or send someone to do it at your expense, sort of thing.

P.S. Gated communities and condos are a different story. We have those here and they have HOA-like rules. I would never.

[Zema Bus]

Well I submitted my loan application to the lender I mentioned above (on Sat Oct 05). Wish I hadn't bothered with that previous one. That loan originator assured me he was connected to many lenders with the type of bridge loan I was looking for, so he runs my credit only to come back and say that he only found one and they were expensive. Then later he finds one that sounded good at first but it involved my current property and would have doubled my current interest rate until I was able to sell it. So with that personal loan included that's 3 credit inquiries to get to this point, and now I'm about to get a 4th credit ding for the one that should have been the first and only application. Wish I'd found it sooner. My credit score is still good but it would have been 5 points higher if not for those other ones.

[Grogan]

I never understood why credit inquiries count against you. Isn't that normal practice when applying for more credit? Jeeze... the system is just stacked against you.

[Zema Bus]

I never understood the reason for that either, and you can't always tell whether a lender is going to work out until after they run your credit to see what they can offer. The whole system does feel rigged, at least for anyone who is not wealthy or a corporation.

I got the pre-approval letter. This one better work

[Grogan]

Let's hope so, this has had you chasing your tail for a long time now.

[Zema Bus]

Was about to make a move on one I've been looking at for a while, but one thing I hadn't explored made me put on the brakes when I finally did some reading. It has a foam roof. At first I wasn't overly concerned but not thrilled by the requirement for inspections every 6 months, but it got worse. It's a fragile roofing material, very easily damaged and prone to leaks, like after a heavy hailstorm, and has to be resealed every 5 years. Discussions I found about it said things like "don't do it!". That was very disappointing I otherwise really like that house and I could find no others with all the attributes it has for the price (at the high end of my price range but doable). So I'm back to the drawing board. The pickings are pretty slim unless I either go to the area with no curbside mail delivery or down to Rio Rico where the water is contaminated with PFAS. The available houses down there are amazing, it's like a candy store of houses. If only the water was safe to drink. To the north in the Phoenix metro area prices are way too high, same down in the Tucson metro area, and in both those areas they have to do yearly smog tests. That boring house I mentioned before though is still on the market, I could get that for pretty cheap, and the mail cluster box is right across the road. The kitchen looks like an after thought though tucked away in a corner, no island and hardly any counter space. But no smog tests at all, no PFAS, and no mail delivery issues.

[Grogan]

Well that sucks... good that you recognized the bad investment though!

I hope the boring house works out.

[Zema Bus]

I'm still looking, the boring house has a number of short comings including the mediocre kitchen and having the HVAC on the roof, which isn't a good location, but if I don't find anything better soon it may have to do.

My pile of dead and severely obsolete motherboards, and dead microwave set out for the junk haulers to pick up:

oldmotherboards.jpg (240.23 KiB) Viewed 71640 times

And some old modems, video cards, sound cards, and NICs:

oldcards0.jpg (112.2 KiB) Viewed 71640 times

oldcards.jpg (226.7 KiB) Viewed 71640 times

[Grogan]

Sorry to hear about the house.

Why do we keep shit like that? I've got a closet so full of junk that if you pulled something out, it would be like on the cartoons. I mean, we know it's good for nothing, why keep it

[Zema Bus]

I guess it's kind of like how it is with a lot of backyard mechanics with piles of old junky car parts they've accumulated over decades until they die and it all either gets sold in an estate sale or just sold for scrap. "I might need it someday"

[Zema Bus]

Found one I thought would do. Nothing remarkable from the outside but the inside was nice. 2 years old, a large lot, mailboxes at each house, and it came with a refrigerator and window blinds. It has a vaulted ceiling, I wouldn't have had a problem with that in of itself but I got to looking at the placement of the HVAC filter - they placed it at the highest point on the ceiling. I don't do well with heights and I have enough trouble changing the filters in my current house. And of course they placed the smoke detectors up there as high as they could too. No way in hell would I want to climb way up that high on a rickety ladder to struggle with that filter door multiple times a year, especially not with my bad back. Maybe it's also all the trauma cases I've seen at work over the years. Seems like it's one gotcha after another with this house search.

[Grogan]

Fuck, it sure is always something. Probably, an engineer lived there

I hope you find something suitable, soon.

[Zema Bus]

Thanks Grogan.

[Zema Bus]

I think this garage would do

biggarage.jpg (183.39 KiB) Viewed 70121 times

[Grogan]

You'd have a nice place to park at least

[Zema Bus]

This has been tough, those two houses (the one with the foam roof and the one with the vaulted ceiling), excluding those features I don't like are looking like the best ones currently available. There are some nice ones in the adjacent unincorporated area but I would have to deal with the complications of no mail delivery. There are workarounds, like using a virtual mailbox company, but that wouldn't work for everything - shipping packages would be expensive, and large items would be a no no. I wouldn't be able to use my address for Amazon deliveries because they ship some things via USPS, so I'd never receive those ones. Amazon has a couple lockers, one in a busy truck stop, another at a Circle K gas station, but they can only accommodate small items, so not everything would work. I'd have to find alternatives to Amazon that don't use USPS. It could be done, or I could make one of those other two houses work for me. I've been looking into the things I don't like about them. The HVAC air return filter could be relocated down on the wall for fairly cheap, all they'd have to do is cut a new opening, reroute the duct, and patch the original opening in the ceiling. For smoke detectors - I thought of something I remember having as a kid. It was an external connector for a 9V battery. I looked them up on Amazon and they're available. So what I would do, with the help of someone without a fear of heights, is plug one into the battery compartment of the smoke detector, splice in long enough wires to reach a battery box on the wall, and use some square conduit to hide the wires. And for the house with the foam roof - I've done a lot of reading about this type of roofing material, I talked to a roofing company in AZ, and listened to a weekly radio show about home improvements and repair where the host responded to a question about foam roofs. Overall it doesn't sound as bad as what those people on Reddit were saying as long as the maintenance is kept up, and a big part of the reported issues stem from the geographical location, it's not a good choice in places that see a lot of rain, but works well in dry climates. It's popular on commercial buildings with flat roofs, when you look at satellite views of commercial buildings and see bright white roofs a large percentage of those will be foam. Warranty periods range between 10 & 20 years, and when re-coated the warranty is also renewed, so it becomes a perpetual warranty. I checked the real estate listings for houses sold with foam roofs and found a lot of them in AZ. I would still not choose this roofing material, but that house otherwise checks all the boxes, plus some additional ones that would be nice to have. If I went with this one I'd be OK for a while at least, and when it came time for a re-coat in 5 years I could always just replace the roof instead with something else. I looked up the cost of a replacing it and it's not that bad relatively speaking, around $6K to $10K.

Here's a comparison between these two houses:

The vaulted ceiling house was built in 2022 and is $300K (I could probably offer $290K), is 1,500 sqft and has 3 bedrooms. The garage is way too small, I'd have to have one built. Because of the vaulted ceiling I'd want to relocate the HVAC filter and smoke detector batteries. It comes with a refrigerator and window blinds so fully move-in ready. It's possible I might feel the smaller size of this one, coming from a house that's twice that size. But when having a garage built I could probably also add a little more square footage to the house. But that and the garage addition would eat into the price advantage over the other one.

The foam roof house was built in 2024 and is $320K, is 2,000 sqft, and has 4 bedrooms and a larger garage. It has a high ceiling too, so I would also want to relocate the HVAC filter and smoke detector batteries. It doesn't come with a refrigerator or window coverings so that would have to be taken care of (most new houses are that way). There is a lot of space between houses. There's plenty of space to do what I want to do.

I'm going to have to make a move soon, the money from my personal loan is evaporating.

[Grogan]

That doesn't sound good about unavailability of delivery. I'd say that's a show stopper for that neighbourhood.

It sounds like the one with the foam roof is more practical. 4 bedrooms... imagine all the junk you'll be able to accumulate and store in those rooms

[Zema Bus]

Thanks Grogan. Yeah, based on the total sqft, about 66.666666666667% of the junk I managed to accumulate in my current house before cleaning it out

[Grogan]

I got to thinking, another reason you need to get this all settled is because the political/social/economic climate is about to change, soon.

Something to think about though, being hasty in your decision isn't good either, as at your age, this is probably the last house you're going to get.

That foam roof doesn't sound bad unless you get hail storms. I read some pros and cons about it. It's at least a newly built house, that one.

[Zema Bus]

That has been on my mind, things changing soon. Yeah after a heavy hail storm the roof would need to be inspected and any damage patched. This video kind of sums up what I've read about foam roofs and hail storms:



And here's one of the articles I've read about how it handles impacts.

[Grogan]

Heheh... in the still image for the video, it looks like a severed arm holding that hail stone. It took his arm right off!

So it's compressive enough to absorb some of the shock. That's sounding like it's going to be pretty good. The insulating properties should help with the AC, and the heating at night too.

[Zema Bus]

I'm close to getting the wheels in motion. Before doing so I contacted the person I'm working with at the lending company, but she happens to be off for a week. Got another person filling in for her, she said she'd get back to me 4 hours ago. My normal contact always gets back to me in under an hour. The tricky part of all this, if my offer is accepted, is getting the deposit to their title company by 4 PM the next day being that I'm over 300 miles away and I don't live near my credit union. The old way of doing that is with a cashier's check or a wire transfer. But the modern way is doing it electronically via different methods, my realtor says the one she sees often is a phone app that scans a check. That would be ideal, as I could take care of it in minutes. A wire transfer may be the next best scenario, that's how I did it the last time I refinanced - I was able to do it over the phone with my credit union, it was kind of a pain as they made me read back the wiring instructions three times, then the next morning they called and made me read it back all over again. That was during the pandemic, I don't know if they'd still allow doing it over the phone, or require me to be there in person. Some banks and credit unions allow sending wires from their website, but not mine. I no longer live near a branch, they closed one that was in town, so if I have to go there in person that's going to be a long trip in an area with a lot of traffic, that's what I'd have to do to get a cashier's check, then run to a UPS store to overnight it. So if they require a cashier's check, once I submit an offer and I'm notified at say 3 PM that it had been accepted I'll have to immediately scramble to get it there by 4 PM the next day, which would mean leaving work to be gone for two or three hours. I really hope they do it electronically.

[Grogan]

I've been thinking about getting set up to scan cheques with my phone, but my aversion to gimmicky shit has prevented it. I think that's common practice though, my bank even advertises it when I log in to PC banking. Banks are different here, there are branches and credit unions in most towns. (I have my choice of two branches, both a few minutes away in either direction)

That sounds like your best option. I hope you can git er done