Investing in an income suite: Q&A with HGTV’s Lisa Colalillo
If you've been following our blog you already know that we're huge HGTV fans. Remember our PARA Blog Crew submission video?? Yea....it's a problem. On any given day you can pretty much guarantee there's an episode of one of HGTV Canada's many awesome shows providing the soundtrack to our household. One show in particular that we've been enjoying in this season's lineup is Critical Listing. If you're not familiar with the show, you really should get familiar!
Closing day: Take 2
Every cloud has a silver lining... As you know, our closing got delayed by one day. Boo right? We thought so too. The upside however, is that because of that ONE seemingly insignificant day, our first mortgage payment has now been delayed by ONE MONTH! Woo hoo!!! I guess it's true what they say - everything happens for a reason. :-)
Closing day??
Well today was closing day. Sort of. At least it was supposed to be. As it turns out, however there was an error in the mortgage paperwork that caused a delay in the final release of funds between the bank and our lawyer's office. Despite everyone's feverish attempts to rectify things, ultimately the clock just ran out before the issue could be resolved.
Done and done!
It's been a while since we blogged, and lots to update you on. Specifically what happened with the seller after the inspection... Well of course - he was anything but reasonable. Essentially our agent Mike went to him with our inspection report of what could potentially add up to $25,000 in repairs - and his response was "I won't come down one more penny." That said, we know that the renovation plans we have will address most, if not all of the issues the inspector raised. But the bottom line is, ultimately we're buying THIS house, in it's present state, and regardless of our future plans for it we shouldn't have to absorb all the cost of any repairs that it needs going in.
Home Inspection
It's been a busy couple of days. We got all of the offer paperwork signed and finalized, made a quick trip in to the bank to pick up our pre-approval letter to satisfy our financing condition, then topped it off with a road trip to Ottawa to visit a friend and celebrate the Canada Day long weekend. It was our first time spending the holiday in the nation's capital and we had a blast! Definitely recommended if you've never experienced it before - so much to do and the fireworks on Parliament Hill were a spectacular end to the trip! Now after a little much needed R&R, we're back and down to fulfilling the final condition of our offer - the home inspection.
It’s a good day to buy a house!
Sometimes to get what you want, you have to be willing to walk away - which is exactly what we did when offer negotiations with the seller of the house we wanted reached a stalemate. After flat out rejecting our initial offer (which was admittedly WELL below his rather inflated asking price), it was pretty clear that talks between his agent and ours were going nowhere fast.
Buyer frustrations…
Ugh...home owners can be so frustrating! Don't get me wrong, it's TOTALLY understandable to be emotionally attached to your house...but seriously - Pricing a home for sale is a science. You can't just arbitrarily pick a number that you want to sell for just BECAUSE. These things have to be based in reality. Lot size, square footage, how many upgrades you've put in, comparable properties in the neighbourhood and their past sale prices - these are all things that you have to keep in mind when setting the right price for your home if you expect to sell.
This might be the one…
So after expanding our search area, we've found an interesting property in the West Shore neighbourhood. The house itself isn't much to look at. In fact it probably hasn't been updated much since it was built in 1962. Now in saying that we don't mean the cool 'retro chic 60s', we mean circa 1962 textured plaster walls, parquet & vinyl floors, avocado tub in the bathroom - we're talking full on time machine the second you walk through the door. Not exactly what you might envision us looking for in our dream house.
SOLD!
Up and down in less than 48 hours....and here we were all geared up to endure at least a couple weeks of stress around keeping the house in immaculate 'show ready' condition. When we listed the house, we thought we were a little bit on the ambitious side in terms of our asking price. After reviewing the past sales and comparable properties in our area, we had an idea of what we were hoping to sell for and naturally priced ourselves slightly above that to leave some room for negotiation. What we really didn't imagine was that the house would go OVER asking or that things would get wrapped up so quickly and easily.
Officially on the market!
So in between all the property hunting, we've been busy prepping our place for sale. Now after several weeks of painting, carpeting, cleaning and de-cluttering, it's nice to be able to say that our house is officially on the market! It's been a long and laborious process, but we made it to the finish line. All the papers have been signed and submitted so we should hit MLS by sometime tomorrow - just in time for the weekend!