Adventures in Moving: Chapter 1 - The house search parameters

I'm going to talk about the various elements of our house search to help make some sense of all of this before I talk about the houses themselves.

Since it's such a buyer's market we had a lot of houses to look at, in various shapes and sizes and in various conditions.

I was already schooled in house hunting from back in 1995 and knew the things to watch for/avoid/lust after.

Examples of things to avoid:

• House near commercially zoned land.
  
• House on busy street.
  
• Land sloping towards house.
  
• Undeveloped land bordering house (could turn into a Kwikee Mart or a Sewage Disposal Facility).
  
• House near power lines.
  
• House in bad school district.
  
• Basement shows signs of flooding .
• Yards so small that you can reach from your back deck into neighbors fridge and grab beer (and it's a brand you don't like, to add insult to injury).
  
• Ancient Indian burial ground on premises.
  
• Necronomicon found in basement sitting next to dusty tape recorder.
  
• Mogwais frolicking in backyard next to Chupacabra.
  
• Giant swastika pattern etched into landscape that can only be seen from the air.

Examples of things to lust for:

• House in excellent school district.
  
• Street in cul-de-sac.
  
• Low traffic street.
  
• Far away from power lines.
  
• Close to main roads.
  
• Hooters within walking distance.
• Yards have some kind of foliage to give privacy from other yards and look nice
  

And now the house itself.

My wife was concerned with the main interior..how many bedrooms, bathrooms, all that stuff. I was concerned about that stuff too, of course. But we divvied things up, divide and conquer. My number one priority was to scout out the basements and the backyards. Keeping not only our needs in mind but the needs of our two boys.

Often times we came up with different opinions based on what we saw .. a great backyard but a crappy house, a crappy basement but a great upstairs... awesome house, dangerous backyard or no backyard. The trick was to find a house where all the components were acceptable.

But wait, there's more.

There's the financial status of the owner in regards to the house to consider as well. We not only looked at houses that were being lived in but also houses that had been vacated for various reasons. Abandonment, foreclosure, job relocation, or the people simply owned two houses and were living in the other one. Depending on this variable.. things could be smooth or tricky. A great deal, no deal, a long drawn out negotiation, an instant sale.

To add to the fun some of the houses were foreclosed, others were short sale. Foreclosed means the bank owned it and kicked the ex-owners out. Sometimes the ex-owners trashed/looted the place on their way out. "Short Sale" means the owner owed more on the house than it was worth and tried to talk the bank into reducing how much he/she owed if he/she sold the house for a lower price. The owners other option at this point is to lose the house and declare bankruptcy and then the bank is saddled with the house. I guess the gist of this one is, the bank was willing to take a moderate loss if they could unload the house and no longer be owed money by the owner. Less work for the bank.

We couldn't afford to wait, we only had a month to find a new place. So "short sale" houses were out.. those deals can take many many moons to work through. One of the simpler reasons for this is.. the sheer volume of people trying for a short sale to unload their house. Stacks of short sale requests sit on overworked bank employees desks.. waiting to be looked at as time permits. And thats only after the owner figures out how to file the correct paperwork to the correct person. UG!

So we were armed with a battle plan and knew our individual duties. And off we went! With our real estate agent, who was a great person but desperately needed a GPS but didn't have one..

next blog: backyards.

Adventures in Moving: Preface

Recently we moved. We as in my family and I. We sold a smallish house and purchased a bigger house, and moved the whopping 1.2 miles down the road in what can only be described as "a typical move."

But, anyone who moves can tell you.. there is nothing typical about a typical move. The typical move experience is packed full of bizarre little incidents and inexplicable situations. Local oddities and global phenomenon. You, your old house, and your new house make up a kind of Bermuda Triangle where logic and reason enter on various plotted courses but vanish from the radar of common sense never to be seen nor heard from again.

Our moving experience was no exception. So, I thought while my memory still functioned in a near-average capacity, I would share some of the madness for your enjoyment. Laugh at my pain, I beg of you!

What will follow are scatter-shot recollections from this experience, arranged in some kind of attempt at being semi-coherant.

Why Move?

I had owned my house for about 15 years.. having purchased it when I was a bachelor. It was during "the seller's market" phase of the economy. It was quite difficult to find and purchase a good house back then (believe it or not), and I spent considerable time looking at houses and bidding on houses before I got one. It is a nice house, when I got it it was a fixer upper of sorts but had a basement and a separate garage, in a neighborhood that was in a great location. Great school system too.

I met my wife, we got married, and had kids and fixed up the house even more along the way. It was still small though. Not for one guy, and not for one couple, but definitely for a family of four. Especially when that family consists of two strapping young boys who start literally bouncing themselves off of walls for their enjoyment since they didn't have lots of room to run.

My mom, my wife, and her mom and dad all wanted us to move. For years I heard about it. Finally I decided.. maybe if it's me against everyone else.. maybe, just maybe, I should consider the idea that everyone else was right and I was wrong.

So I mulled it over with an open mind finally and thought "yea let's try to move." After all, if we put the house up for sale and it didn't sell.. nothing lost. If we put it up for sale and it sold.. we would then find a new house and get a good deal on it. There was no downside to this equation.

Also I would finally buckle to the pressure and get everyone off of my back.

So we got an agent and put the house up for sale. We got ready for the long process of showing the house. We made plans to be gone on weekends for some open houses. The first people came to look at the house. We made plans to go look at some houses. We thought about... Hey hold on. What? The first people are interested in looking again? Fine, maybe they can give us some constructive... Hmm. What was that? They made an offer!? No wait, are you kidding?

We haven't even looked at any houses yet! By the time we go out to look, as we look at our first house our agent and the agent of the people who want to buy our house are haggling by cell phone. By the end of the day our house is sold pending inspection!

And so the journey begins, as we are still preparing to think about the journey!

Next up.. the frantic house hunt begins.