Garbage and Houses...

Yesterday I didn't do much. I was kind of bummed about it, because I had every intention of being a useful member of society, but I slept poorly the night before and spent most of the day falling asleep repeatedly on the couch. I've been stressed that I haven't relaxed from the last school year, so I don't sleep well. Ironic, huh? But I did do one useful thing yesterday. I was taking out the garbage and found that one of my neighbors had moved out, leaving some really nice stuff in and beside the dumpster.

This tabley-drawer thing was one of those pieces of furniture. In Cleveland we used to do what we called "tree-lawn shopping", which involved us going out on big garbage day and taking home the best of the really crappy furniture that was on the tree-lawn awaiting pickup. So I was no stranger to this pass-time. (So many hyphens! Need more perentheses!)

I looked at this tabley-drawer thing, expecting from my former forays into reclaimation that it would be made of cheap particle board with a thin vinyl veneer pasted on it, or if the tossers were high class that it would be a laminate wood. I was, however, surprised to find it was in fact hardwood. At least most of it is. I don't know for sure, but I think that makes it pretty nice. I mean I think you'd pay tens if not a ten of tens of dollars for this piece of furniture. I didn't really have any use for it, but I decided at the very least I should bring it inside and take it to the DI later.

The thing about hardwood and iron is that it is heavy, which meant that I wasn't really strong enough to cary it up to the door and down the stairs safely by myself, especially not in flip-flops. I figured this out when I stumbled as my flip-flops, dragging on the ground caught the toe and rolled as I started down the stairs. For a moment I was sure I was going to end in a broken pile ontop of a broken pile of what used to me furniture at the bottom of the stairs, but by bravely using my elbow as a brake on the textured plaster wall and heroicly wrenching my back to maintain balance, I halted my downward motion. Eventually, I got it in the apartment, and now it sits classing up the place, but still without any other real purpose.

So that was yesterday.

Today I went an looked at houses with Rich. We found one that I really, really liked, but that will be beyond me. There's little chance I could make it work. It is in a fantastic neighborhood, near Laird where Dad grew up, in a house that is now worth about a million and a half dollars. He checked because he recently saw it was for sale. It is right on the edge of the gully there, and is almost like a partially earth sheltered house. It's surrounded by woods and has these huge cool sky lights and an enourmous fire place.

The problem is that the roof is basically falling in, and would not only have to be resurfaced but probably restructured. There's dry rot throughout the exterior, and all of the parquet wood flooring is buckling and coming up. All of that said, it is priced at the top of my means, so if I bought it I probably wouldn't have money to fix it up enough to be liveable. But what a perfect house for me. I would love to be able to do it. I'd really, really love to be able to.

After that we looked at a couple of places I wasn't interested in, and that aren't very interesting, and as we were looking for one of them we saw a place that sold pupusas. I told Rich how good they were and he decided he wanted some lunch so we came back around the block to it. I think the place was just opening. The guy who was serving us was still fixing up the windows, and made some executive decisions about what should be on the menu while we were sitting there. I ordered two pupusas, and Rich got two pupusas and a tamale, and I was surprised at how big they were when they came. They were fantastic tasting too, as good as I've had.

When we went to pay the guy was embarassed when I gave him my card, and told me he couldn't run a card for less than five bucks. My total was only three eighty-something. It was an amazing deal, and Rich had to pay for me because I only had a dollar in cash. I'm definitely going back there. It's on the corner of 5th East and 27th South if you want to go.

After that we looked at a place around 33rd south. I liked it. It was small, but the guy who owned it was an artist, and he'd really done some great things with the place. The price was a little high for me, but besides being small I really liked it.

We went out to north Taylorsville after that and Rich showed me a split level that I think he wanted me to buy, because it was a good deal, but it was big, and in a crappy neighborhood, and I wasn't into it. It probably will be a good deal for someone, but the sureno graffitti at the entrance of the subdivision and the half wall out front that was new painted (presumably because of graffiti) pretty much sealed my decision.

Following that we went to a place further south in Taylorsville that was in a really nice neighborhood, and looked really good. It hit the market two days before and already had several offers on it, none of which had been accepted by the bank, and the sellers realtor was refusing to let it be shown anymore, which Rich thought was actually against the law. We couldn't go in it, but he thought we should submit a high offer and see if I outbid the other buyers. That scared me. He asked me how high I would be willing to go, and when I told him how far I could go he agreed that from what we'd seen I probably wouldn't be able to outbid the other people.

We were talking about the competition in this price range and he was really surprised. He just sold his daughter's house in St. George, and is helping her find a new one up here, and he said that things in my range are going really really fast, and they taper off up to around three hundred and fifty or three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars, where houses seem to be languishing on the market for months until their sellers are forced to mark them down into the active range.

I think that all the people who can just pay a little over a hundred thousand, like me, watch the news and said to themselves, "Maybe now I can actually buy," and they all hit the market at once. Whatever it is, our experience seems to be that if you don't get an offer in in the first day or two that it is listed, and if it isn't accepted, that you don't really have a chance unless the money falls through for the person who did.

We had one more house to look at back near downtown on the east side, but we were both tired of it, and didn't have a lot of hope, but Rich said we were going back to my place and me might as well drive by.

For the price, and the neighborhood, I was expecting it to be old and in really bad shape. Besides, it was a short sale, which is good for the seller, and less bad for the bank than forclosure, but I don't think lives up to its marketing for the buyer. The price at which the selling agent lists it is pretty arbitrary. It can mean that even if the buyer offers more than the asking price, it is still subject to the bank's approval. They often end up spending up to six months maundering on whether it is better to sell at that price or forclose. It's not a quick process where you are paying pennies on the dollar like the market seems to want to portray it.

Anyway, for all of this, when we found the place I was blown away. It was in great condition, and priced even below the house on Roosevelt that I'd thought would be a great deal. What was better was that this was the first day it had been listed. We called the selling agent and she said that the sellers were expecting someone else to come look at it so to just go and knock. We did and got in to see it. The design is nothing to write home about, but it was well kept, and it was in the right neighborhood, and the asking price was amazing as far as quality to dollars as far as what we'd seen so far.

We were both pretty excited as we drove back to my place and we decided to make an offer on the spot. It took a while to make up the papers, but I submitted it tonight. I offered the asking price minus closing costs. By 5:00 PM tomorrow we'll know if the seller has accepted the offer. If they do, it will be off to the bank. When we talked to the selling agent as we were prepping to send it off she said she'd already got another offer on it, but it was a lowball offer. Rich said it was probably an investor. This area in the city and the price range has a lot of speculators buying up these houses and hoping to make cosmetic improvements and sell them for a profit as soon as "the downturn" ends. Anyway, I'm sure there are going to be several more offers in the next couple days, and if the other houses we've seen are any guide, I'll probably get outbid. But my fingers are crossed anyway.