Looking for the Right House--Inspection vs Appraisal

I got a call yesterday from the people who will be doing the house inspection. Now this is something that is totally optional for the buyers to do. We don't have to have the house inspected but it is always a good idea so you at least know what it is you are getting into, a sort of protection.

 

The house we had in Texas, the people who bought it, had it inspected and we were insulted about it and luckily, we were not there either for the inspector to go through and nitpick away on it. It was bad enough reading the list of things they wanted us to fix.

I hope these sellers will not be there for it either cause this is the painful part when you are proud of your home. The buyers for our place in Texas were awful in that they were insisting we fix and repair a whole list of nitnoid crap and it made me feel like they were wanting a brand new house or something? We had lived there for 8 years, it was going to have some scratches and dings.

 

I WILL NOT do this to the nice couple in Maine!

 

The inspector (a husband and wife team) told me that I would find out everything I ever wanted to know about the house and then some! A friend of mine had told me how cursory that house inspectors are, suggesting nearly it was more of a scam and he didn't get much at all looked at. This was surprising to me as I told him all that they were going to do. Our inspectors told us they were going to take a lot of pictures and would be happy to go over the report anytime after we get it if we had questions and they would also go there to the house and show us what they were talking about! Gotta love that! Plus, we are having them inspect the garage as well and also several other tests like radon for not only the air but also the water. A normal house general inspection is $350, but with all the extras we wanted, it is going to be $800. And yes, that is a lot but it is something that we will feel better about having, that knowledge of the house beforehand so we will know what to put on our to-do list and some things that we may not have thought of or notice at first. So I am not going to bug the sellers to fix anything. A lot depends on what it is of course, but I have no intentions to do that to them. The house isn't brand new and I don't expect it to be, I expect there to be things that I will need to be mindful of and that's fine.

 

The inspectors emailed the invoice so I can write a check and mail it up to them. Our realtor picked them out and a lot of this, is trusting your realtor. It is a must, especially when you live far away.

 

The inspector is different than the appraiser and you need to be aware of that. The inspector is someone that the buyer can hire to inspect and go over the house and conduct tests such as the radon, water quality, etc.

The appraiser is someone that is sent out by the buyer's bank who goes out and looks at the property to determine it's worth. As I mentioned in a prior post, the bank will not lend money for a property that is not worth what you are wanting to pay. That is a good safeguard for the buyer but it is the scary part.

 

So at this moment, everything is ok and good to go until we get the appraisal. I will probably receive the report from the inspection first and so that will give me a clue as to what the appraiser might find, but we'll see what happens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking for the Right House---Locking in the Rate

After you get the fully signed contract that has your bid/offer for the property and it has been signed by all realtors, sellers and buyers, this is the point that you call your bank back to let them know you now have a signed contract.

 

At this time the bank will go back over the information you had given them to be sure they have all they need and some of it they go into more depth and detail.

 

I called USAA and we went over everything and he put me on hold a few times to pull reports and all that fun stuff.

 

Now something to really make sure you know before you go to your bank for a Pre-Qualification letter should be: find out if that bank can offer loans for the type of property that you are wanting to purchase. USAA for example typically does residential but they do not offer loans for property that is zoned as agricultural. Our property is zoned as rural so it places us on the sticky side of the fence. They did move forward with the loan however but said it would come down to the appraiser in finding comparable homes nearby and also that the home would need to be the majority of the property in comparison to the land. I am not sure if that is for area or value. They have to make it work. So keeping fingers crossed there as the appraiser will have this whole deal in their hands. Granted there is a large garage on the premises too, so hopefully that can help and be a factor in it.

 

Our contact at USAA told us we would need to procure pay stubs from the last 30 days and also find out what the title company will be, their physical address, phone and fax and email as well as a point of contact name if possible.

In the meantime, an envelope coming by FEDEX will be arriving with disclosure documents we will need to sign and he would call us then once we received them as they can track that on their end.

 

Now for the rate.

I was always confused about all of this. But it seems from what I understand, is that you are buying your rate, your interest rate that is for the loan. This so seems like a....hmmm scam or I don't know what the word is, but it's kinda buggy to me.

But anyway, we were able to lock in a good rate and had the choice of either paying for an 1/8th of a point that would bring the rate to a certain number or pay more for a bit lower rate. The deal is that if you are going to have your home for a long time or plan on it, then it would behoove you to pay more now and then over the life of the loan, you would save in interest. Otherwise, if you are only going to have the home for 5-10 years, then you wouldn't worry about that so much. I plan to have this a long time and although I didn't want to pay $1,400 or so, I opted for a middle price instead.

 

Of course the VA has a fee and it can be rolled into the loan. For us it is $7,590, so yea, ouch.

And then, he talked of closing costs. Oh man, here is where it gets even more expensive to buy a home. With the sellers agreeing to pay up to $3,500 for their share of the closing costs, we still have to bring approximately $6,300.00. AND we'll need more than that to pay for the wood and oil that we agreed to pay. Now granted, USAA had the taxes due for this place to be twice as what I understand them to be, so if that is the case, we will not have to pay quite so much at closing. That $6,300 is for also setting up the escrow account and all that jazz.

 

To further explain closing costs:

http://www.zillow.com/mortgage-learning/closing-costs/

 

It sounds like I will have to have my checkbook in hand for closing.

 

So at this stage of the game, I have to contact the realtor and get the title info....

.

Just called them and they will get that information to me. They need something however from the bank to say that we have started the application process to fulfill the obligation on the signed contract saying we would get that letter to the sellers. So I just emailed my contact to request that statement.

 

The realtor also told me they were able to pick out an inspector for us and would email him to let him know he can call me when he is free to go over what all we want done on the inspection. Now you don't have to have anything inspected, but its usually a good idea to at least get the water done. I have a few other things I'd like done so I'll be going over that when he calls.

 

Land: Purchasing & What to Research About

History of Land---Paranormal & Historical
This is important on several counts to know the land that you are wanting to purchase.
First, to find out about any historical significance. Find out about the people who were once on the land, travelled across it or camped or fought upon the land. This is important for many reasons. Was the land once a creek bed? Or did a river run through it and is it now dammed and you are below the dam?
That brings to mind it would be good to find out not only of your own land but the surrounding land as well just for that reason alone, would be important to know if you are below a dam and if that dam should burst, would your home then get swept away?

Has there been earthquakes or tornados in the past that have come thru there?

Just why is the land for sale? Why are the current owners selling it? Recently looking to buy property, I asked that all important question. After talking with the owners myself, face to face, it gave me a very good feel for things. In this situation, the owners, an elderly couple are selling their property to be closer to their kids as they had sadly lost two sons and want to be closer so they can spend time with them. I could also see that it was starting to get to be too much for them. The house is too big than needed and the land is a lot to take care of.

And of course, these days with the heightened awareness to it, you should also try to find out about any paranormal activity. I tend not to ask the owners of this unless they are younger. Otherwise, we discretely used a K2 to see if there were any high EMFs in the house. Funny enough, we got nothing until out in the garage in the storage space above, as we passed by these tribal African masks, that's when the K2 went off.
Yes, it is important to know if people died on that spot. Were there any traumatic incidences that might have occurred there? Battles fought, skirmishes, prisoners of wars, rapes, torture...the list goes on!

The area I am looking at currently, I researched the history and it land that was given to the revolutionary war soldiers when they retired after the war. The land itself was given to Maine from Massachusetts. I also looked up the local Native American tribe that had inhabited the area before, the Abenaki who sadly were part of the Native Americans who died from diseases no doubt brought in from the Europeans who settled there. Those Abenaki that survived retreated to Canada or they merged with other villages and the lines blur into other tribes.

For this property we are looking at, we also did find out the current owners had buried a goat out in the sandpit, so although not paranormal unless you get rammed in the butt by something that isn't there while bending over, we at least knew that if we dug into the sandpit, to be careful of the goat that is buried out there.

Research the land's history and find out as much as you can about it. It can sound anal but it could come in handy to know as much as you can upfront before you make a purchase.

Knowledge is power.

Other items of interest:

Appraisal
Knowing how much the property is really worth is key. The bank will not lend you money for more than what it is worth. When selling, this is a good thing to know beforehand so you know what your top price could be.

Mineral/Gas rights--land rights to the State
This was the case in Texas in the community, believe it or not. The state of Texas had full rights to the mineral and gas that might be found on the land and they had permission to come onto the land and drill or dig as they wished. This always bugged me for I didn't really own that land.

Flood zones
Always good to know. Best times to see the property you are thinking of buying is early spring when the snows melt or during the rainy season so you can see just how wet the land can be.

Right of Ways
For this property, it's more of a long private road-right of way, but that will come in handy during the winter with the plowing that is included in the Road Association fee.

Community Planning
Is there anything that the town (if you have one) is planning on the neighboring land? Noise factor, ruining your views?

Land next to this land
Again, knowing what is to happen with the neighboring land or if it is privately owned is really important. This property I am looking at is bordered by a stream and private land owned all around. I'd rather state game land or forest, but as it is so much land and so remote, I should be fine.

Utilities, Electric, Water, sewage, cable, phone, gas, trash
Do you have access to all those things? Are they important to you? Do you need to take your trash elsewhere to dump or is there a pick up service? How good is the connection for your phone? Is it cable or dish? Is water from a well or spring?
Is your sewage to be septic and if so, is it sand mound or the traditional type of tank or do you have sewer?

Buildable--Got Permits? Can you build on the land? Are there any restrictions?

Taxes--Property & School
Finding out what the taxes are is very important in buying property. After the mortgage payment is done, you will still have taxes and yes, most likely they will increase as time goes by. Even with the mortgage payment, you have to include the taxes into it so you know what you are getting into for monthly payments. It can be quite expensive. In Texas we were paying $700 a month for property taxes on top of the mortgage. So it was very high.

Height Restrictions on Homes
Important to know if you are building a home on land or improving the home you are purchasing. This was the case in the community where you couldn't build anything too high. They tried to keep most of the houses pretty uniform.

Number of building restrictions
Just in case you wanted to build some outbuildings, chicken coop, barn, shed.


Who are your neighbors?
Important to know if you have a junk yard next to you for example.

Nearest child abusers or sex offenders
http://www.familywatchdog.us/
That is just one of the many sites you can check to see if you have any sex offenders in the area you are looking to purchase. Forewarned is forearmed.
And just don't look at one site for your area, I tried that one and didn't get anything and then tried this one:
http://www.criminalwatchdog.com/neighborhood-watch/ and I got a hit not too far from where I am looking to buy. It is really good to know what you are getting into, especially if you have little kids.

Making sure there is a survey done
This is if you can afford to. If you have a lot of land it could cost several hundreds if not thousands to have your land properly surveyed. It's important to know your boundaries and have it marked if possible. Smaller land mass is cheaper to have it surveyed.

Types of trees
This is important to know if they are deciduous (lose their leaves) or if you have evergreens. It will mean what can be seen through them, your place or others or if surrounded by trees that lose their leaves, all those leaves you might have to clean up.

Has land been scraped or any of it removed (for foundation/house settling)
See one of my blog posts here about that. http://weirdnwonderfulnwackytips.blogspot.com/2013/08/adding-or-taking-dirt-away.html
 When land has been cut away, before you build on it, it should be left to rest and settle. You've created air pockets and loosened up the soil so it needs time to settle it back down again,  otherwise if laying a foundation, you run the risk of the foundation cracking when the land does settle and having to redo the whole thing. It's a mess and a big concern.

Miscellaneous laws on the property and also state laws--water/lake restrictions?
There are always some type of odd ball law you may need to be aware of.
No dumping, or burning of certain things.

The more you research, the better informed you will be. I've ticked off several items that can help you in this post and I hope they do and get you to thinking before you buy your land or property!

Looking for the Right House---The Bid

Now after all of my experiences, and I know I am buzzing here on posting about this but will stop at this point once I finish as we are just at the end of this stage of it.

Ok so the bid. What do you bid? How much or little? I feel this is a bit backwards of a system and I'll explain why.

First however, what you should really do when wanting to buy a home, is to go to your bank and get what is called a "Pre-Qualification Letter". This is where your bank will pull your credit and see what amount they can approve to lend you. It takes about 30-40 mins on the phone and you will know and the document is online at your bank's site and they can also fax it to you.  This allows you to take that in hand and go shopping for your new home. It also tells the sellers that you are serious and ready.
I went to look at this property first however before the letter because I was planning on going up there to Maine at the end of April and not so fast. So I did not want to have my credit pulled too soon and for just one property and if I ended up not liking it, I will have wasted a month to where I could have paid down my debt more to raise my credit scores and then have a better interest rate in the long run for the mortgage. See? A lot of factors go into this.
But after returning from seeing this one, I didn't need to wait any longer and so called my bank and got the Pre-Qualification Letter and sent a copy to my realtor to put with my bid on the property. He whites out the numbers as its best the seller does not know what the buyer has qualified for, the maximum, else they will hold out thinking the buyer can afford more. Then he writes up a tentative contract with my bid.

So how much do you offer?

The seller puts a price they want for the property. More often than not, they ask for more than what they really want. So it is accepted and expected for you to offer a lower price. They can counter or say no and then you go from there.

Looking at this particular property I am wanting to buy, they originally had a price on it for $249,000 in the fall. They eventually lowered it to 235k which is when I looked at the listing more closely. Of course, I would offer them a lower amount. So I did at 220 and then offered for us to split closing costs.

Closing costs are what pays for the appraisal and other various fees that are involved in transferring the deed over from the sellers to the buyers. This is usually about 3% of your purchase price. So yea, ewe, it can be several thousands dollars, in this case over 6,000.

Now something to take into consideration before placing the bid, is the appraisal, This won't happen (set up by the buyer's lender/bank) until after the contract is signed between the buyer and seller having agreed upon the terms of the sale.
This is where it's backwards a bit.

The bank will send an appraiser out to look over the property to determine its true worth before they will lend me the money to purchase it. The sellers will sign a document saying that they acknowledge this is a contingency on me buying the property (as this is a VA loan and it's one of their stipulations), that it has to appraise or be valued at the price we agreed upon or higher.
If it does not, then I have a few choices. Either walk away from the property, ask the sellers to come down further with their asking price or I pay the difference out of my pocket.

This seems backwards as I would think the sellers would get an appraisal ahead of time so they would know what the highest price they could ask for their property before listing it. That way, they wouldn't lose a prospective buyer because a bank won't loan anyone more money than what they deem the property is worth, VA or otherwise. 

So I put in the bid and the sellers took a day and night to think about it and countered with 230k, split closing and then I pay for the leftover oil and cords of wood they have on the land and they pushed closing to June versus May. I agreed. So then came the contract which was signed via DocuSign online and sent off to them and they signed it. That whole process is quite easy. HOORAY!!

Afterwards, I found out what the sellers had paid for the property when they bought it, 235k and they put in 75k of their own into the place!? Oh noooo I felt bad in some ways about the lower offer I had made. But no, some of the things they had put into it was needed and would depreciate anyway over time. They don't stay new and the place is in boonieland and no town nearby, why the low taxes. Still, I felt they should have asked for more like 300k! Just to try to get back what they had put into it. Again however, depreciation on a lot of things and on top of that, they had started out higher but were not getting any real bites at least because of the remoteness of the place no doubt along with other issues like the Road Association would/might deter some people, it nearly had me. Although the place has more pluses in my mind, it could have minuses for others. It all comes down to taste and preferences.

Now, that signed contract will go to my bank in the morning who will move the loan forward with the VA. Plus the bank sends me a disclosure statement and goes over a few things with me and then sends for the appraiser.

In the meantime, my realtor is setting up an inspector to inspect the property. You don't have to do this part but it's a good idea nonetheless to not only have water tested but the structure itself and radon and a few other items. This will at least let you know what you are getting into before you buy it.

My only worry is how much the VA will appraise the property at?
This will take a couple weeks to happen if not longer.

This post brings you up to date if you'd like to follow along as I go over the steps and all that I am going thru in buying this property.

Looking for the Right House--Next Move, First Steps!

After living all over the world in a few various places, you have to ask yourself just where is home?

Sit down and think about what you want, what makes you happy.

 

For me, being from PA, the northeast, it's what I grew up with and what I also have fond memories of and what I want to surround myself with. Now I could very well live in many states and enjoy the nuances of each of them, but something keeps calling me back to PA. Although, after searching the past year or so and finding out all I have, I began to set my sights to Maine.

 

Yep, the frozen cold tundra of the Northern Woods. You might see that show on tv now, North Woods Law that showcases the game wardens up there in Maine, sort of like their version of COPS.

It has taught me a bit about Maine watching that show.

 

I began my search on Zillow.com. If you are not familiar with that site, it's very user friendly and does not take long to figure it out. You can have an account for free and save homes you like, create searches for what you are looking for and Zillow will even email you as often as you want with new listings or on the weekend it gives you a whole bunch of suggested property that fits your criteria. It's really brilliant! Has pictures and prices and all kind of information.

It is not, however, the most accurate nor up-to-date as say realtor.com or trulia.com although I suspect trulia is along the same lines as Zillow whereas realtor.com is a bit more current.

 

I wanted a good bit of land at first and even tried Land Watch but then after going to that Log and Timber show in PA, I was leary about buying land to develop. What if the land is not able to be developed? We'd be stuck with the land. Then all those trees that would be cut for a log cabin too? Yikes! Plus it would take a while. So, I began the hunt to find the right kind of property with an established house. Not too close to people, no one on top of you but not too far away from civilization.

 

I found that I could get a lot more for my money in Maine. Maine is the more repressed state in the US and many people have left it to move to other areas when some of the industries tapped out or boomed in other places. Still, many people do vacation in Maine in the summer, escaping the heat of their regular homes and having camps or cabins in the woods usually near a resort or such.

 

The property taxes are cheaper and there is a state sales tax in Maine. Still you could get a lot more property for your money there than in PA. Granted, yes, the winters are going to be harsher, colder, more snow and last longer, but the trade off from what I could see was worth it.

 

I had looked at several properties starting last fall and had narrowed it down to a few. Contacted my bank who offered a service to help you purchase a home and they sent us off to a realtor in Maine. This realtor contacted us and got on their 'portal' which is a real estate site with listings that are current and contain a lot more information than any of the other sites I mentioned above. It was great! Took me a while to get it figured out and to be able to maneuver myself through it. But once I did, it was fantastic. Then now and then, when a new listing came up, they would email it to me. Awesome!

 

I had passed up this one property that noted that they were part of an association, later it came up again and I looked more closely at it and found out it was not a Home Owner's Association as I had dealt with in Texas, but a Road Association instead. This is where the people along the private road got together and share the expenses of having it plowed and maintained. This is brilliant! Loved it and changed my whole attitude about it.

 

So the first step, was to contact the realtor to ask what questions I might have about the property and I was also able to find out they had 2 other people look at it just recently! OH NOOO!! The more I looked at this property, the more I liked it and wanted it. So I made arrangements with the realtor for a showing that very weekend (last weekend!) and flew up!

 

I got there before the realtor and waited for them to show up and once they did, we went to the door and the owners were there. I was told they would be and many times, most times, the owners were not but we were glad they would be to help answer the questions we had. They were a very nice elderly couple and showed us all around the house and we chatted for a while and they showed us how things worked and what they had done and added to the property and showed us the garage and everything. It was great! I fell more in love with it from the moment I got out of my car to have the wind whispering with the tall pine in greeting and welcome to the lovely home itself! I didn't get to look over the whole of the land down to the stream because there was still some snow back there and I didn't want to go traipsing off as it was a bit brisk out.

 

After that, we signed papers with the realtors to be assigned to them so they would become our realtors and represent us. Now you have to be careful here because if they are the seller's agent too, they could have a conflict of interest. In this case, the sellers had a different realtor than I did, so that worked out well.

 

Then, we had to take some time to think about the property and if that is what we wanted? Good question. I fell in love with the land and all the things I could do with it. But it is a big, huge, scary step! This is to be IT! The last one. The forever home. Oh boy is that a very scary step!

 

We took some time to think about it. Mull over pros and cons and sleep on it a couple nights. The more time went by, the more I wanted it however. Yes it is scary, but nothing ventured, nothing gained they say!

 

So then...the next step....was the bid! 

Looking for the Right House ---A Look at Delaware and brief glance to PA

We needed a quick place to land temporarily in Delaware as I wanted to spend some time with my uncle as well as be a bit closer to Maine than Texas was for my daughter.

So we chose the AFB here in Delaware, Dover AFB as they were renting to retirees due to the downsizing of the military and not having enough active duty to fill the homes. The rent was cheaper than what we were paying in Texas for our house payment. I was able to get a 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath and 1 car garage on the corner towards the back of the housing area. I loved the location as it had a big yard that I could fill with my cemetery during Halloween.

Before even signing the rental agreement, I made sure they were going to be ok with what I was going to do not only out on the lawn, but also inside the garage for Halloween. They were excited to see this and eagerly welcomed us! I was so happy! Even more to not have to trim or mow the lawn nor weed the garden. WOW!

Luckily, our neighbors over the course of 2 years have been nice and quiet. Last year we had the big haunt for the 2nd time and it was even more fantastic than the first year.

Housing office was very friendly and accepting as well. As we signed the lease however for another year, our 2nd, we had been told at first that if we were to buy a house and had a year lease, they would be willing to work with us. But going in to sign for the 1 year, it was a completely different story, so sad, too bad. :( That was not good.

Having a tree in the yard and noticing that it had issues of something feasting on it, I went to the housing office to talk to them about it. They indicated they had the same issue with trees in the back of their building and the lawn maintenance didn't do anything about it, just let the trees die and then just planted new ones. I found this so incredibly sad that I was determined to help my tree. So I got some soaking liquid and spray and tried to save my tree. So far, it has not died. I will do the same again for it here soon and when the leaves come out.

We got told about the trash cans again. When you could put them down at the road for trash day and by what time you had to bring them in. This was not convenient at all and we just continued to do the same as we had before as it was close enough to the time at the very least the same days.

Last  year during October when I had just finished putting up the entire cemetery fence, the housing office told me I would have to take it down due to the bad storm coming our way. I was like nooooo cause it took us so long and we had secured it quite well having learned from the high winds in Texas. They still said they were about to send out an email about taking down anything outside. But the email I got said to secure or remove and luckily the hurricane did not come near enough to us. It would have been such a pain to have to remove that fencing tho' I would have if the storm had come this way.

Then came the inspections. It started out as annual inspections, checking your fire extinguisher, the smoke alarms and radon I believe it is. That's fine. Then they wrote us a letter to say they were going to do quarterly ones instead of annual. The letters of notice for this were papers taped to the garage door which we ended up missing a lot of those.
This was a pain and very intrusive to where they said they could enter the apt with just giving us notice and whether we liked it or not basically. This really bothered me. 48 hour notice for this was a piece of paper taped to my garage?

So now, I am at the point where my 1 year lease is up again. Last year the rent price dropped if we agreed to another year lease or it would go up if we did month to month so we signed another year as we were not quite ready to move yet as we had not yet found property in PA that we wanted.  By then, we were changing our mind for PA and looking to Maine.

This year, we got a nice letter saying how much they enjoyed us here in the base housing community but to sign a new 1 year lease, our rent would be increasing by $250. That was on the letter that was attached. In the email, it was stated it was to be even higher of an increase and yet even more if we wanted a month to month or a 7-9 month. This made no sense to us.

I wrote the housing office and got no reply as to the discrepancy in prices and then called only to leave a message and they are to call me back, which did not happen yet. :(

The pest issues here as far as ants were bad the first year. Their reply was to have someone come out only when needed. My answer was to have someone come out quarterly like the service I had in Texas. But as we didn't want to go that route, we got some ant bait ourselves and applied it around the house and have not had any ants since then.

I am getting tiny little roach like kinda bugs they are the size of the head of a pin however so not sure what they are exactly.

Of course spiders too now and then.

The other issue they have here is mold. So I am very vigilant about running the fan in the bathroom for a long while after a shower.

Inside the place, they had put laminate floors and this shag kind of dark rust carpet for the stairs and upstairs. They left the old cheapo tile linoleum stuff in the dining room and stuff in the kitchen. It is not nice tho' they thought it was all so pretty in the fake hardwood floors but laminate scratches super easy just moving furniture or a box around even. It's bad. Of course the carpets having cats is never a good idea.

The other issue I have about this place is the a/c unit. Several times it has frozen up on us. It has taken maintenance a while to fix it and yet still no one has given us a booklet on how to use the complex a/c and heating control panel. So we are forever toying with that to get the temperature just right. There is only one intake in the house, in the dining room and no filter on it. No filter on any of the outputs either. There is only one filter, locked up outside that we do not have the key for that sits in front of the unit itself. We have to ask maintenance to come out and change it if we want it done else they say they change it every quarter but when we moved in, it had not been changed since March and he thought it looked just fine and so never changed it. I finally broke down and got a very nice expensive filter for them to put in there instead of the cheapo ones they always use.

We keep sneezing in this house and my cats began to have asthma attacks. We believe it is allergies here in Delaware as well as the poor a/c unit here in the apt itself. Dust is horrible.

It has been nice however to hear TAPS play each night at 10 pm and then to hear reveille play in the morning at 7 am and retreat played at 5 pm. Going back to our days in the military brings a proud smile.

Also nice to have a gate guard to know we are secure but the bad thing is that any visitors or guests you have to go and sign them in at the visitor center with their driver's license and registration with them there as well. It's a huge task just for a visiting relative. :( More of a hassle.

Nice to be near the base for appts or going to the commissary or base exchange however, they charge a surcharge that goes to the military whereas there is no sales tax in Delaware so it's cheaper in Walmarts downtown.

And although Delaware has no state sales tax, they do have personal income tax and I was told that the food here is a bit more expensive to make up for that fact of not having a sales tax. Property taxes are also cheap here I've been told.
Every state will get you one way or the other however.

I didn't want to live here due to all the tourists and yes, humidity and it's crowded and it was the woods and mountains that beckon to me.

I had come here to be able to be closer to PA and take my time to look there for land and/or a home to move to. But the problem with PA is that it is becoming one big sand mound septic system. That's ashame. Plus it's expensive and you don't get much for your money in PA. It was hard to let go of PA and look to another state as I am from Pennsylvania. But I will not do that to the land, rip it up and drop a bunch of crap sand and muck onto it. I applaud the EPA in not wanting the waste to hit the water table, but their solution is not good for the land itself, you kill the land, the trees..the soil...no. Absolutely not!

We had gone to a Log and Timber show in PA as we had wanted a log home built for us if we found the right land. This was huge and a great education if you are looking for a log home, you will learn a lot! I will probably make a blog post about that later on. But if you get a chance to go, do so if you are thinking of getting a log home. Lots of vendors there and classes and you will get a lot of information on it. Just be sure you don't sign up for anything or else you will be bugged to death via phone all the time saying you won some trip or other and just have to sit thru their presentation and blah blah blah.

Unfortunately, it scared us away from it. Not only financially but how involved and how long it would take for us to move. The longer we've been here in DE, the more antsy we became to move.
After looking in two areas in PA and finding out about the septic systems, on top of my daughter having a car accident last year, that did it.


So I began to look to Maine....

Looking for the Right Home ---A Look Back at Texas

Now, I already had gone over about the place we had in Texas where we made the mistake of buying into a community with a Home Owner's Association. You can read about that experience here:

http://weirdnwonderfulnwackytips.blogspot.com/2013/05/on-buying-new-home-community-or-not.html

Having lived all over the world with being in the Air Force, gave us a lot of insight into different types of homes.

To look back at the Texas home, it was nice and big! It was a lovely home, a bit too big for our needs but it was really grand to be able to have a house built for you and with everything inside it that YOU pick out, down to the grout color even in the tiled floors! Can't beat that!

The mistakes here were:

A)Getting wall to wall carpet. Bad mistake when you have cats.

B)Choosing to live in a community with a home owners association that got to dictate to you how many pets and what types you could have, when you could have your trash cans out and how quick you had to be to get them in. When you could have your holiday decorations out and how quick you had to be to take them down. To keep your trees trimmed like truffula trees in Dr. Seuss' story The Lorax. Just on and on it went to the list of things you had to do, not of least was the dues you paid which were expensive like over $300 semi-annually. YIKES! Making you buy passes for your guests if they wanted to go to the community pool. Or that you had to keep up this wooden fence including painting it by a certain time or you'd be fined. Had to ask permission as to working on your garden or any major changes to it. If you didn't weed, you could be fined. The list just goes on and on really.

C)Even choosing Texas to begin with as it is so hot and humid that we were miserable in the summer time.

Now all that said, I love Texas, I do. I love many people who are Texans that live there. But although I spent 8 years there, I am not a Texan. My hero died at the Alamo, and I love and adore San Antonio but yea, I am a northern girl who enjoys the cooler weather and all four seasons and does not like humidity at all.

Texas however was fun. I got my own personal home haunt going that got bigger and bigger there each year. Met a lot of great people.

We had hail, so that the roof was pitted slightly but not enough to where I had to replace it although we sure did get bothered by a lot of roofing companies trying to tell you it needed it just after one hail storm.

We had two a/c units, one for downstairs and one for upstairs. This could have been expensive.

When we went to sell the place, unfortunately the people who were to buy it, lived in our community. They had an inspector come in and try to tell us we had to replace the roof and found this itty bitty scratch and this other one and all this little nitnoid things. It was as if they wanted us to fix it all so that they could move into a perfectly new house?! DOH! It was 8 years old, it was going to have dings here or there. We didn't even have little kids nor dogs in there but yea, the cats but they were fixed and declawed although that did not stop them from having accidents on the carpet. That was the bad thing.

So looking back, I would not ever buy into a community again. Not with a home owner's association and not to where you had neighbors so close to you like that. My neighbors were very nice however, so I got lucky.

I also didn't have any problems with anything being stolen, so again, I got lucky.

It was hard to be there for that many years when you've been in the military and used to moving every 4 years. 8 years was a long time.

We quickly did move however to take our daughter up to Maine and we landed in Delaware on an Air Force Base....

Looking for the Right New Home --Mobile homes

I thought I would blog about the experiences as I have them with buying a new home.

 

A look back however at some of the homes I've bought in the past.

 

We had purchased land before in Vermont, 11.4 acres and had a double wide put on it along with a detached 2 car garage.

 

We had decided to put the double wide atop the first hill on the property, about 1000 feet up. We had gone to one of those mobile sales parks where you can look inside all of them and pick out what you like and then go and order it. These are filled with all sorts of very creative ideas and I so enjoyed looking through all the different homes.

 

We found the land in the north western part of Vermont and went about getting it developed. It was scary at one point because they had to dig fairly deep to get the water for the well. The bad thing was for our neighbor, whose water pressure had dropped significantly because our well was up higher.

 

Warning there, if you buy a piece of land and it is lower than someone else, that may very well interfere with your own water pressure.

 

Also we had made the mistake of buying this in Vermont in the winter time and with a delivery date in Feb-March. This was at the height of the mud-season as the snow began to thaw and so it was very difficult to get the double wide up there, half by half as there were deep ruts in the mud on the drive that was cut.

 

Next mistake was in getting the double wide to begin with. Although aesthetically, it was gorgeous, structurally it was a nightmare. Cracker Jack walls were so thin! It was not put together well at all. Nothing solid about it and it was not long before we had leaks and mice. The leaks through the casement of the windows was so bad, I had gotten my son's marble-works toy and devised a set up for the water that was dripping so badly to be diverted down to the floor in a couple pots. This was from the ice backing up under the shingles and creating a dam. What would happen is that the sun would melt the snow, then at night it would freeze, becoming ice. More snow, or when it melted a bit more, it hit the dam and began to seep up under the shingles and then find its way through the window frames. This happened the very first winter. The mice came in as well looking to get warm, following the plumbing pipes and gnawing holes in the cardboard Cracker Jack walls. We had just gotten a kitten but he was only wanting to swat the mice to make them squeak and not kill them.

 

The one good thing was to have heating electrical tape that kept the pipes warm from freezing. This, however did not help the next owners that bought this place after us when Vermont had its coldest and most snowiest winters of all and the pipes froze and burst. 

 

But huge mistake was to have a double wide in Vermont at all for there is no pitch to the roof. So the 2 1/2 feet of wet snow remained on the roof and I was up there with either a shovel or paying someone with a snowblower to get it off due to the weight of the snow. This was a disaster waiting to happen.

The other bad thing was the long drive. It was not paved. Mistake. It was all mud and just a bit of rock but not enough. So when it snowed, there was pretty much no way we were going to get the car up the drive. So we would have to park at the bottom, walk up to the garage and get the sleds and bring them down and take out all the perishable grocery items and load the sleds up and drag them back up to the house.
The good thing about this was the ride back down and one that my kids loved to sled down the hill from the doorstep, 1000 feet down at top speed to catch the bus. They'd leave their sleds there in the morning and in the afternoon bring them back up. Bad thing was to make sure you didn't hit the spot that was mushy from the septic or the liquid manure that the farmer would deposit on the field there that we owned. We had let him do so as he was hay-baling that field to feed his cows and it saved us from having to mow it.

 

Luckily, we were able to sell the place, albeit at a loss and got out of there.

 

Even the shower rod ripped right out of the wall and anything heavy I tried to hang just fell down as there was nothing to secure it, not even anchors worked! It was all hollow.

 

Inside, it was gorgeous. Beautiful ivy wall paper in the kitchen and handwriting of poetry wall paper in the master bath and there was also a sky light over the garden tub. I kept waiting for that to leak but it didn't. The shower stall was very skinny. We had a faux stone fireplace that was just gorgeous in the living room, but I say faux for I couldn't believe it was real although it felt that way. The fireplace itself worked, wood burning. That was about it however. Had a laundry room very small but that was it. Pretty colors but that's all it was, dressing up a cardboard box with pretty paper. 4 bedrooms, 2 baths.

 

Now granted, it was quick, cheap and easy so we could land quickly after we retired from the Air Force, but it was a huge mistake. We should have gone with a log cabin kit instead. It would have been more durable.

 

The garage was sound, it was very nice. Tons of room and they even gave us extra power which was awesome, tho' at the time I wasn't utilizing it.

 

So if you want one of these mobile homes, double wides, it's best to keep them in the south where there is not a lot snow. And be sure you get them built more solid than what we did.

 

This was a big mistake and one I will not ever repeat.