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June 17, 2009
Small farm, big headache
So, we managed to find one other small farm in this entire county that is in our price range. But will we be able to get it?
Our friends Cheryl and Dave were driving around in the countryside a couple of miles from their own farm, and saw an "old farm house" for sale by owner. So I drove out to check it out. It looked okay, it wasn't as old as I'd wanted, but it was still a nice, vintage house in decent shape. It obviously had been well cared-for, and had some outbuildings.
It didn't give any info on the "for sale" sign except two phone numbers, so I called on it. I wanted to know if the acreage was small enough for us to afford.
The guy who answered said it had been his wife's parents' house, and that they had built it and lived in it until they died. (The wife, who I met today, appears to be in her early to mid fifties, so the house is probably not quite as old as I like.)
Anyway, the man said it had five acres (exactly our target range) and had been for sale for awhile (at a price we could never afford), and he'd recently had to drop the price down considerably (to a price we can afford)due to the economy. "Owner financing is available," he added.
So I set up an appointment for today at noon.
Brian, Derek and I went to see the farm, and we liked its location, the land, and the outbuildings. The house was well-cared for, but hideously ugly on the inside, the victim of having been extensively remodeled in the 1960's and 1980's.
However, the land and the outbuildings (and the location, actually INSIDE the county where Brian works, that's a switch) is perfect.
Unfortunately, we were not the only people to view the property today, though we were the first. We ended up telling the guy that we would gladly give him a down payment if he would consider selling the property on land contract or lease-to-own, but that a conventional mortgage would have to wait until we had closed on the house in Michigan (which has had two offers on it since March, but the mortgage company is dragging their heels about accepting one of them.) We also had to explain to the guy what a short sale was, as he had no idea. He couldn't figure out why our mortgage company had to approve an offer on the Michigan house. He told Brian he'd wait and see what the other prospective buyers could offer before letting us know if we could purchase it.
So we might get beat out on our race to get an affordable farm by one of the other prospective buyers who can actually get a mortgage right this minute.
This makes the second old farm house that meets our specifications that I have found for sale in our county since August of 2008.
Posted by Jessica at 09:09 PM | Comments (0)
June 10, 2009
We're damned if we do and damned if we don't.
This is our current situation in life: no joke. Let's look at the ways.
We still have this house in Michigan. The mortgage company is reviewing the two offers we have had since, oh, March. The mortgage company has to approve one of the offers, as it's a short sale (meaning we don't have enough cash to cover the difference between what we owe on the house and what it's currently worth.)
The guy we are dealing with in the short sale process says, "Stop paying the mortgage. Stop paying the utilities. The mortgage company will act quicker on their decision if you are behind one or two months."
So we're damned by our current mortgage company by paying the mortgage on time, as we have been the entire time we've owned the house. The current mortgage company figures we must not be in any great financial crisis, as we are continuing to make the payments. However, we are making payments on TWO houses, utilities on TWO houses, gas is going up, grocery bills, etc. I have been unable to find a job down here. (I'm not alone-my friend down here filled out 200 applications - mostly for businesses that said they aren't currently hiring, but would keep applications on file, there just aren't any businesses hiring right now - and got one call for an interview. She didn't get the job.)
How are we damned if we don't pay the mortgage? We want to buy another house (actually, a farm) so any future mortgage company is going to damn us for not paying the mortgage. We have to keep paying the mortgage.
So we continue to drain what's left of all of my money just to cover our grocery bills and the rent on our current house, while Brian continues to pay out most of his income on a house we can't live in and can't seem to get rid of.
Brian agonized over his decision to buy a truck recently. He was concerned that his Saturn would lose value when the company was sold by GM. He was also concerned that he would lose the ability to get a car loan once the short sale goes through, or that the interest rate he would be able to get would be too high.
On the one hand, we don't currently have a farm. But on the other hand, we know we are getting a farm in the future. We don't know whether we'll find the perfect farm this year, next year, or five years from now. But we are getting one. So we will need a truck eventually.
But, then again, gas prices are certain to escalate this year. Did we really want to be driving around in a truck if we don't have a farm right now?
Damned if we do, and damned if we don't. In this case, we decided to just go for the truck (a nice, used Ford F150 that still has a few years of warranty left) since it made Brian very happy. (That was the ultimate deciding factor. Plus, we'll use it to move the rest of the stuff from Howell down to Kentucky.)
I feel like we're entering a very short window of opportunity. We have already pre-qualified for a mortgage down here, but that has a short lifespan. The pre-qualification is only good if we sell the Michigan house. So if we actually close on that house in Michigan any time soon (which seems unlikely at this point) then we have to be ready to immediately pounce on a farm that presents itself before the short sale shows up on our credit report.
(So far, there has been only one old farm house that met our specifications that has showed up for sale in this county anywhere near our price range in the past year, and that one sold in a couple of months. So we have to be able to grab it fast when it appears.)
Posted by Jessica at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)