Our New Home?

We wanted to update you on our housing situation. As you may or not be aware, we listed our condo for sale back in February. In about 2 weeks time, we had 16 showings and 3 offers. (Don’t these people know there is a recession going on?!) We thought it would take much longer to sell, but we were obviously wrong. We took the best offer and started a 45 day escrow.

Meanwhile, we stepped up our home search. From time to time, we would do Internet searches and dream, but now we were at bat. We found a couple we liked and put offers on them. But they are short sales, meaning they seller owes more to the bank that the property is worth. But they really should be called long sales, because they take forever. For example, we put in one short sale offer about 6 weeks ago now and still haven’t heard back from the bank. Frustrating.

Well, our 45 day escrow is up, so we have moved out of our long time home at 4 Abrigo.

Megan’s mom, who we have not had a relationship with in 10+ years, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and has been moved to a Board and Care facility. So we have temporarily moved into her home in Mission Viejo to clean the place out, sell what we can, and otherwise prepare her home to sell. All the proceeds will going to pay for her long term care, or to fix up the house. We will basically rent here until we have finalized purchasing a home.

Moving is never fun, and we have the added level of difficulty of moving into a place already cluttered with stuff. Check out our blog post to see some of the “before” pictures: http://spamdrewfam.blogspot.com/2009/03/where-to-begin.html

Poor sweet Angela seems a bit confused by the change of surroundings, and is very clingy. Which makes de-cluttering that much more challenging. But she is still our precious, happy, healthy baby, who is now crawling all over the place, and climbing up on things. (The little monkey!)

This week we put in an offer on a normal (“equity”) sale, and that offer was accepted. Finally, progress. Assuming everything makes it through escrow.

Here are some pictures with pluses (+) and minuses (-)....
+Cute front, attached two car garage, detached home, nice view from front yard with no homes across the street, little front yard to maintain.
-Very close to school traffic and on a street with lots of neighborhood traffic passing by (I guess Angela will not be playing unsupervised in the front yard anyway).
+ Indoor laundry.
- Needs new laundry doors.
+ Large open kitchen, gas range, travertene floors throughout the whole first floor.
- Too much white (appliances, counter and cabinets are all white), small opening for a fridge (hope ours would fit), at least one cabinet door needs to be repair or replaced.
+ Open living room to kitchen and dining room.
- Fireplace has been removed and replaced with extra storage (this might be a positive, we never used our fireplace except for a stocking holder at Christmas time).
+ Nice grass play area in the back yard with low maintenance and patio area for outdoor dining.
- Very small backyard.
+ Loft area with built in desk and storage for Andy to set up his computer working area.
- Whole upstairs needs new carpet.
+ Three large bedrooms upstairs all with walk in closets and one cute little girls room.
- Some cabinetry needs painting.
+ Nice large master bathroom with two sinks, travertine floors and large walk in closet.
- Large tub and shower are combined (much harder to clean).

The seller’s are in a similar situation as we are, that is they have offers also out on short sales and are waiting for them to respond. So we have offered to rent back the house to them for up to 60 days in case they need it. Depending on how that goes, we may be in the new house in 30 days or as long as 90 days. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers that things will work out and we can soon move to where we are meant to be.