Monday, March 30, 2009

We're going to homeowners!

It seems like a whirlwind... but Yes we officially received word that the bank accepted our offer on the house! Supposedly, we are going to close escrow in 30 days, we might be able to extend it to 45 days. IF we we extend it to 45 days it will allow us time to pull out the asbestos tile in the house and replace it with new padding and carpet throughout. We also want to paint before we move all our stuff in... God willing we will be able to do this before we move in. The house needs quite a few upgrades, the kitchen being one of the major areas, in addition to new windows throughout, and new closet doors. Keep this in your prayers, as we still need everything to go smoothly during the inspection of the house. Pray there are no major faults!! I posted some pictures on my facebook, but for those of you reading who are not on my facebook... here's a few pictures!






Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Sheesh

Whoever said the housing market is slowing down... Is fooling themselves. We had 4 houses we were going to look at today, all 4 are off the market now! Okay how are we supposed to buy a house if all the houses are flying off the market so quickly?

Monday, March 23, 2009

Wednesday is another day...

For house hunting! We have asked our realtor to take a look at these properties for us...I think we have now like 4-6 homes we want to take a look at. These are some ones we are interested in:


Oakwood Pl $189,000 (Desirable Wood Streets area of Riverside, has a studio guest house in the back of the property, that might be cool!)
4665 Oakwood Pl, Riverside, CA 92506


Burnside Ct $135,000 (In the same neighborhood as I grew up in)
6701 Burnside Ct, Riverside, CA 92504


Quebec Dr $134,900 (Right near Arlington High School)
2962 Quebec Dr, Riverside, CA 92504


Nelson St $185,000 (only a 1 bathroom, but it's worth a look because of the neighborhood)
3610 Nelson St, Riverside, CA 92506


Arch Way $196,000 (pretty high priced, so we will see what it actually looks like!)

Kendrick Dr $195,000 (In Canyon Crest, so that's why the price is so high)

6678 Montclair Dr

How freaky is this? This house is up for sale for $165,000.... EXACT same floor plan as the house we grew up in and it's around the corner from where we lived. The only difference between this house and the house grew up in, is our old house had a nice big addition on the back of the house the led to the backyard which had a pool. Square footage is definitely a lot less, but exact same floor plan and everything!

Thursday, March 19, 2009

More houses

We looked at 2 houses today... not 3, but we looked at this house on Mallorie Way:

It is going for $142,500.... which wow seems really low. It's really close to our church and not too far from where we work. Andrew seems sold on the house because of the price. The house needs some real TLC from top to bottom, but it doesn't even have central air installed. This is not exactly my "dream home" but Andrew is sold on the property. I would still like to keep our options open. We haven't heard anything back on the Le Conte houses yet so once again.... the search continues on still.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

More Houses

So we placed on offer on Friday to the Le Conte house, but as we assumed we are still waiting for word on whether or not they accepted our offer.

In the meantime, we are continuing the house search. We are planning at looking at 3 more homes tomorrow. They look very promising,  but we will see once we get in. Those darn pictures they post online can be veeeerrryyyy deceiving lol.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Took it easy

Today and took Hezekiah to the park for a little bit. Lots of kids were there with their bikes, dogs, and families. It was pretty crazy with kids running everywhere but I think Hezekiah really liked it and it was a nice day outside for running around. Caught a few shots of him while he went down the big boy slide 4 times on his own and ran around screaming and running up and down the hills at this park. So much fun!!!













Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Le Conte House



So this is the 2nd house we REALLY love! It really is everything we are looking for as far as space and layout and location. It is a 4 bedroom 2 bathroom, with a pool. It is located in Canyon Crest part of Riverside, and right around the corner we have some really expensive $400,000 homes. The house is going or $169,000, and it is extremely low for the area which is why the house already has a couple of offers on the table. It has a lot of cosmetic work that needs to be done, but really that is what we really wanted. Putting a little money into the house would make it instantly appreciate from the sales price purely because of the location. The pool looked like a swamp, but it just needed to be emptied and filled back up again. We are putting in an offer tomorrow for higher than the asking price. We don't expect to get this house really, but if it's meant to be then it will be. Keep it in your prayers!

Saturday, March 07, 2009

Haskell St.

We looked at about 6 houses on our 2nd house hunting trip today. We saw 2 that were pretty decent, this house is from Haskell St in Riverside 3 Bedrooms and 2 bathrooms for $189,000.  The price is definitely too high for the neighborhood, and the kitchen counter is not actually attached to the cabinets and there is no range/stove. The backyard is in decent condition, but the fence definitely needs some TLC- might be something we can see if the bank would fix for us.  Anyway, we are not going to put in an offer right now. The house has been on the market now for 60 some odd days, so we are going to wait a little bit and see if they decide to drop the price some. We are waiting to get some more listings from our Realtor, he said that in the next 2-3 weeks we should see a bunch of brand new listings.

DSC06972.jpg picture by KHolybee

The other house was in Appleton and we really like the lay out but right behind the backyard was the railroad tracks and then Dewey St. and thee was tagging on the fence and inside one of the rooms. For Security purposes alone, we are not really considering this house, the one upside is they installed brand new double paned windows and doors so you can't hear the railroad when it passes. Ehhh, that one is listed at $165,000 3 bedroom 2 bathroom. The other REALLY bad thing about the Appleton house is that they "tried" to convert the garage into another living space and they drywalled right over the garage (yuck!) so there would some demo work that would need to be done... so I don't know I don't like this property very much.

Anyway.... the other houses were either too small or weird lay outs.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

House Huuunting!

We began the search again for a house... I thought for sure we would have to wait until next March before we could buy. We had a long conversation with Andrew's Dad, the tax man, and found out we actually can REALLY benefit from the $8000 tax credit. Seems like we were so disappointed for a long time because we did not want to miss the boat.  FHA rates have not been that great the last couple of weeks, but we have promise that they will lower again very soon, but it's not like we're going to find a house tomorrow. I expect this search to take some time before we find what we are looking for. Yesterday, we looked at 2 houses:

Goodview

Westridge


They seem to look okay but the inside need a lot of work that we would not be able to afford, not to mention the layout was... wierd! Anyway, needless to say... keeping our options open still.

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Maternity Session #1

I had the pleasure of doing my very first Maternity Photo Session, it was soooooo much fun and it was mostly an experiment for me since I have never used professional lighting system and backdrop but I am SO pleased with the results of the photo shoot. For any of you pregnant women reading this, if you want me to take some maternity photos... Let me know ;) Here are some of my favorite photos:
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