Still Waiting...

Waiting to see if we have "won" the house is kind of like we have bought a lotto ticket for the big one and just when the winning numbers start to appear on the TV screen, the power cuts out.  And no amount of banging on the set will make the numbers appear.  So, we wait.

There was another open home at the house today, so Philip, Esther and Kevin (my sister and brother-in-law) and Kevin's mum went to check out the house again.  Really, we were there to check out the competition.  We didn't hide in the bushes or anything, but it did felt a bit like a covert operation.  We were after information.  How many people are interested?  Was it over run with people looking to outbid us?  Any news on what is going to happen next? 

We did learn from innocently bending an ear towards the real estate agent talking to another couple that there is an offer on the house and the vendors were keen to work with the buyers.   Hmm, is that us?  Is there another offer out there, other than ours and the one that the vendor has already accepted?  Hard to tell at this stage.  Apparently, the agent is collecting offers by 4:00pm on Monday (tomorrow for us) so people needed to get there offers in ASAP.   Optimistically, I am hoping that means that we will know if we are the lucky winners of a mortgage by this time tomorrow.  What it could also mean is that the vendor doesn't like any of our offers and could go back to putting the house up for auction on the 27th.  Or, he could like our offer well enough to go back to the person he first agreed to and ask her to turn her offer into a cash offer in two days.  Or, someone could out bid us.  Or, or, or.  There are lots of endings to this story and we just have to be patient.  Erg.  Waiting isn't a strong suit.

The good news is that Philip and I did really like the house again when we went back.  That's a good sign when you sign up to pay for something over the next thirty years, right?  So, in the meantime we wait.  An secretly start planning what type of furniture will go perfectly in the living room...just in case...

Oooh, So Exciting!

The house hunting is gaining momentum.  Once Philip and I decided that seven miles away is doable, we put our energy in finding out what the houses in Port Chalmers are going for and what we should offer for the house we really like (I really, really love it).  It turns out that the owners of the house must have gone back to the government CV folks to show them all the work that they have done, so the CV has gone up from $200,000 to $280,000.  That is good for us because we don't want to pay too much for a house.

I called the real estate agent to learn more about buying a house at an auction.  It seems a big unknown, so the more information we can get about the process the better.  Do you get a paddle that you raise to bid?  What if you sneeze?  Is that a bid?  Do you have to bring a 20% deposit in cash?  I don't even have pockets that big.)  If the house is sold on auction, we would have to pay for the building report and the LIM report (Land Information Management report) beforehand and if you don't get the house, you lose that money.  These things are around $1,000, so we want to get it right!

The agent knew who I was right away because we have been listed on the "no commission" list as we found the house before it was listed with the agent.  She wasn't keen to tell me much, but I did find out that they may not do an auction at all due to the high interest in the house.  Now those are not the words I wanted to hear.  It is our house!  That information did help Philip and I figure our next step; go directly to the seller to see if we could get in before any one else does.  Oooh, the adrenaline.

I called the owner of the house,  a super nice American guy who has been living in Dunedin for years and years (called yonks here).  With my best poker voice, I asked him if we could chat about the house.  I asked him (very smoothly, I might add) what he is looking for in a price now that the house has been on the market.  He said that he was advised not to mention prices, but that he does have an offer of $285 with the condition of the woman's house selling by the 25th of April.  VERY good to know.  That sets the bar.  I slipped in there that we were interested in putting in an offer and work with him directly to save him the auction fees and the real estate commission.  We chatted for a little longer (with my heart in my throat) and I hung up and jumped in the shower so I could run down to the local bookstore to pick up an offer contract.  This is VERY exciting.  I am trying hard not to get too excited (kinda failing) and get too hopeful.  Keep your fingers crossed for us!!

And the verdict is....

still waiting.  Not that a whole lot of time has passed, but when there is a house on the line, it would be good to know!  How can you plan paint colors and carpets and where to finally hang our paintings if you don't know if the house is ours?

We put an offer in for a lower than the CV (that weird little "I-can't-tell-you-what-the-house-is-worth meter)...

THIS JUST IN...the agent just called and we...

didn't get it.  Well, now we know.  What we were going to say is that we put in a bid for less than the CV originally and then upped it with all our might when there was a second offer on the house.  The agent took our bid in a sealed enveloped and whisked away to a quick meeting with the other agents and the house sellers (called vendors here).  That was at 5:30 and we got the call two hours later to say that we were not successful.  There was an unexpected third offer at the last minute and I think it is the one that stole the show.  They put a three in front of their bid and ours couldn't do that.  Our bid was in the middle, however.  At least we weren't the poor country cousins with our bid, but we still didn't end up with the house.  Oh well!  We were pretty realistic about our offer and we really believe that if it were our house it would be meant to be.  If not, well, the search must go on.

So, here are the front runners at the start of the new search:

Port Chalmers:  http://www.realestate.co.nz/1525522.  Love, love LOVE this house.  It is my favorite of all time.  Warm, renovated to maintain the old charm and character, probably in our ball park as far as the price.  The drive to work is along the harbor with the hilly green peninsula in the background.  The drawback here is a seven mile commute each day.  Not a big deal in the US, but is in the sticks here.  With gas (petrol here ) at $8 something a gallon, that makes you think.  What are your thoughts?  What is a commute with kids?  A dog at home?  Would you do it?

Well, that's it, I guess.  That house sells at auction in three weeks, so any ideas you have, we are all ears.  

Back to the real estate websites.  We'll keep you posted.

House-O-Meter

For those of you who have somehow magically escaped our ranting about finding a house, here's what we've been doing for the last three months: Finding a house. We haven't found one yet. Well, we may have, but then we thought that for house #6 on day 2, #25 about two weeks later, then we lost count but found several in suburbs all over town. Since Dunedin is, by area, the largest city in the southern hemisphere, that's quite a spread. It would take us 45 minutes to drive from a house we like at one end of town, to one at the other.

In any case, Kristi has done all the long hours of online research, made private appointments, and scheduled our weekend days to catch the open home times for the ones that could suit us. We've then together gone along, looking at each house with our different eyes, different interests, but, thankfully, quite similar tastes.

In retrospect, it's perhaps surprising that it took so long (probably 70-some houses, now) for us to come up with a way of more rigorously quantifying statements like, "it's not too bad," "we could change this (and this, and this)," and "I really like that." (Statements like, "I hate it," are really easy to work with: That's final and the sucky house in question is not in the running.)

We call it our house-o-meter.

The way it works: We have 16 categories: Neighborhood, Privacy, Open-Plan, Spacious, Location, Character, View, Price, Garden, Storage, Sun, Laundry, Warmth, Light, Access, and Futurability. We made up the last one, but it has to do with our finding that you can't buy a house with character without it requiring a certain amount of work; also, it represents the freedom that a house might provide us with putting our own stamp on it. For each category, Kristi assigns the house a score from 1 to 5, I do the same, and voila, we have a score out of 10. As soon as we started house-o-metering we realized that our scales actually had to accommodate terrible scores, so they're now between zero and 10.

Some of the front-line contenders were in the 110-120 range. We found out some interesting details from the scoring, with a few houses that seemed ok scoring quite low, and finding out what's really important for us.

And so, we've now put in an offer on a house that Kristi found earlier this week. It scored 122. We're about 50-50 excited and resigned; we have no idea whether the offer will be accepted. It doesn't help that our Daylight Saving ended today and our bodies are already out of whack with the day. We will obviously keep you posted on what happens next!