Bob: When I was getting ready to move to Indiana in the spring/summer of 2005, I contacted my sister Patricia. We jointly owned a piece of undeveloped land in San Diego County, inherited from our mother in 1996. I inquired as to whether she was interested in our selling it, and at that time, she said no, she was sufficiently funded at that moment. Being that it was 2005, we both expected the property to appreciate further than it had so far.
Late that year, after my move here to Lebanon, she contacted me with the same question. It seems she, and her husband Larry, were seriously considering leaving the Seattle area, probably for the Midwest, probably Indiana. They would need bucks to do such a move, and it seemed to both of us that the time was right to earnestly promote the sale of the parcel. Oh, goody! This sale would provide the money for Nan and I to purchase a home!
So my sister and I listed our property in June 2006, and it didn’t sell, didn’t sell,
didn’t sell. After a six-month contract with one realtor, and a three-month extension,
we changed horses, and listed with a different realtor, figuring that maybe another angle
would help. Besides, our original agent wasn’t “into” undeveloped land. Apparently this
change made the difference, and, after some looky-loos and a few comic offers, a buyer
became seriously interested. This led to an offer/counteroffer/etc series in June and
July of 2007, and we succeeded in closing the sale on July 31, 2007. It was indeed
fortunate that we did, because as many of you might recall, it was about August 14, 2007,
when the wheels started coming off the economy (but by then, we already had the check!)
Bob: So Nan and I started seriously looking for a home we could purchase. Not for a home
to finance, but one to buy outright. We haunted the on-line MLS listings, bringing up every
cheap house we could find within about 80 miles of Lebanon. We spent a nice day in Brazil,
Indiana, looking at everything a local realtor could find that was inexpensive. Nan mapped
out days of house-looking in all the burgs surrounding us. We looked in Brick Church, New Ross,
Lindon, Coatesville, Frankfort, Darlington, Crawfordsville and many others. NOT in Indianapolis,
thank you, as we had no interest in living in THAT zoo! We engaged a local realtor (Davon Lee)
to help coordinate and access many of these houses in our search for what was to become our most
cherished Castle USWE.
Bob: Early on in the process of finding an appropriate place to live, we saw this house as a good possibility. It was here in Lebanon, a town we both love, and was priced close to right (affordable), and was not in too bad a shape to knock together. Compared to some of the places we saw, it was practically “move-in ready”! Some of the others we looked at were downright nasty, like a house in Brazil with no inside plumbing (it DID have running water though, right through the roof into dozens of tubs and pans!) One house in Frankfort seemed big enough for the price, but every board, wall, ceiling, and trim piece in that house had been battered and butchered to death. Several houses we saw had sufficient square footage, but were divided into too many small rooms, especially on second floors with knee walls. Several others might also have sufficed, but each lacked a second story bathroom or a garage (each a requirement).
And so it was that on October 1, 2007, we made our first offer on this house. With the original listing price having been $59,900, and then reduced to $49,900, we decided to low-ball the sellers about another 20% by putting in an offer at $41,900. This is when the fun began. First they came back with a no-reduction counteroffer (they offered to pay the close). We countered with our same price, they pay close, AND accept our inspection. They countered with $47,900, we pay close, and they accept our inspection. We countered AGAIN with $41,900, and our same stipulations. About this point, the sellers' agent died! Just up and had a heart attack, I think. The seller was Key bank of Colorado, and they were running this sale long-distance (and not doing that good of a job at it, in my estimation).
Well, the sellers were motivated, and we stuck to our numbers, and they caved. We really think that someone there was desperate to get this thing off the books by the end of the year, because in late November, they accepted our offer. Just flat-out accepted! Of course, there was still that inspection to get through. And to be able to inspect a house, you HAVE to be able to turn on the utilities, and this is where we really had out-maneuvered them. With the stipulated inspection requirement, they had to call in an electrician and some plumbers to correct the problems that kept the power and water from being turned on. Those were the infamous plumbers that knocked holes in our living room ceiling and dining room walls. This was the electrician that we later had come out and do some modifications for us, including turning on dead circuits and adding some new ones. Having the inspection stipulated as a condition to the sale probably saved us about $5,000 in additional costs. And, after those repairs, we inspected, signed and paid. And now we OWN!
Nan: In the summer of 2006 we walked all over Lebanon just because we wanted to, and because we could. In the process of those walks, we walked past nearly every “for sale house” in Lebanon. We actually walked past this house two or three times. Each time we remarked about the size of the house compared to Little House (our rental). But we didn’t care for several things. This was without actually going inside the house. We especially didn’t like the "not much yard" aspect. And I especially didn’t care for the concreted back yard – the patio – as it turned out. I now love that patio!
When we finally began to look for a house in earnest, we looked in all the towns that Bob cited, and quite a few others also. There were three houses that stood out to me. One was here in Lebanon, on E Superior Street, a huge Victorian with two apartments that we wanted to turn into a one-family house again. It was last mortgaged for $110,000, and was up for auction at a sheriff’s sale. We made sure we were there, but never even got to bid on it. It went up too fast, and for too much. It went for about $5,000 more than we’d decided we could afford, and still have money left to refurbish. So, on to another house.
Next we went to see a house in Brazil. It was a Victorian that needed a ton of work. The asking price was $27,000 and the day we were there looking, the agent told me the owner had told her the night before, "Get me an offer!" We did not offer. It needed way too much work, even at that low-balled price. I sure did love the idea of that gentle-lady of a house, though. It did have wonderful hardwood floors and double French doors inside to the dining room. The kitchen had been "updated", also...yeah, to about 1935!
We also looked at another dozen or so houses that day, in Brazil. One of them, and again, I quote, "Asking price: $35,000. 3 bedrooms, 0 baths, 0 half baths, 0 garage". It did have a basement. Now, we figured the number of baths being listed as 0 had to be a misprint. Wrong! Like Bob said, the only running water in that place came from off the roof, but then, only in a rainstorm.
There were a number of other turkeys there that day, including the last one we looked at that gave us fleas! Yep, fleas. We just happened to have a can of Off in the truck and we offed them with that! Yikes. We couldn’t get away from Brazil fast enough!
The next one I fell in love with was in Linden. The listing price was $46,500 and had been reduced to $35,000. It had 12 rooms in it. Boy oh boy oh boy! It was, according to the MLS reading, built in 1900, but that was code for "we don’t know when it was built". It was built in the mid- to late-1890s probably. At one time it had been a hotel, but was now a single-family dwelling. It had so much potential, but it scared the bejeebers out of Bob! He’d never considered something that huge, and so far away from Lebanon. The furnace was an older steam heat system that he figured would go out the first winter after we bought it. The house had a beautiful curved front staircase with gorgeous carving and the original finish! It also had a back staircase off the dining room. That staircase led to a landing which opened to the main part of the upstairs. The landing had a doorway that opened to a back hallway, which in turn opened onto 4 very small rooms across the back that were at one point servant’s quarters for the maids! What a lifestyle, huh?
Next on my wish list was a humongous house in Coatesville. It was listed at $49,900 (reduced from $59,900), at the very top of our "wanna pay" limit. They probably would have negotiated, and maybe we’d have had some left over for "fixing up". It was being sold in an as-is condition, and after we got there we found out what as-is was! It needed at the very least, a major part of the roof replaced, including the deck of the roof. A tree had fallen through, and the carpet in one bedroom was ruined. The house had three full baths, two full kitchens, 2,900 square feet and included three bedrooms upstairs on the main floor, and one gigantic bedroom on the lower level. It actually was in quite good shape inside, except for needing a good cleaning. The outside looked like a two-unit cheap motel. But, it was also about 80 miles from Lebanon, and the logistics to have worked on that house and still lived in Little House until move-in would have been a nightmare. Bob vetoed it mostly for that reason, but also because of the expense of a roof and other changes we’d have wanted to do. Ah, I still dream of that wonderful lower-level sewing room. But in the end, the sewing room here, other than size, is indubitably much better, especially since this one is mine, and Bob built it to my specs just for me.
I could list at least 40 other houses we toured! And that doesn’t count the hundreds on line that I
toured electronically. After all is said and done, the house we originally scorned when we walked by it
turned out to be the home of our dreams. We could have saved ourselves a ton of walking/looking/driving
and a hundred gallons of gas, if we’d only listened to the greater power that sent us by this house a
year before we even knew we’d have the funds to buy our Castle USWE!
Bob: I am sure some of you have had to do extensive repairs to your houses, too. Sometimes, projects
can last longer than you thought, for sure. For us, in the beginning, it looked like a couple of month’s
work ("We’ll be in here in April (2008) for sure!" we said), and then April stretched to May, to August,
to September. We gave our notice to our landlord for our rental in October, then begged
him for one more month in November when we still couldn’t quite get out. We even extended that by two days
in December, when there was still just that little bit of work not complete. It was frustrating, but on
December 2, 2008, we packed up the last of our belongings and bade a fond, final farewell to landlords
and rent!
Bob: And so, they lived happily ever after...well, not quite. We were finally living in only one house, but there were still a thousand things to do, and lots of work on the new house had to be postponed until 2009. It was winter, and cold out, and we were tired, dog tired from the final frantic push to get everything moved over. The house was stuffed to the gills with all our stuff, and nothing was organized yet.
We spent the next several months, moving things around and arranging stuff. In February, 2009, I finished the sewing room upstairs, and helped Nan arrange the things in there, but, otherwise, we took the winter off.
One of the things we did when we stopped paying rent, though, was to get DISH network TV programming. It’s
sort of a gift to USWE for no rent. Thus, we’ve spent the winter catching up on a lot that you-all have
probably taken for granted for years. I mean, the last time I had cable, I cancelled it when they raised
the rate to $8.99 a month (you can guess how long ago that was!). So there was plenty of material to catch
up on this winter. We positively spoiled ourselves in Twilight Zone and Outer Limits marathons, with
numerous episodes of MythBusters and Dirty Jobs, and, of course, scads of home-improvement shows on HGTV
and DIY (Decorating Cents, Myles of Style, Design on a Dime, My Big Amazing Home Makeover, and many more).
We delved into documentaries on Discovery, Science and National Geographic channels (How It’s Made, Modern
Marvels, Build It Bigger, Colossal Construction, The Universe and countless others). USWE indulged, baby!
Bob: Well, here in the spring of 2010, we are happy, MARRIED, and enjoying life with no rent and no mortgage! Our castle pleases us greatly in its less-than-complete but easily comfortable way.
Nothing is ever complete, and I suppose that this will always be true with our castle. We see so
many more things that could be done, and undoubtedly will be done in the next few years, but our structure
is solid, and our aesthetics pleasing. We are taking it day by day, and enjoying every one of them!