modern thrifter

[ THE LONG ROAD TO HOME: PART ONE ]

Patrick and I bought our first house six years ago, in practically the peak of the real estate market here in Seattle. We fell into that awful category of sub-prime borrowers, and even after being approved for an amount that was more than we could afford, the selection of houses in our price range was dismal. Most of the homes we toured looked like they were about to be condemned, but we were sold on the dream of home-ownership, so we kept looking. We finally stumbled upon an 800 sf house that had straight walls and didn’t smell like death, so we bought it.

The house was in serious need of a cosmetic overhaul, but because our budget was stretched so thin, we knew it would be a slow process. The first year we lived there we were only able to paint the interior, scrape off the horrible popcorn ceiling, and replace the sink in the bathroom. We just accepted the fact that we would have to make do with damaged flooring, the yellow and lime green exterior paint, and a kitchen with no refrigerator (it was out in the laundry room, down three stairs).

Here are a few before & after pictures:

This was our laundry/mud room. We needed more space for an office after we had kids, and this was the only extra space we had.

The picture on the left is Patrick dressed in his make-shift hazmat suit, the day we ripped down the popcorn ceiling. I’m pretty proud of the subway tile in the “after” picture. It was the first tile project we had ever done, and it turned out nice.

Little by little, the house shed it’s prior appearance and became our home. But our plan was never to stay there forever. We both had dreams of owning a house that was more architecturally interesting, and hopefully a little bigger. But it was hard to be patient. Most of our friends had either remodeled their homes or moved on to a new house within the first few years. Making the waiting even harder was that after only a few months of living there, we discovered that the “quirky” house across the street, was in fact, a well-known drug and prostitution house. But for as much as we wanted to move, we simply weren’t in a place financially that we could. Instead of moving up we had started Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover, and we knew we were on a much longer road to a new house.

We worked really hard for three years to pay off just under $40,000 of school loans, credit cards, car loans, and the hospital bills we had incurred having two kids. I also spent a lot of time writing letters to the city council and working with narcotic officers, which finally resulted in most of the drug dealers being forcibly removed from the property. By the time we were out of debt, the real estate market had started its infamous nose-dive, and while many people were in a place of financial ruin, we were finally hitting our stride. We suddenly had an extra $800 each month that had previously been dedicated to paying down debt, and we hadn’t really increased our cost of living.

We decided to take a serious look at the homes that were currently on the market, and we were surprised to see how many foreclosures and short sales were available to purchase. Suddenly, we were in the position to buy a house that two years earlier would have been beyond impossible.

A house came up for sale far below market-value that fit every part of our wish list—modern, three bedrooms, an office, and in a great school district. But what seemed at first to be a quick and easy real estate transaction, was about to take us on a six month long emotional roller coaster…

Come back tomorrow to read part two: the ironic term “short sale”