Post by turtlegirl on Jul 25, 2014 15:16:29 GMT -5
Now that the kids are napping (well quite time for DS1) I'll make a quick list of apartments that might work and costs, etc. Then we can talk about it more tonight after he gets home and decide if its a good idea to pursue actually looking at them, etc.
Seriously, though - do your parents still work? Would THEY like to go on a vacation? Could you send them off to a VRBO for a week or two?
My step-dad still works and travels 3-4 days a week for work. My mom doesn't work anymore, but she watches the boys for me 2 days a week while I go to work.
They have a cabin in the mountains about 2 hours away and usually go there on the weekends usually 2-3x a month. But my step-dad also just had sinus surgery in early June, so their normal travel plans have been put on hold until just recently.
We are going on vacation for 5 days in mid-August by ourselves and shortly after we get back my parents are leaving for about a week to go to the Bahamas.
I think we all are going to be pretty busy for at least the month of August, so maybe I'll point that out to DH and say we can re-evaluate the rental option after our vacations.
Post by MadamePresident on Jul 25, 2014 16:47:20 GMT -5
I think it's good you are at least exploring the apartment option. Even if you don't move to you husband will feel like you care about his ideas and feelings, it seems like he is just frustrated and it won't cost you anything to look into an apartment. I'm sure he is reasonable and will see is probably not ideal.
I think you can look into an extended stay hotel for the weekends. It might be nice to be out of your parents house on the weekends and offer the the minimum amount of privacy/space without the expense and trouble of a full-blown move into an apartment. It's not a permanent solution, but it is a solution.
I agree with others who said to recommit to the house search, possibly hire a new realtor, and give yourself a timeline to move out of your parents' house. Moving sucks, and at this point, it doesn't seem to make sense logistically or financially to move into an apartment/condo only to move out again in a few weeks/months.
turtlegirl I completely agree with all of this. Moving into a rental now would be a waste of money IMHO. It's a ton of $$$ to move, let alone do it twice.
It sounds like DH doesn't necessary want to leave ASAP, but he does want a plan to be out of his ILs house. So I would also focus on your house search. We had been looking for our "forever home" for several months and are THRILLED to have found it, but we had to compromise on several features. Rather than wasting time and money on moving, I would talk with your Hubbie tonight and make a plan to get out of your parents house. Decide what house features you can compromise on in order to get a bigger selection of homes. Aggressively stalk a house app like Redfin, we toured our house the DAY it came on the market and put in an offer the next day. Think of how you can make your next offer stronger (offer to pay your own closing costs, waive some contingency, offer $5k cash upfront for selecting your offer). I think coming up with a plan will make you both feel better.
We check new listings everyday and are trying to be on top of it as possible Lots of places here are listing during the week with no showings until the open house on the weekend and getting all the offers in at once so they can pick and choose the strongest one. We offered to pay our closing costs and 1k over the asking price last time and got out bid by 10k. Ugh. It was an amazing house too!
So frustrating!
It sounds like your REA should be telling you to bid higher. Would you have paid $10k more for the house? If it's a sellers market then you need to be competitive.
We offered $15K over asking and paying our own closing costs is much a given in a competitive market. We also put in a clause that we wouldn't ask them to fix anything but we could walk based on the home inspection.
We check new listings everyday and are trying to be on top of it as possible Lots of places here are listing during the week with no showings until the open house on the weekend and getting all the offers in at once so they can pick and choose the strongest one. We offered to pay our closing costs and 1k over the asking price last time and got out bid by 10k. Ugh. It was an amazing house too!
So frustrating!
It sounds like your REA should be telling you to bid higher. Would you have paid $10k more for the house? If it's a sellers market then you need to be competitive.
We offered $15K over asking and paying our own closing costs is much a given in a competitive market. We also put in a clause that we wouldn't ask them to fix anything but we could walk based on the home inspection.
We would have not paid $10k more. It was already at the top of our budget. I mean the house and location was amazing, but I was stressing about the money.
Besides the whole apartment talk we really need to figure out what our compromises are going to be for a house.
Sucky situation. I don't want to dismiss your h's feelings but dang moving twice, having to pay movers twice or do it myself, worrying about our dog and our kids...well that would make me miserable and I agree that moving several times is stressful on little people. Of course if you have to you have to and he will be fine but unless there is a true problem I would probably just suck it up. I would hatttteeee living with my parents too!
I'd look at apartments to appease him but ultimately I wouldn't move. On the pro/con list, I'd put "$AVING RENT MONEY."
I get the needing your own space. This drove me crazy when we lived in a 1 bedroom apartment. Is there anyway to rearrange things at the home so he can have some space dedicated to him alone? I needed space where no one would touch my stuff and without this, I went seriously crazy. I took over the second bedroom when we moved rather than have a nursery for DD because this was so important to me.
I don't get the mooch thing. Then again, my parents are moving into a beautiful home next week and have already set aside a room for DD. I can't wait to move there. Uh, I mean visit.
Get a rental - and I say that as someone who moved a lot as a kid because my parents would build a house, decorate it, and then sell at a decent profit over and over and over again. We were accustomed to selling a house then going to a rental for a few months then moving into the new place. It wasn't that disruptive...in a way we all looked forward to it. It was fun getting a new bedroom on a frequent basis.
Even without this experience, what you've posted here doesn't inspire a ton of confidence that you're going to land your forever home soon. If you just needed a house that met your needs, I'd probably say stick with what you're doing, but if your forever home means you're playing at the top of your budget and consistently getting outbid by people who aren't at the tops of their budgets...well, this is going to be a long haul. Either you come to terms that the next house won't be the forever house or it's time to acknowledge that living in limbo is going to be more long term than you'd like.
I was in your H's shoes. We lived with my ILs for 5 weeks while we finished building our house. I love my ILs but living with them was stressful, it wasn't my house, I was trying to be sure not to step on any toes, knowing when to offer to do a chore/cook/etc vs let my MIL run her house her way, etc. There is no way I could have done it for 3 months. Unless you will find a house in the next month or so get an apartment for your H's sake.
It sounds to me like labor day is s good deadline. There are a lot of breaks in there if your DH can stick it out next month. Rentals in competitive markets are also usually the most expensive in August. Fewer things typically come on the market after labor day too.
Post by turtlegirl on Jul 26, 2014 10:39:03 GMT -5
UPDATE: Thanks for all the feedback everyone.
We went out for dinner last night just the two of us and talked a lot of things out. He agrees that apartment living would be stressful with us, kids and a large dog. So our new plan of action is to keep going with the house search this next month and at the end of August/Labor Day we will also start looking for rental homes. Even though renting a house probably won't get us a month to month lease we will just keep up with the home search and if we find THE house we will just break the lease, even if it means paying extra.
I also stressed that since I'm compromising by agreeing to look into rentals soon that I also need to see some effort on his part to make an attitude change and come up with ideas to make things easier on him at my parents house. They have an awesome pool in the backyard we need to use more and a park literally right next door we should be taking the kids too after dinner more, etc. He agreed.
After our semi-serious dinner conversation we went bowling (which we haven't done in ages) and had a lot of fun. It was good for us to get out and do something good different just the two of us.
And work had been really stressful on him the past two weeks with coworkers being on vacation and a lot of extra stuff falling on him. That should be getting better too this next week. So hopefully that will help as well.
Post by turtlegirl on Jul 26, 2014 10:43:07 GMT -5
And our REA is doing a good job and we are very happy with him. I think it's more just us being super picky. And we knew we'd be picker this time around so it might take longer to find THE house. So if we are going to be that picky it's probably only fair to my parents and us that we ride the wait out in our own rental house if it gets to that point.