Wonderful house... not so wonderful inspection: Rant

Husband and I decided it was finally time to ditch the apartment lifestyle we've been living for the last 15 years and to buy a house. Neither of us have owned a house before. We're both in our early 30's and have been moving around the States these last 10 years while I pursue my higher education. Now we're in an area that we're planning on being in for a while. After a year here we both really like the city we're in.

There are many reasons why home ownership sounds like a better idea than apartment renting. In apartments, there are always some small upgrades we would like to do, but are unable to. Like, maybe opening a section of wall up to make a living space larger, for example. Or run wiring through walls, etc. There's also the noise issue from neighbors. We've grown to hate hearing our neighbors through the walls we share. One of our neighbors has 6 kids. They constantly are screaming/crying, stomping, banging on the walls. With this, the parents are also screaming at their kids. It's super stressful and puts me on edge. I'm a PhD student and would love to do my graduate work/research/writing at home. But as it is, I have to do this on campus, wasting both time and gas, to be able to work in a calm environment. These neighbors also throw late night-early morning parties, so we're not getting any sleep either. We'd also love more outdoor space. Some type of yard would be wonderful so we can see if we like gardening, or backyard gardening, etc. Rent is more expensive where we're at than what a mortgage payment would be. We also have a 15 year old indoor cat that we'd love to give more space to explore (a silly reason, I know, but it's what we want). There are many other reasons, but these are some of our main ones.

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We got preapproved for a loan and started working with a realtor. Even though both our credit scores came back as really high scores (+750), we were preapproved for only 250k. Luckily, there are places in our area around 200k. These places aren't the best and will need some TLC (some more than others), but we went into the process hoping we can do some work. Husband had previously worked construction for ~10 years, and together we can do a lot of the smaller handyman repairs and upgrades. After looking at many places within our price range, and that fit our minimum requirements (3+BR, 1.5+BA), we finally found a place we could see ourselves fixing up and living in. It's on a very quite street, no HOA (but all the houses/yards look well managed), and is a 4bd 2ba house on .27 acres, mostly in the backyard. We honestly love the area it's in. The house is older, 1951, and the inside cosmetic design is very dated. But it appears to be move-in ready. We've visited this house many times this last week, during different times of day to get a feel of the area, and every time we go there we get more excited. We put in our offer at the listed price (200k), and the next day it was accepted. We're in a state that requires a real estate attorney, so we got one of those. The seller lives pretty far away, and the house belonged to his deceased mother. Seems like he's just trying to sell it before he has to pay the taxes on it. He's already willing to credit us a new septic tank check at closing (nothing wrong with the current one, it's just not rated for 4 bedrooms which this house now is).

We did our inspection yesterday. Nothing wrong with the foundation. There was some mold in the basement, but nothing horrifying. One of the bathroom showers, though, has a small leak, and over time has rotted some of the wall behind the shower, so the shower needs to be replaced and the wall needs to be fixed up with new drywall. Once again, that seems like a good enough project for us to do on our own, but shower-tubs can be pretty pricey, and after closing costs we'll have a much smaller savings left remaining. The big bad that was found ended up being Vermiculite insulation found in the upstairs crawlspace. It should be assumed that this type of insulation has asbestos in it, so that is a very big concern. It'll have to be tested and removed. This can be very pricey. We gave the inspection results to our attorney. The inspector and our realtor said that we can try to have the seller credit us the costs of these major issues, but we have to have the attorneys talk it through first. We know that Vermiculite insulation is okay if sealed up and not disturbed, but we don't know if it was used all throughout the house, and we would really like to do some wall remodeling while living there.

You guys, we are so stressed and anxious today. We really want this place, but if the seller doesn't budge, then we're going to have to walk. Our plan was to try to sell this place after 5-10 years, and at that point we'd have to fix these issues ourselves. Our hope is that since seller is already fine with crediting the cost of a new septic tank, that he'll also be fine with crediting ~20k worth of work. But that seems like a giant number, so I don't really know. End rant.

Submitted August 18, 2022 at 02:03AM by definitelyNotMyCat https://ift.tt/a7TpYfU