Hail yeah!

Eric's been out of town all week for work in Seattle. The week was pretty uneventful until yesterday. Austin had the biggest hail storm that this city has seen in 15 years and I was in the middle of it! After American Idol, I decided to run to get a burger and fries at Jack-in-a-Box, about 2 miles away. The entire way there, it was really eerie and like a strobe light, a constant flicker of lightning lit up the sky. After getting out of my truck I noticed a weird humming sound and thought that I better check the news for a possible tornado. The weather service was issuing a severe thunderstorm warning with reports of golf ball sized hail and tornadoes. I immediately thought of my truck and protecting it from hail damage, which can be pretty nasty. Our garage is barely a one car garage and with the built in work station, the parking is even more limited. So I began stacking....box on top of box, on top of bike, on top of weed whacker, on top of lawn mower, on top of skies, on top of golf clubs, on top of laundry baskets until I inched my truck inside the garage so that I could close the garage door. It took about 5-10 minutes of maneuvering. The moment I shut the garage door, all hell broke loose. It literally sounded like someone was throwing quarters at the garage door and bricks on the roof. It was really, really crazy! It lasted about 15 minutes. When it was all over, I had a frozen piece of hail in the freezer to show Eric when he returns and a cold cheeseburger and fries on the table to eat.

The other meaning to the title of the blog is that the inspection went extremely well. The inspector said that this house was like night-and-day compared to the other one that he inspected for us. He was super impressed. I just hope that the hail didn't cause any problems with the roof. It's metal so it should be fine. So it looks like we're on to financing. We actually may come out with a house this time!

This picture if from the local news website, sent in by a viewer...

Flowering cactus

So amidst all of this house hunting stuff, I couldn't pass the opportunity to shoot a photograph of this beautiful flowering prickly pear cactus. 90% of the year, this cactus is just that, a cactus. But during spring, it blooms into these beautiful yellow flowers and during fall, the chunky stem (directly below the bloom) turns bright red and people can it into jelly. It's called prickly pear jelly. I now understand how it got it's name. I had to tromp through knee high jagged weeds (possibly littered with fire ants and rattle snakes to get this shot.) And wouldn't you know that the prettiest bloom was in the hardest location to shoot. After 5 minutes of shooting, I returned with this great shot and about 100 tiny thorns penetrating my skin from my elbows up. It was worth it. After all, my blog is titled ELCphotography, not ELCrealestate.

The line-up

I thought that y'all would be interested in seeing all of the homes that we've put in offers for. As you can see, our initial goal of buying a fixer-upper investment property has slowly deteriorated.

Number one: Ugliest house on beautiful street in impeccable neighborhood. We low balled and lost. Scary looking, huh?




Number two: Largest one out of the four. Quite livable. Same great neighborhood as above. We got beat out by a higher bidder who later backed out due to numerous repairs. We chose not to resubmit another offer.




Number three: Great potential to increase square footage and curb appeal. Super cute interior. Big price reduction. Same great neighborhood as 1 and 2. Offer accepted but inspection revealed 25K in repairs. Seller unwilling to negotiate. We walked.



Number four (and hopefully the last): the quintessential Austin craftsman bungalow with almost 1/4 acre lot, amazing landscaping, 1.5 car garage. In a "more desirable" neighborhood than 1-3 although I may disagree. Pending inspection. If this falls though, we may go for the teal one in the prior post.

A Turn of Events

Since loosing our 2nd house (actually 4 if you count the two that we low-balled) I couldn't stop myself from continuing to look for houses. I really think that I have a slight compulsion with house hunting. Real estate may actually be my calling...but that's another blog. After being clinically depressed for two days after loosing the blue craftsman to a higher offer, another house came on the market that was also very cute. We scheduled an appointment with our Realtor for Saturday at 3:30 to view this teal craftsman. Here's a picture of it...

But...a few hours before we met, our Realtor called to let us know that the blue craftsman (pic in prior blog) was back on the market. The previous buyer backed out because after spending more time in the house they felt that it would be too small for their family of 3 kids! So, we looked at the teal one and the blue one again and decided to put in another offer on the blue one. They accepted and now we need an inspection. But we don't want to get too excited because we've been here this far with another house and it fell through due to some hefty repairs that needed done. This one looks in great shape but it's so hard to tell what will be revealed with these older homes. After all, it was built in 1936 and is 72 years old. Here's a picture of it...

Austin or bust!

I have decided that I will be a life long tenant and I have concluded that I hate, hate house shopping. Our offer was 7K below asking price and someone offered above the asking price. Above asking?? In this market?? I hate them. I cried for 2 hours last night. This was the one. This was it. It had everything. It was perfect. But our offer was already at the top of our price range and although my heart said to go higher, my brain told me to let it go. That was so hard. I still haven't let it go. In fact, I'm still crying. We put in a back-up offer for another 5K in case their offer falls through but those chances are slim. It's a tough game out there and I need a time out.

Maybe we'll rent in the neighborhood that we'd like to live in and save for another year so that we can have more options. If I have to live in Round Rock for another year I just might.... No, there is no living in Round Rock for another year...we will either buy in the city or we will rent in the city. That way, it will be much easier to look for houses. The only downfall is that we might not be blessed with a landlord that will allow us to do the month to month thing while we house shop...and that's a big risk...I certainly don't want to be pressured into buying something because my lease is running out. And then there's Bentley. It's not the easiest thing to find a descent house to rent that will allow a 100 pound dog. We had to tell our current landlord that he's 60 lbs to get this place and since then, he's put on another 5 or 10. We've been looking for 3 months now and I am becoming obsessed with checking the MLS. I have to have a break...but what if during the break a perfect house is snatch up? I can't let it happen again. Maybe committing for another year's lease will force me to stop looking. Maybe that's what I need.

It turns out that our inspection uncovered some pretty hefty issues with the cute little house with the limestone chimney. Twenty-five thousand buckaroonies worth! We requested for the seller to reduce his asking price, and he refused to lower it a dime. So we had to walk...away...heads down and sobbing. Not for long though, because I had my eye on the blue house below, even before we put in the offer for the little house with the chimney. It is also in a very nice neighborhood (some would argue better than the previous house). Our favorite part is the huge shaded front and back yards. Well, my favorite part is the architecture. I love, love, love craftsman bungalows! In my opinion, besides the price, this house is absolutely picture perfect. We are submitting an offer tonight but there is another couple viewing the house tonight too. Lets just hope that they don't put in an offer and that we can get a descent interest rate to make this work! We'll let you know how the saga unfolds. Here's a sneak peak.