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.