Karen-we might be next!

[ladycattat]

I was going to try to keep this on the down-low, but I am really excited, so here goes!
It looks like DH and I have been pre-qualified for a home loan. It's a really tiny loan, and as egerandi can tell you, to get even an ok type of house in the Los Angleles market can easily cost you 750,000, so we are going to have to look for a foreclosure or a real fixer-upper, and we are not going to be able to stay in the same city we are in now......but still, it's time. We have been paying rent to *the man* for way too long, and I can hardly wait to start looking!
Laurie

[egerandi]

Oh, what great news! I'm sure you can find something, prices have been dropping like crazy around LA for the most part. I was eyeing a loft in an industrial area that went from 590k to 550k to 490k in a year! I'm in the finish line of paying off my CCs and student loan, but already checking into places. Now, if dear BF could make up his mind about where he wants to live... heh, that's another story.

Good luck, Laurie!

[JenW]

Yayyyy Laurie!

I hope it all goes well. Please keep us posted


**Sending good vibes your way.**

[karen]

Congrats! That's fantastic. I've been watching "House Hunters" on HGTV and the prices in some of those markets are just unreal (their down payments were more than my house)- but Egerandi is right- it's really a buyer's market at the moment. We bought our foreclosure for about 1/3 less than it sold for 10 years ago. The trade-off being that it was "as-is" so we've had to do some work to get it up to snuff and will have to do a bunch more come spring- still a pretty good bargain, and it gives DH something to do. As you're looking- double what you think it's going to cost to fix it up, and you'll be in the right ball-park. I spent $400 just on paint- which so wasn't something I had planned would be so stinkin' expensive or time consuming. I'm getting pretty handy with a caulk gun though!

Oh- and if you see one that has nice hardwood floors- and think "oh we'll just rent a sander and fix them"- think twice. It's terrible. And if you do wind-up fixing floors, whatever you do- don't stain them dark walnut. It shows dust like you wouldn't believe. Stripping wallpaper isn't bad though.

[marina16]

That's awesome! We bought our little foreclosure home for $50,000 less than it's original value. And because of the low mortgage we have low monthly payments! Good luck with the loan and have fun house-hunting!

[tizzylou]

Laurie,You have my best wishes and prayers that this goes through. I agree with Karen, don't look at floors and think that you can just strip them and then refinish, in my years of remodeling house's or at least parts of house's with 2 DH there is always more work than every one thought would be involved. I love to lay ceramic tile, and hve done 2 walls and one kitchen floor, so am actually pretty good at that.

Karen, If stripping wallpaper isn't so bad, would you please make a trip to Colorado and see if you can get the wallpaper in our bedroom off? Both it and the wallpaper in the living room are vinyl and we finally gave up in the living room and sheet rocked over it, and then painted, since it took better than 1 day to take it off of a 4ftx6ft wall. The cat has scratched a piece off of the corner in the bed room and we have pulled somemore loose in that same spot, but have not proceeded with that remodel, simply becuase we can't loose the space in the bedroom , thus can't sheetrock over it, and it will take months to get this stuff off. Scoring, soaking etc, does not work.

Hollis

[karen]

Sure- I'll come strip wallpaper if you want to come tile! I'm about a mile from a gorgeous lake in the middle of wine country. I can see the draw of putting together the puzzle but about 10 minutes in and I'm frustrated. I've always enjoyed the process of improving something via something destructive- I love to cut, melt, and forge things- so it may just be my weird kick.

We didn't have a ton of it, but what we did was peel off all the vinyl, and then soaked it with Diff wallpaper stripper- it has an enzyme that eats the glue. About 10 minutes later I just scraped it with a wallpaper scraper, and it came off pretty well. It's messy, and you have to wash the walls when you're done, but we had pretty cool plaster work under the wallpaper so I stripped it. We stripped a wall at my mother's house to reveal bad bumpy plaster- so sometimes it's not always worth it. Our painter said he's seen it where it just won't come off, but we got pretty lucky. There is a spot in the kitchen that I'm planning to just install beadboard over, mainly because that wall needs something rather than just paint.

Yes- it's a lot more work than I thought it would be. For about the first week every time I went to go do something for the first time I found something else that needed to be fixed or replaced. I still need a new kitchen cabinet- it's going to be a while.

Oh Laurie you're going to have so much fun! Keep us posted!!!!

[mgmsrk]

How exciting Laurie! Good luck!

[ladycattat]

We went looking yesterday. Amazing how many truly revolting homes are on the market. Don't mind a fixer, but these were tore up from the floor up. We saw 6 places.
But- we did find a nice little jewel. Not perfect, and needs some work. But it is 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, a pool, fireplace, 2 car garage, nice neighborhood and close to good schools. There is a nice little patio with a built in brick BBQ( needs repair) There isn't a humongous amount of storage, and the bedrooms are small, with small closets, but they are slightly better than we have now.
It's at a REALLY good price and our realtor feels that there will probably be mulitple offers, and advised us if we were even halfway serious to go ahead and put an offer in.
So, we told Jacen to put in an offer for $100 over the asking price. We'll see what happens!
Laurie

[JenW]

Please keep us posted! I hope it works out for you!!!