Team Alice + The Little Lady: New House?

Our house saga is just that... a saga. It started back in April when we realized that with interest rates being so low, now might be a better time to move than a few years down the road. We had two main reasons for moving: more space and better schools for Rya. We love our little house and our location, but it's definitely lacking in the aforementioned areas. After researching schools and the surrounding neighborhoods, we narrowed our search to Sierra Oaks and the Del Dayo area.

The first house we found was on American River Drive. The first problem was its location- AR Drive is a very busy street. Other problems included the fact that it had no flooring and needed a lot of work. Little did we know at the time, we would eventually see more houses that needed far more work. Neither one of us believed this was our dream house, but we thought we could make it work. It was over 2000 square feet, it had a large yard for a pool, and it was around the corner from Sierra Oaks Elementary. We put our offer in low because there hadn't been other offers. Just our luck they received an offer the same day we submitted ours! We heard from the realtor that they deliberated quite awhile because they really liked our personal letter (who wouldn't want a cute family of three moving into their house?), but we were a contingent offer and the other offer was not. Ultimately, they chose to go with the other offer. We were bummed for a few weeks, but vowed to keep looking.

We saw more houses, but none of them were going to work for us for various reasons. I kept seeing the listing for a large house on Del Dayo and asked my realtor to look into it. She did and found that the price was so low because it had a 65,000 dollar pest report of section 1 items that needed to be fixed. We decided to take a look anyway. It was a huge lot- over half an acre. The house itself was in terrible condition. I was very concerned that someone had been living in such filth. I should add that this house was being sold by two daughters after their mother (the owner) had passed away. We knew this house needed a lot of work and we didn't have the cash to pay for the pest report and all the remodeling. Then we learned about construction loans. With a construction loan we could afford the house and have it remodeled all before we moved in. It sounded like a grand plan and there were no other offers! Once again we submitted a contingent offer. As luck would have it, they received another offer the same day through another realtor. The house was originally listed by a realtor, but she had been removed by the owners and another realtor hired. We were working with the second realtor, but the other offer went through the original realtor (supposedly because they had submitted an offer previously and it had been declined). The situation went from good to bad quickly and over the course of a stressful few days we realized we were going to lose out once again because of our contingent offer. Jason especially was upset and irritated by this whole situation and both of us were disappointed. I had my reservations about this house. It had what we called the "stupid" room. It seemed like the garage was originally detached and they added a room between the house and the garage to close the gap. It had no insulation, funky linoleum, and a door on each wall (one out to the side of the house, out to the garage, to the backyard, and into the house). Stupid and pointless. My gut wasn't saying this was the house for us.

Our house hunt continued and has led us to 1401 Mipaty Lane just blocks away from the house in the above paragraph. This house is in slightly better condition than the Del Dayo house, but not by much. An older couple has lived in this house since it was built in 1957. They have updated nothing except the heater and air conditioner. I'm not exaggerating. The carpet is so thin you can see through to the subfloor because the carpet pad no longer exists. The oven and dishwasher look like the front of a '57 Chevy- round and with a lot of chrome. I think maybe five dishes will fit in the dishwasher it's so small. I don't even know if you could fit a regular size cookie sheet in the oven. Most of you know my- I hate germs. Bathrooms are germ havens. This house has two and a half of them. I would rather use a public toilet than these colorful toilets (one is pink, one is blue, and the last is surprisingly a normal white color). I'm not sure who took the photos of this house, but when I first saw them I thought the photos were not doing the house justice. Then we saw the house. There isn't much to actually photograph to make this house look good. It's pathetic that the below pictures are the "good" parts of the house. Despite its current condition, we love this house. We put in an offer and knew it was going to be complicated because it's part of a conservatorship. What we didn't see coming was one of the people firing his/her trustee. Without a trustee for each owner, the house cannot be sold. So, our offer sits there waiting for a trustee to be appointed. Even then, it will be a waiting game to see if the court approves our offer. We want this house. We want this neighborhood. Please keep your fingers crossed!

This is the front of the house. We would get rid of the lovely antenna, replace the bay window with a regular window, take out a lot of the bushes, and paint the house. Can't you picture this house with a cute red or navy door and dark shutters?