Eight Lives Left

The listing agent finally got in contact with my realtor about the condo. There are already three offers on it and there’s a bidding war going on, which means I’m out of the running. I’m on a very strict budget and the price has already gone above my maximum, which means I have to start looking again. Oops!

I’m going to take Wednesday afternoon off from work to go out with my realtor to look at some new places. I’m a little disappointed, of course, but not upset. I’m not surprised that this happened, and as I said earlier I’m not going to actually believe any of this is happening until I’m actually at a closing signing paperwork. Something else will come up, or it won’t. Either way, I’ve gotten a much better idea of how this whole process works and just how far my money can go. If I don’t end up in a condo I can always get a bigger apartment and keep saving for another two or three years until I’m really in a good position to buy a place without quite so many financial restrictions. It’s all good.

I hope everyone is doing well!

I liked this blog post very much.

I just canceled subscriptions to two of my online games, saving me a whole whopping $15 per month. I know it doesn’t seem like much but I figure every bit counts and I do need to start being a little less exuberant with my money if I’m going to go through with this whole home-ownership thing. I canceled all my travel plans for this year and I doubt I’ll do much of anything except fly to see Lea once more (hopefully). Tickets to Boston are relatively cheap after all.

I haven’t heard back from my realtor yet, but I’m what I’m hoping will happen is he’ll have the contract written up for tomorrow, and we can go look at the condo and take pictures and then have lunch and go over the contract before he ships it to the bank. I discovered it’s not actually a bank who owns the condo, though. It’s one of those sub-prime lending companies like Countrywide, except they don’t seem to have gone under. I don’t know if that really makes a difference or not.

I have a cat butt in my face. This is a pretty constant theme in my life. Good thing I like cat butts.

I think it hasn’t been confirmed yet whether or not the place already has a contract on it, so I might get stymied from the get go if that doesn’t work out for me. But it’s ok. I like this place enough to make an offer on it, but I’m not wedded to it and if I don’t get it, it won’t be the end of the world. I’ll just keep looking until something else presents itself. And if nothing goes through, I can keep living here in my apartment which, although cluttered, is really quite nice. It’ll all be ok.

I’ll keep saving money, though.

I emailed my buyer-broker today and told him to write up an offer on the condo we saw last week. It’s listed at $197,500 and I think we’re going to offer $185,000 and ask for all closing costs to be paid. If I manage to get the place for around $190 (which is what I’m hoping), then my payments will be about $1737.80 per month, which includes the mortgage, taxes, mortgage insurance, and condo fees. My condo fees include water, sewer, trash, cable TV and high-speed Internet (via Verizon FiOS). There’s other stuff in there, too, but those are the items I care about.

The only information I couldn’t get was how much utilities had been running in that particular unit. The electric company wouldn’t tell me because my name isn’t on there, and of course it’s owned by the bank right now and I doubt they’d be very motivated to get the info for me. So that’s a little bit of an unknown but I figure I can deal with it.

I hope to go back out there this weekend for another look and to take some pictures with my digital camera so I can share.

This is getting pretty scary. I hope this all works out.

My mortgage guy is going to crunch the numbers and give me a couple of Truth in Lending statements for the condo. One will be for full price ($197,900) and one at $185,000. Both of them will include full closing costs to be paid by the seller. I guess this is starting to get a little serious. Many, many things could still go wrong, though, so I’m not getting my hopes up until I’m actually at a closing and signing papers.

Lea seems willing to spend some of her vacation time helping me paint, yay. : )