It's a BOY! Closings and more....

Well, I finally have a few minutes to tell anyone reading this that we had a boy! His name is Aidan David, born on 8/18/08 and was 9 lbs, 12 oz (ouch!) and 22 inches. We have 2 little girls so getting a boy was a thrill. We didn't know what we were having but both my husband and I thought 'girl'. Anyway, everyone is doing good.

This past Tuesday we closed on the 2nd HUD home. There were some glitches but it ended up closing fine. When I was in the hospital I put 2 ads in the paper to sell the property "as is" instead of rehabbing. Since we're STILL holding on to the Jefferson Street property we were getting nervous about having to sit on 2 properties (as I stated in previous posts). Anyway, we received about 30 calls in the first week and about 10 calls this week so far. This morning a gal called who is already pre-approved so I told her we would be at the property at 11:30. She met us there, she liked the property and we signed a contract. She was headed to her bank to give them the signed contract and I think she wants to close within 2 weeks. Let's hope it goes through. She is using a local credit union so seasoning shouldn't be an issue. What might be an issue though is the fact that the bank I used for financing didn't know I was going to "flip" this property. I wasn't planning on it initially but we ended up going that route. Do banks get mad at this? She didn't seem too pleased when I told her I may have interested parties. I hope she doesn't get too mad as I wanted to build a solid relationship with this bank!!! We'll see how it all goes and I'll keep ya posted.

We have not submitted any new offers and the ones we submitted a while ago the banks would not come down enough to even warrant looking at the property. I am, however, still watching other properties to see when they will drop in price.

Okay, that's all for now... going to take a nap : )

2nd showing last night

We had a 2nd showing on the property last night and both sets of parents apparently did not like the basement... What?! Okay, the house is about 90 years old with a stone basement. What do you think you're getting? A finished basement with full bar and large screen TV. Oh yeah, and it's also $25k under value? Maybe I'm off on my numbers, I don't think so but the more I'm getting these comments the more I have to wonder! We still have the other 2nd showing with the guy that wants to see the garage. He hasn't gone through again and the garage is what needs the MOST work - crap. At the end of this month there will be a change. Either the price will go down OR we will make more changes to the house.

I decided I'm going to market the 2nd HUD home "as is" at $69k for a few weeks before putting any more money into it. I placed ads in the paper today and have called a couple people to see if they are interested. I have a couple more people to call but I will not be able to get into the property until after closing so I don't want to say, "yeah, we can't get into the property just yet". I bought for $62,740 so this would not be a huge pay day but if I can sell for a few grand that would be just fine in my book. Wish me luck on this one too! The other property is just pissing me off!!!!

I think the property I put an offer on yesterday has an accepted offer. It is no longer listed as for sale. I'll have to ask my realtor. Another property I put an offer on (that was declined immediately) came down in price by almost $10k. We're still about $23k apart but maybe they will at least look at my offer this time. We're resubmitting.

Still going through my pre-license DVD classes and I've fallen asleep twice. woops. I have learned a couple interesting things but for the most part VERY boring. Especially since I know this is not for a "real" real estate job but rather my personal interests. Anyway I'm a little more than 1/2 way done. I'm not really sure how I'm going to remember everything for the test since it will most likely be done in the next 2 months (before I go back to work - SOB : ( ). I'll figure something out even if I have to take it a couple times!

Still no baby but we did get our loan!

I posted on the forum that we did get the "in house" loan from our local bank. The only things we had to submit were a copy of our DL's, 1 pay stub from each of us, our signed contract and that's it. The downside, as I stated on the forum, is that we need to put down 20%. I'm not all that happy about this but I want to establish a relationship with this bank to hopefully do many, many more deals going forward. Ultimate goal is to establish a LOC to access when making offers!

We had 2 second showings on the Jefferson Str property this week. I think one showing was last night and the other... well I'm not sure if he went back yet. He wanted to go through the garage/work area. When my lovely husband put on the new lock he did not leave a key in the lockbox and proceeded to lose the key. So, we had to go out this weekend and cut the lock off. There goes $18 down the toilet : ) I'll just add it to our all ready growing holding costs. My fingers are getting achey from having them crossed until we sell this place. I would be ecstatic if we had a contract before the 25th which is our second closing.

I am putting an offer in on a HUGE victorian that needs a lot of work today. I haven't been putting in offers because of everything I have going on but this one I couldn't pass up!! It was just reduced to $34k and I submitted a $21k cash offer w/ inspection contingency.

Well Friday is my actual due date but I'm going to see the dr. tomorrow and we're setting up an induction appt. I hope we don't have to go that route but... whatever it takes, I guess.

That's it for now. Talk to everyone soon!!!

No baby yet... oh yeah, maybe no new loans for me either!?!

Yeah, no baby. I am hot, tired and crabby dammit I don't know how I'll be able to survive another 2 weeks?!?! I guess, just like everything else, I'll just muddle through.

So, my mortgage guy tells me I no longer qualify for the loan that I got to close the last HUD property. Of course I find this out 2 weeks before I'm supposed to close on the 2nd HUD property. Nice, huh? I guess it has to do with the new FHA guidelines and my debt to income ratio is too high. Since my husband has sucky credit I've been doing this on my credit alone and we DO have a lot of credit of which I'm trying to pay off with the profit from our houses. It will take us a LONG time to get out of debt. We're doing it little by little though.... At any rate, I started calling around to small, local banks like everyone says to do (I'm a slow learner) and have connected with a gal who is trying to get me an "in house" loan through their commercial department to get this done. We have to file an extension for closing by Friday if we're going to go through with this so she'll have to let me know if it will work for them. They are concerned we're holding the other property with no offers and my debt to income, of course. She did mention if we could clean up my husbands credit a bit than maybe a LOC would be a better option for use - what?! that would be AWESOME! So possibly the profit from the next house will go to cleaning up his credit if we could get the LOC.

Otherwise with all this crap I may have to put my dad on the loans. He offered up his credit but I've been trying to avoid that for many reasons. If we get declined from this bank, we'll most likely lose our EMD, back out of the deal and I'll have to talk to my dad about it again.

I have to say I feel like I'm starting all over again. Calling banks/brokers to see if I qualify for a loan even though I know I do not. Also, the hard money guys that I had as a "fall back" are not loaning any more. I am very frustrated and am starting to lose focus. I KNOW the losing focus has to do with the baby coming too but the getting declined now doesn't help either!! Urrrrghh.

There was an open house this weekend at the house and it went well I was told. A lot of people went through and a few went through after the open house and another one tonight. My realtor seems to think we'll have something by the end of the month. I like her positive attitude but I really hate getting my hopes up and then having it fall apart. If we don't have anything at the end of the month we're going to have to either update more of the house OR drop the price.... I'll have to talk to Dave about that, I suppose

Is anyone else sick of hearing about Brett Favre or is it just me b/c I'm in WI?!!? Who cares already!!??!?

Baby?

So I thought I was going into the early stages of labor yesterday... no such luck. I'm not due for another 2 weeks BUT I was a week early with my 2nd and expect to be early with this one too. With that said I'll probably go past my due date! The good thing is I am not working any more and, can I tell you how much I LOVE not having to rush, rush, rush anywhere. Well, I did have to "rush" to my pedicure this morning : ) Yep, I can live without a 9 - 5 job.

Okay, we have two somewhat serious people looking at the Jefferson Str. property. One likes it a LOT but isn't pre-approved. They are working on that now before they submit the offer (so my realtor says). The other is pre-approved and is looking at putting a lot down but is going through tomorrow. We'll see what happens. I'm glad people are actually saying the like it!!!!

Nothing happened on the offers I submitted. One had an accepted offer already, one came back at asking price, one came down $3k and the other was flat out rejected - heehee. We are going to submit another offer on a short sale property. I asked my realtor to get the BPO, which she did, and now I'm submitting my offer. I put the offer in at 72% so we had some wiggle room but should be a pretty good deal if we could start negotiations!!

I started my RE license training yesterday (DVD's). It's enough to bore someone to tears... agency, sub-agent, broker, co-broker, single agency, blah, blah, blah. Oh well, have to muddle through and get back to work........