Wednesday, March 30, 2011

accepted bid

On Monday, 3/29/2011, we put in a bid for the house.  The seller countered, and we countered, and the seller accepted.  Closing is in 30-45 days.  Financing is in place; our attorney is in contact with the seller's attorney, and we are having our engineer come through the house this afternoon.  More on his findings and another video to follow! 

Sunday, March 27, 2011

back on the hunt...


Here is the house off Central Ave. in Gendale, NY.   As you can see from the snapshot of the MTA bus map. it is located in a "dead" zone for transit.  An express bus serves Manhattan on the weekdays only--AM into and PM out of Manhattan only...  Otherwise it is a mile or so to the nearest subway stop.





We and our agent, Jason are researching it now--pulling comps, looking at mortgage payments, locating amenities, and noodling over what to do.

This house is slightly smaller at 18'6" wide and 45'6" long, about 10' shorter than the one we did not get.  But, it is substantially less money--$130k less (listed).  It will still require a similar major reno job to get it where we would want it--just that we would be putting that $100k in this place, and be pretty assured of getting it back out when we sell.

seller bails out. house is off the market.

The worst case is upon us. A week and a half ago, the seller's attorney faxed our attorney a one page letter stating the seller decided not to sell due to the conditions of the contract.

A couple of phone calls to the seller's broker, to the loan officer, and to our broker, we got the pretty good impression that the seller was not interested in selling.

Ok, big disappointment. And, since we paid to get the engineering report produced, gave it to the seller to try and get the price reduced for necessary repairs, we were out $600, and the seller got a free appraisal of the stuff wrong with her property. We are still deciding what to do about this-my guess is that there is not much we can do...

So, after a week of sulking, we started to look at listings again. Today, we went and saw four, one of which we are considering. More on that house in the next post.