Intro

About a year ago now my husband and I moved into a 4 bedroom three bath house in a suburb of Atlanta, GA. We rented this house for $1200.00 a month and agreed with the property manager that in a year we would visit the idea of purchasing the house. The first summer in the home we had issues with the ac not cooling. They tried every silly remedy they could from crimping the lines to the finished basement to make more air flow up to the main floor to replacing the condenser with a new in the box old unit. (means that it is so old it is not even energy star rated but they insist it is new because it had never been used before). Nothing helped much. The best we got was from 90 degrees to 80s. The house has many other issues as well that would require some major upgrades right off the bat.

About two months ago I contacted the agent and we began to negotiate pricing and terms. When we moved in we were told they wanted 105 for it but of course we did not do it all in writing then because we were so excited. When it came down to it they wanted 170 for it. That is about 70 grand over market and comps for this area. Needless to say the end result was "Ms agent. You can stick that where the sun don't shine and we are moving out asap."

Within a few days we were pre qualified to buy a house we had found at an incredible deal. It was nearly 4000 square feet and had every dream we could have with the exception of wanting to replace a few minor things. It was our dream home. We made an offer of 170k and they countered with 175 and we took it contingent on an inspection at our cost.

Yesterday we met at 7:30 am with the inspector and before he even had the chance to enter the home he noted that the stucco was not right. There were not flashings where there should be and that there was water damage on all the windows. What does this mean? It means that all the windows would have to be replaced. That would be easy to do since they were going to have to pull all the stucco off and fix it anyhow because it is leaking inside the walls because of not having flashing. "How much will that cost?" I asked foolishly knowing that no matter how much it was I could be assured it was more than we can afford right now. After he told me that it would be at least 30k and as much as 100k to do what was needed to the outside the blood ran from my head and I was certain I would vomit.

Needless to say that deal was cancelled and we are now searching. I had no idea how hard it was going to be to look for a house. We are an impatient people, us DeMars so of course we could not wait till Monday when our quite competent realtor will start his magic machine up and give us a list of potential places and start making appointments to show us. We started driving... Looking at nearly every neighborhood and subdivision in our preferred area. We have scoured the internet looking for the right house. Nothing crazy cool has popped up yet.

Last night there was some issue over our ideas of what we want. Turns out we were looking for different houses. I sit her now looking at how we can compromise and both get most of what we want. Maybe even all. Help! I thought this blog would be a good thing for the following reasons...

It allows me to vent
It keeps people who don't give a crap about my house hunt from having to read about it
It allows people who have ideas or suggestions to make them
It may bring me together with the person who knows of a house for sale that meets our needs
It may help someone else going through this personal tragedy called house hunting.
It will serve as a good weapon when I have to convince my loving husband that selling and buying another house is not a good idea.