A Closing Date is set!

The HUD paperwork finally came in yesterday morning and we spent the rest of the day at the bank getting the mortgage loan started. We still have a ways to go before we know absolutely for sure and there are still some things that could go wrong. But the loan officer feels that it should go smoothly.   

If all goes well the payments will be about $680 a month AND the payment will include the insurance & taxes!! That's a little on the high side until we get the Alaska house sold, but it is doable. We are dropping the price on the Alaskan house too so that should help.    

Closing date is July 28th. We are planning the move for early September. We have a LOT to do till then! Mark has been looking into barging our truck and a trailer down and we will fly. It's looking like in the long run this will be a bit cheaper and I have to admit, 1 days travel time is better than 5. It will be easier for all of us!      

House Up Date & Fishing

Monday. There was a paperwork problem & the HUD house was put back on the market. But only for 24hrs. We had to do another bid & submit new *correct* papers. We had a very nerve racking couple of days because during the second posting another bid came in after ours! This news came to us Tuesday afternoon. We signed & faxed the correct papers then waited. All day Wednesday, no news, all day today, no news. I had just about given up hope! Then, got a call about an hour ago. HUD is still reviewing the paperwork but all looks good! AND the second bidders have dropped out! So, assuming no more problems with the paperwork we should have an answer form HUD hopefully tomorrow. However HUD is a government thing so it could be as long as Monday. 

But we're not out of the woods yet. Even though we are pre-qualified that doesn't mean a loan is guaranteed. So we still have to do that part. The loan officer said it looked good & he didn't see any problems. If that part goes smoothly we are looking at a moving date of around September 4th!!!!  

Fishing. We have been fishing the Kasilof River because the King salmon restrictions are more liberal & we can use bait. (eggs & spin & glows) Bank access is fairly easy, current not as fast and NO power boats! Also for some reason the King count is higher here than the Kenai River so far. Mark & I didn't catch ANY Kings last year so we decided to give it a try here. If you read my last post you will see it was a wise decision! 

Today was our 3rd trip and this time we took out the mini drifter. It was a perfect day! Bright blue sky, sunny & in the mid 60s. The mild current made handling the mini a breeze and it was just a nice relaxing day! (except for worrying about the house) We got there a little late however & missed the bite so we didn't catch anything. But we did see a boat bring in a huge king just shy of 50lbs! I haven't seen a fish that big in a long time! Mark got a picture of it with his new phone but we haven't figured out how to download them to the computer yet! I will post it when I can. In the mean time we are going again Saturday, hopefully we can get there on time and I will have some good pics to share!

Until next time...       

Father's Day Fishing

FISH ON!!!

Of course I didn't bring my camera this day, and Mark decided to leave his new phone/camera at home, thinking his old one would be good enough. 

Don't know what is wrong with it, sometimes it works sometimes not. This just happened to be a NOT day. So these are really bad quality, but oh well, it's the memories right?

Good News!

The HUD bid went through on the Raymond house!!

We should get the signed paperwork back by Wednesday, 6/22. The next step will be to continue the loan process with the bank. We did pre-qualify so there shouldn't be any problems. I don't know how long this part will take or how long to closing, but so far it looks like we got it!     

 The address is 

2900 Mallis Landing Rd , Raymond , WA 98577

This is the map that is posted on the MLS website. Apparently the Google satellite view was done before this house was built. If you do a search the view is very blurry and there are different buildings there.    

This is the street map view showing the location in relation to Olympia.

Wow! We both are very excited! I will contienue to post up dates as I get them.

Oh BTW, fishing so far this year has been good! Mark caught the first king of the year and I will post details & pics soon!  

 

If all goes well, This will be our new house!

Address: 2900 Mallis Landing Rd , Raymond, WA 98577. Google map, It isn't the ideal location for commuting to & from the airport for work, but it is right in the middle of prime hunting & fishing land, so Mark doesn't mind the extra drive. And it is close enough to all the kids that we can get together a couple times a year!   

 Built in 2007

In spite of this being a HUD home there doesn't seem to be any problems. The land is slightly rolling but on a ridge, so there wont be flooding worries. Of course the bank will require a home inspection & stuff so if there are any problems we will know about them. 

Detached garage
It looks like this door might be to small for our large truck. But the building looks to be plenty big enough to handle a larger door. This is likely to be our first major *remodeling* project. We will probably have a breezeway installed between the house & garage at the same time.  

Shop and Barn
It isn't huge but there should be plenty of room for a boat with a shop in the back. Plus there is lots of room around it for add-ons later. I don't have photos of the barn yet but it looks like 2 stalls & a loft. I'm hoping there is room for 2 horses.

This Kitchen Photo says it all! The only thing wrong with this kitchen is the white sink! But I will gladly live with a white sink to have THIS kitchen! I don't cook much anymore & almost never do any baking by scratch. But with this kitchen I will have to get back into it! 

Did I mention that this house is 1669 sqft?!
Mark & I have been living in living in fairly small places for a long time. To us this place is going to feel HUGE! We both love the many big windows! And NOT seeing a neighbor from any of them is even better!  

3 Bedrooms & 2 bath.
This is the master bedroom. I realize that photos can be deceiving, and maybe these rooms are not as big as they appear. I'm sure the waterbed will fit nicely between these windows! Right now we have less than 2 feet between the sides of the bed and the walls. This will be a very nice change!
Well so far this is all I know about the property. Oh, even though it is only 1.40 acres it sits in the middle of the woods. There are a couple of neighbors but they are far enough away we probably wont even hear them. It is also kind of close to the road, but it's just a road not a hwy so there shouldn't be to much traffic. This is a good place for us so everyone cross yer fingers & wish us luck!!

Bidding on New House

If you have been keeping up on the Flickr site you will see two different houses posted there. As excited as we were about the Chehalis house we have decided not to get it. The mortgage payments would be to high for us to be comfortable with all the unknowns we will be facing once we get moved back, Mark's commute to & from Alaska for work being the biggest concern as well as the age of the house (built in 1930, that's an OLD house!). Also there was no way we could afford this place (until it sells) AND the Chehalis house. The idea is to find a house there with payments low enough that we can pay for BOTH places just in case this one takes a long time to sell. So we continued the search.

Mark found the listing for the Raymond house early Monday morning, (6/13) It isn't very much land but it is enough considering the location and that the house was built in 2007!! This property does not offer as much as the Chehalis property but it is almost new & at a listing price of $83,500.00, it will definitely work for us! 


At this point I need to back up just a bit. This is not the first house we have been interested in at this price range. In our earlier searches we did find a Realtor to work with but the houses in this price range (and in a reasonable living condition) sell really fast! Being out of state we just couldn't act fast enough to get a hold of them. Consequently that ends up being a good thing!

Anyway, so when we found this listing, it had only been on the market 4 days. Knowing how quickly these houses sell, we made the decision and started making calls. Turns out our Realtor quit for some other job and referred us to the gal that would be taking over his clients. To make a long frustrating story short, it turns out that this is a HUD house & she didn't want to be bothered with it AND of course she didn't tell us that till the next morning! So... what is a HUD house anyway, & why is it such a big deal?

HUD is a government owned program to help lower income & disabled people with their homes through cheep loans & grants. As with regular homes, if the people still can't make their payments the home is repossessed. Only instead of going back to a bank they go back to the government. These houses then go back on the market and sold through a kind of auction. As with all government institutions there is a lot of hoops & red tape but it turns out to not be that big of a deal! Actually this turns out to be a really great way to get a nice place for way under the market value! The drawback is that the buyer can only make a one time bid and there is no way of knowing if someone else has bid higher. Also bidding is only open for a short time, so everything has to be done very quickly.

With our homework done we set out to find a realtor who knows about the HUD houses and would work with us. By Tuesday afternoon we found a realtor, Wednesday the bid was submitted. We got our pre-qualification done and all the papers sent UPS to the realtor. Now we wait.

In the mean time we will gather all the additional information the bank requires to complete the loan process. In the case of the HUD home the actual loan from the bank will only proceed if we get the bid, and even though we are pre-qualified that does not guaranty we will get the loan. That was scary, but the loan officer said it looked good & we shouldn't have any trouble.


The realtor said we should know about the auction by Monday. Then we have to wait for the bank. Hopefully that wont be more that a couple of days and we should know if we for sure got the house by the end of next week. 


We are not thinking of a moving time line at the moment, only that the last ferry out of Alaska is Sept. 30th. And the ferry is not our only moving option either. If we get the HUD house (or something else in that price range) we can afford both places for a short time and that will give us even more options. What it comes down to is that we need a place to move to first, then we will make decisions on when & how. 


OK so now you are all up to date. I will be posting on here a lot the next few weeks. Not only house & moving up dates but also, it is summer in Alaska! The Kings are in with the reds not far behind them. Even though we might get really busy with the move, we will still be taking advantage of our last Alaskan summer fishing season! 


We will see you all real soon!

Keeping it Simple

With the up coming move back to Washington, I have decided to do a blog for now & not worry about a new website. This is a quicker & easier way to jump right in and keep you all informed with what is happening as it is happening. I will worry about a new Washington website later after we get moved.

This blog is already a bit behind, if you are interested in what has been going on up to this point, check out the Flickr page. Also I will continue to post all the photos there. The photos here will be a smaller size with lower resolution to be used with more detailed information about the current subject.

With that said, lets get going!