Bid on a house today.

[longhuntr74]

Best of luck to you...I hope things work well. Your price gap is considerable (your original offer was 80% of their asking price), so I'd say that if you're truly serious in wanting it, you probably want to cross the 90% line...especially if you're asking them to invest money in the roof repairs. I'm no expert though...aside from having purchased a home myself and my parents selling real estate for 20 years...not that I was ever involved in the deals though. I'm just applying my own logic here.

Home ownership is definitely a mixed bag. My wife and I own a house...purchased it in 1998. During that time we've lived in it for about 6.5 years...well my wife and kids have...I was in Afghanistan for about 2.5 years of that. We had it rented to a tenant for about 4 years while we were stationed elsewhere...and now have a new tenant since we moved this past December. I have to say that I somewhat regret owning it...but if I were able to live in it all the time I wouldn't. It's nice to have your own home and be able to do as you please...it's at times a burden to do the upkeep, renovations, etc...or when something big breaks, it's a seriously emotional event...especially if you don't have the savings account to fix it. Oh...and then you have things like we had during our most recent year of occupancy...sewer installation where we got slammed for the max assessment because we have the most road frontage on the street...and then also had our water main bust in the front yard during the same year...it was an expensive year.

[Mike_Oettle]

Auld Argonian wrote: “My first advice: kill the lawn and plant a dry garden.”

Whether you need to kill the lawn will depend on where you are.
There are many dry parts of South Africa (as there are also dry parts of the US) where using the amount of water required to grow a lawn for that purpose is a criminal waste.
In my case (and living at the coast), I found that using indigenous grasses worked because they require less water (once established) than the commonly used variety (which happens to be an alien invader from Kenya).
I also deliberately did not plant flowers, bushes and shrubs that needed constant watering. Here again, planting indigenous meant having hardy vegetation that survived the dry spells.
My wife happens to be fond of water-thirsty plants like English honeysuckles and roses. She holds a grudge against me that ours died. But it was the climate that was unsuited to them. I told her that in the first place.
Regards,
Mike

[Pleater]

Back in 1981 my husband was one of just 3 employees who was asked to move here when the firm he worked for decided to close one of its two operations.

I set off on my motorbike to look for houses - saw some really awful ones, and then I spotted some estate agents I had not visited and as all the parking in front of their shops was full I pulled in around the corner, and there was this house for sale.

It was down at the end of the street - but it caught my attention at once. It is a Victorian red brick villa - a high tiled roof, conservatory at the back on the south side, three bedrooms, and from one you can just see Poole harbour and the Purbeck hills.

I saw it was for sale and thought I could never afford it.

Next time I visited the agent who had been working hardest for me said 'we just got instructions on a property I think will suit you' and brought me here.

The same day we had an offer to buy our house.

We have had some windows replaced, the wall cavity insulated (it has double brick walls with a space between) and had the edge of the roof enclosed in plastic. We needed the roof repaired a couple of times - you don't get a view without being high up, and this is the top of the ridge, but we are just far enough back from the exposed side not to suffer much damage, even in hurricanes, and we are insured anyway. We insulated the roof and put down a floor, made the conservatory more substantial, replaced the central heating boiler once, but have not had much expense really, in thirty years. We will get around to doing the new kitchen and flooring sometime, I expect. From time to time I make up a cabinet from the stack of flat packs and shuffle things around to fit it in.

OK - the drain from the sinks blocked up and flooded the conservatory the other day, so I had to poke the cleaner down it until it cleared - messy but not really a problem.

It is a happy house and for the 24,500 pounds we paid for it I don't think we could have done better.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[ohiopiper]

The house was a foreclosure from GMAC, one of several banks now stopping all sales of foreclosed properties due to some rather extensive improprieties during the ofreclosure process.

Now we start looking at houses. Again.

[Maclachlan]

I know exactly what you're going through and you have our prayers that this all works out for the best! He has a plan!

[kc8ufv]

If you don't mind changing areas of the state, there's lots for sale in my area...

[Drac]

We have a guy around here that I affectionately refer to as "The Rock Man" who lives on a block full of verdant, perfect lawns with poodle-bush evergreens and he has a yard covered with stones and driftwood. He is my hero.

We have a neighbor by us that has that with white stones. The heat of the sun on the rocks kills all the weeds so even less work.

Jim