Journey of a Homeowner

A true story of a First Time Home Buyer.

Finally some pictures are going to get posted.  It came to be last minute. Other wise I would of had some pictures with all the wall paper still up. These will still make a good before and after down the road. My lender Stonegate Mortgage wanted me to keep track of my renovations as well. I think she just wants to use what I did as a sales pitch for other future home owners. My Realtor thinks the same thing.

This is the west wall of the Dining Room. I decided that I did not like the wall paper. It made the dining room feel more dated. I think a nice coat of primer and paint will go a long way. I will be replacing that light with a nice ceiling fan with built in lights. Being a larger room, that will help with the air flow.
 Here is the sliding glass door against the South wall. Other than the tracks needed to be clean, its a great door. I did purchase some vertical blinds for it. As you can see it gets very bright.
This is the North wall. It looks like thought about painting it before they put up the wall paper. I think they made a poor choice. Both in that paint they were thinking about and the wall paper that they chose. Of course someone may think that about me when I choose the colors for the house.
 Just thought I would take a picture of the ceiling to give you guys and gals an idea of the height of the room. This is why I really want to get a fan in here. Push that warm air back down. Considering its snowy out side, you can understand why I want it. I do plan to paint the ceiling. Most likely a shade of white.
Finally got all the wall paper off. As you can see, its not that great. At least I don't think so. Someone may think this is absolutely beautiful. Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Luckily they all came down in single strips without tearing or even applying water to the walls to loosen up the glue. Made clean up easy.
 The floors are really nice in here. I will spend a lot of time just trying not to scratch them. I do have a large area rug that I will lay down to help. Just need to get an under mat for it so it doesn't scratch the floor if it slides.
Here is the South opening to the Sun Room and fireplace. Not much will change with it. Just a new coat of paint. The exposure is really making that room a lot brighter than it really is at the moment. It still nice to have so much natural light coming in.
This is the easy wall of the Dining room. Not a fan of the shade of burgundy they chose. It just makes the room feel so much smaller. I will go with a much lighter paint. Make the room feel bigger and more open. Dark paint makes it feel like you are hiding things.



I will try and do much better with documenting everything with photos. This way not only Stonegate but I will also have an easier time referencing what I am talking about.


UPDATE: I have not painted anything. These colors are original from when I moved in.

I had my Realtor come over. He doesn't like my fridge. He thinks its way to big for the size of the kitchen. I agree to an extent but I'm not going to leave the refrigerator to the next owners. They can have everything else.

We did go over some great ideas of what to do with the place. He wants me to keep my focus on the top floor. Dont do anything to the down stairs. No matter what I do it will always be a man cave and man caves do nothing for the resell value of a home. No walk out to boot. I agree with him. Ill just put my home theater down there.

We decided that the best idea for the kitchen is to take the dimensions and go to home depot. They will take the dimension and render my drawings of the designs that I come up with or they can do it for you. I think this will save a lot of time, plus I wont have to pay for custom cabinets. They will all be stock cabinets. And after removing one of my base cabinets. I don't it would be that hard to put new ones up myself. Few screws and your done. Oh and a nice level. That way things are square. All the appliances will be stainless to match the fridge.

We moved on to the living/dining room. Going to go with lighter paints. While the sun room connected to the dining room can go a couple shades darker since it has so much natural light. The trim will stay white. Going to replace the lighting in the dining room with a nice ceiling fan that has built in lighting. Since the room is so big and has vaulted ceilings, this will help with ventilation.

Then comes the bathrooms. The two bathrooms are connected by a bathtub. Its also know as a hollywood bath. Not sure who came up with that name. The guest part of the bathroom will be painted. A new faucet and vanity will be installed. Toilet will stay. Just clean it up and put a new seat on it. The master part of the bath will need a new mirror. New faucet and vanity also needed. Huge mirror to go across the vanity. Both will need tile and trim. Now the center part (the actual bath). This room is going to be converted to a giant shower room with two heads and seating area. I think this will be huge selling point. My Realtor thought the same thing. And this was my idea. I felt great about that.

Still trying to get some photos together. Just so you know I am talking about a real home and not a fictional one.

I cant sleep. Today is the day I go see the Lender and the Title company. I must admit, I did not sleep well last night. I will be taking on an enormous amount of debt. Luckily my Realtor will also be there. He was been awesome through this entire process. He has helped me in so many ways. Always there to guide me and make the right decision.

I really don't know what to expect. All I know is that I will be signing A LOT of papers. Each of them protecting the Lender. I think about two are in my favor. Of course I know loop holes are built into them so the lender can still screw me. Of course, that's only if I default and go into foreclosure. Which I don't plan on doing. Knock on wood nothing happens. I see this as being a very sound investment. Im buying about 30k under the appraised value and if the market turns for the better I will see that number go up even more.

I plan to be in the house a minimum of two years. I will only sell for 40k profit after all selling expenses. After that the process will start all over again but with a bigger cushion to rehab the house with. Possibly even flip the home if the price is right.

The other option is to rent the home. That's something I have a lot to learn about. Probably wont even focus on it much for at least a year.

Back to what's at hand. Closing. I still need to go to the bank and get a cashiers check (yes, I don't have a checkbook. what's the point? That's what a debit card is for.). After that I will be making the trip this afternoon.

Heart is racing. What a day.

My Realtor has been really awesome to me. The biggest thing that he has done for me, was finally getting me to view the home as an investment. I was way to personal when I was first going into these homes. He showed me how to look at the house from a different perspective. Once I had the mindset of a business and not of my dream home. I was finally able to decide.

Another thing that he taught me was the "spread". This is just what it sounds like. Just like placing bets in a game. You look at the spread. Take the price of the foreclosure minus the appraised value minus and home improvements. What is left is the spread. This is what you have the potential to make when you go to sell the house.

My goal was to have at least a 20k spread. I can up with that number because I want to sell any house I buy in two years. I want to make about 10k a year sitting in the house. This is actually hard to do. But in a foreclosed house, you can have instant equity because you are buying it way under value. Some people also call this flipping. I dont consider it flipping because flipping is usually done much quicker. Sometimes within a couple months.

But sitting in the house for two years also has one very unique benefit. Any profit that I make off the house is Tax Free. Thats one thing I government has done right. If I sell before the 24 month mark. I owe taxes on all off the profit. That could get into the thousands really quick.

This is why flipping is such a fast paced job. They want to get there money back as soon as possible. The longer they are in the house. The less money they will make. Because there cashflow is tied up in a property.

I thought it might be a good idea to give some back story.

I have been house hunting for the past 4 months. My price range has always been 60-90k USD. I was approved for 185k. I chose the lower amount so I would not be house poor (own a house but all your money goes toward it, no money for anything else). As you know, this isn't going to buy you much. This alone made finding a house a real challenge. Almost every home home that I looked at was either to small or in a really bad area. So this is what pushed me to look at foreclosures and HUD properties. All move in ready properties were out of my budget. I also wanted instant equity in the house. So going with a bank owned property seemed like the only smart thing to do.

I was not having much luck with the houses that my Realtor was finding. I took it on my own to do my own research. Turns out my realtor was missing a lot of properties. I would venture to say the houses he was showing me were not in my best of interest. They were more in his. This lead me to find a new realtor.

After doing some asking around, a very good friend of mines father recommended me one. He was in the mortgage industry for 20 years, so I trusted him. This was by far one of the best decisions I made. Having someone that I could consult and trust made me feel a lot better.

Now the first Realtor sent me about 6 houses to check out. I chose 2 of those to go look at. Now comes the new realtor. I had over 30 houses to sort through. I was blown away. We still had not discussed in detail what I was looking for so I was able to narrow the search pretty fast. We were setup to look at 10 houses that weekend. I was actually excited. Most of these houses were foreclosures and HUD properties. My requirements were simple (1200+SQF. 2BR, 2BTH, 1 Car Garage).

After our first outing. I realized that any foreclosure that I choose will need some moderate work to be done. I find it amazing how people will just trash there house. I don't know if they lived like this or if they trashed it once they knew they were going to loose their home to the bank. Either way its sad. Ive walked up to some amazing homes, only to go inside and see that everything was ripped a part. You can tell when something is blatant and not age or an accident.