A New Homeowner Checklist

We have put in our notice, and 60 days from now, we will be out of our apartment.

I've been scouring moving sites like The Nest and MyMove for months. Cumulatively, I've printed off four or five different checklists for preparing your move, packing your house, and dealing with paperwork before Closing. 

In addition to our home loan, we are tacking on an additional FHA renovation loan. The house does need some work done; and since it is our first home purchase, we quality for some additional tax breaks to cover those projects. 

This means more paperwork, appraisals, quotes and time spent to get everything covered. It also means that we need to clear some major space on our credit cards.

We've gotten some referrals for FHA-approved contractors, as well as movers. However, our big list so far is the list of things we should either hire out for, or do ourselves. It's like making a Christmas list and figuring out how to optimize total presents received. What should we save for, and what should we ask for?

After the contractor gives us a quote for these fun projects, the house will need to be appraised to make sure we aren't overpaying. Although, at this point, renegotiating is the last thing I want to do. All this must be done in order to push the loan through the application process. A timely manner is a bit hard to keep to when we're talking about closing 21 days from now.

An additional obstacle is moving inherited furniture from Virginia to Atlanta. When I first made the move 3 years ago, we got the smallest moving truck for under $400. The latest quote from U-Haul for the same trip? Almost $1,000. Absolutely no idea what caused that jump…

However, the furniture is mine (I'm not just stealing my parents hand-me-downs) and we will be needing it for our secondary bedrooms, and to not look totally house poor. Between covering that move, closing costs and down payments, and hiring hourly movers for our current apartment, that's not a lot of money to go around for the next two months. 

A Home Inspection

I held out a whole week before writing that we finally found a house and are under contract.

When we put the offer in on this house (offer #6), there was the usual amount of back and forth. We each made three counters, finally getting to a middle ground price that is thankfully way below our budget. 

We are almost through our due diligence, and just got back from the home inspection this morning. 

This is the absolute farthest we've gotten in the home-buying process, and yet there are still horror stories from our friends and family about the difficulties between now and closing. 

It always surprises me how many sellers put so much money into giant stone bathrooms and overworked additions, yet they neglect things like structural and water damage.

Source: My Move

We had the nicest guys for our home inspection (Joe and Jim from Medallion Inspections) and they gave us the run down of the house, as well as some good home-owner education. As it turns out, the house isn't in as bad of condition as we anticipated. 

For the age of the house (1979), there were a lot of good upgrades and fixes compared to some of the homes in the neighborhood. Many of the items on the must-fix list were installation shortcuts from previous contractors, electrical wiring and pipes. Others were items that were original with the house and were due to be replaced: windows with broken seals, vents and gutters.

Did you know that installing just one new window gives you allowance to advertise that your house has "thermal windows"? Tricky tricky tricky...

I'm hoping that the sellers can tighten many those nuts and bolts before closing, leaving us with bigger renovations: a new roof, new siding and new carpet. Kitchen, bathroom and backyard face lifts are also on the docket, along with new windows farther down the road.

But, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Our projected closing date is July 18th, and we'll be in our apartment until mid August.