Getting Real (Estate)
 

My wife and I are putting an offer on a home today. I have this knot of tension in my gut. We really, really want this house. More details later.

http://addisonrd.com/WordPress/wp-co.../hillcrest.png

good luck.

Good luck - hope its smooth sailing!

nice looking place. good luck!

Very nice looking house. I'm scared to ask, but how much is it? What city?

My wife and I put an offer on this house today.

http://www.movoto.com/real-estate/ho...3_F1794868.htm


Good luck! I hope you get it.

Good luck to both of you!

Smooth that is a very California looking house.

Radar, I love the flooring details and the pool. Nice.

Wow, smooth! Gulp! What a beautiful place!

Thanks wolf. Smoothmoniker's looks very sweet too. It looks like a giant Hacienda or something. It's probably WAAAAAAY out of my price range.

I hope he gets it so I can say I know someone that rich. :)

Very nice looking place, SM.

Radar, I could have sworn I've seen the place you linked to redone on one of those home improvement shows...

Thanks for the well-wishes, everyone. The house is a Spanish Revival style place in the Sierra Madre area, just east of Pasadena. It looks more impressive from the front, because of the gates and ivy, but it's a fairly mid-sized family home. 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 2,100 square feet.

my friend from school lives in the glendale hills near la canada if that is interesting

Wow! how exciting for both of you! Best of luck, Smooth and Radar.

ooo, just saw radar's link. Nice place!! I love the conifers!

You know that song, Everyone Has Had More Sex Than Me? could one of you music-types do one that goes Everyone Has A Better House Than Me?

If you find an artist and a distributor, I'll write the song. Lord knows I'm gonna need the extra money!

That would be pretty cool. It has Travertine floors, and has had a lot of work done to it. I looked it up on Zillow, and it sold in 2007 for $930k. I may be scooping it up for $375k.

Right now we're debating about the pool. Pools are another expense to take care of. This pool takes up the entire back yard so there's no room to really entertain or have a cookout or for our daughter to play. My wife and I are also scared our daughter will get back there and drown. Plus, we'd rather just have a nice patio and yard area to relax and occasionally entertain.

We'd like to rip out the pool and put in a yard with a patio, but my father is telling me it will reduce the value of the house, and will be really expensive to do. I may even have to take down the brick wall on the outside to get the equipment in. Either that or hire a whole bunch of guys from the Home Depot, hand them sledge hammers and wheelbarrows and put them to work for a week or so. I may even rent a jack hammer.

Then I've got to buy dirt, and have it tamped down pretty well.

My dad says we should keep the pool, and teach our daughter how to swim at an early age. The San Fernando Valley gets REALLY hot during the summer time so a pool would be nice during those times.

Thoughts?

Keep the pool!

They're not that expensive to care for if you're smart about it.

Buy your chemicals in bulk to save and get the mix right so you don't get algae blooms which can definitely be expensive to correct.

Do you have pool fence laws over there? We do here and they're in place to protect small children mostly. We still have infant drownings in pools, but they are often attributed to poor maintenance of the fence or simply leaving the gate open.

There's a cinderblock wall all around the house including the pool. In California, you can put up 10 feet walls with signs that say NO TRESPASSING!", and "DANGER SWIMMING POOL! DO NOT ENTER SWIMMING POOL WITHOUT OWNER'S CONSENT OR ADULT SUPERVISION" but if your neighbors kids climb your fence and drown in your pool, you can still be sued.

The fences that are legal for pools here are meant to be very difficult to climb like these ones. They basically isolate the pool from the rest of the yard. Worth putting in if you have a small child even if they're not required by law in your area.

If your back door opens straight onto the pool, best to get self closing doors to protect the little one. Even when she can swim, it's sometimes hard for little kids to actually get out of pools, particularly if they're fallen in and used up lots of energy trying to get to the side after a big fright.

Unfortunately for me, there is no "rest of the yard". The pool takes up everything. The back door does open up to the pool area. We may have to put some kind of special locks on the door that are high up so she can't reach them.

That won't last long though because she already stacks stuff up and climbs out of the crib.

Maybe I can setup some kind of electronic door where you have to type a code to get out. Expensive, but probably less expensive than getting the pool removed.

Or losing your daughter...

Lose the pool - it only increases the value of the home if the buyer wants one. If not - like you (and me) it is a negative. You can beat them up about the price because of it.

My only worry is that when my daughter is older, she'll want a pool. :)

Buy her a plastic one. That or she'll certainly have plenty of friends with them. Don't sweat it either way. If you do keep it get one of those Pool covers that the elephant stands on in the commercial. They are incredible!

Oh and good luck on the house to both of you.

Beautiful, I would love to see some better pics.

Just tell whoever that its an acceptable property - not that you really, really want it ;)

My cousin does this swimming instruction thing, where you teach a kid to swim when they are 1-2 years old:

http://feagans5ive.blogspot.com/2008/04/video.html

Our swim club teaches them from 6 months. Keep the pool. If you get a cover, it must be 100% childproof, because if they get under the cover, you can't see. Better to get the code lock as you suggest and teach them young. also teach them to stay away without an adult, just like you do for the street. maybe add an easy ladder out for them, just in case they disobey. I say they advisedly ;) /mysticmeg

Here is the type of cover I was referring to. I have clients here that sell them and they are very safe.
PM me if you want a dealer in your area. I'll have to get the contact info from my office computer.

It's hard to believe, but when you blink your daughter will be old enough to leave alone around a pool. They grow up fast. Keep the pool.

Ours has a pool too, and we're going through the same series of questions. Neither of us wanted a pool, and we have two young kids around too.

A pool fence would be about $1200 to install, pool removal quotes ran in the $10,000 range (in some cities, you also need a soil engineers report after the removal).

For us, it's staying. It fits really well on the property, and we think we'll use it. We'll be putting up a fence, and getting a big huge insurance policy to protect us against lawsuits.

I'll be taking care of it. After scraping up the money for a down payment, and extra $100 a month for a pool service just isn't going to happen.

My wife always wanted me to put one it. I am so glad I did not. A hot tub was a much better investment for us. The pool wood have gotten a few years of good use and then I would still be dumping money into it and taking care of it while no one used it.

This house has a hot tub, but they filled it in and are using it as a planter. I would much rather have the hot tub than the pool!

We are on our second Tiger River Spa. Holds 6 people and 8 if you really wanted to get cozy. Our first one lasted about 9 years with a few motor changes. We expect the same out of this one. Forget the pool.

I'm with you guys on the hot tub. I'd rather have a big patio and a nice hot tub, than a wall-to-wall pool in the backyard.

We put a pool in when we built this house and we love it. Our kids love it. Lil Lookout was a year old when we moved in and swimming with a couple months. 2.0 is 21 months now and he was really really swimming by the end of this past summer. Mrs L takes him to swimming lessons.

If you learn how to do your own pool chemicals it is very inexpensive to maintain and not that much work.

If you're really worried about the kids getting out then you'll put in dual door handles. Your normal handle stays but the second is above 5' - both must be turned to open the door. If you have room for the fence that is also a good idea and our magnalock has worked like a dream for years.

You will love the family fun in the pools gentlemen, keep them.

If you decide it's going to make you nervous, couldn't you drain it and deck it over until the kid is older? Cheaper than demolishing and replacing in a few years.

I want a pool. And a pond. A pond would be good for me.

That hadn't occurred to me. It might get ugly down in the pool during the years we have a deck over it, but we could worry about cleaning that up later I guess. I'd be scared an animal might crawl down there and die. The smell would be awful. But if it's tight enough to the ground, I doubt anything big would get down there.

keep the pool
fit some door locks
buy a pool cover
maintain it yourself
get the extra insurance

that's my advice (well, you did ask :p )

When can I come and visit?

if you build a deck over a dry pool you'll have a few problems.
1) plaster and concrete will dry out and crack
2) pipes and seals will dry out and crack
3) rainwater will gather in pool and then here come the skeeters
4) you will inevitably watch as your wife drops her wedding ring through the crack and you have to tear up your deck to retrieve it.

Wives don't need wedding rings.

some wives don't believe husbands don't need testicles either. let them have their rings and keep your jewels.

My real estate guy just called and told me there are 18 offers on the house. He asked me what my best and final offer would be. I bumped it up to 400k with 20% down. I can't go any higher. Man, I hope someone doesn't take this house from under me.

Good luck Radar.

18 offers? In this market?

18??? But I thought the sky was falling

Sales of foreclosures in the San Fernando Valley are going up, not down. They are being snapped up like crazy. The last house my wife and I wanted to put an offer on had 20 offers and the bank wouldn't even take our offer.

This house has 18 offers in less than a week of being on the market.

I think you meant to use only one of those negatives...unless, of course, you are saying that husbands don't want to keep their jewels at the insistence that their wives believe they will need them or something. ;)

I wasn't aware concrete cracked when it was dry. And if rain water was gathering, wouldn't that keep it from drying and cracking?

I'm not a fan of "skeeters", but my wife might feel at home with 'em. My wife doesn't wear her wedding ring. Neither do I. She doesn't wear it because she works with harsh chemicals doing nails, and I got too damned fat for mine.

Our house had 5 offers on it, and someone bid over us by $25k, so we backed out.

The market changed dramatically about 2 weeks ago. New properties are coming on the market priced very competitively, there are a flood of new buyers coming with cash saved up and at 5% loans, they can be aggressive.

Good properties that are priced well go quickly, in any market.

That's good advice about the pool cracking if it's left empty for too long. The pressure of the water is what stops the soil movement from cracking the concrete moreso than the actual concrete cracking as in deteriorating although it's my understanding that concrete being a porus(sp?) material would change if it were all of a sudden dried out.

That's bad luck smooth. Good luck finding another one you like mate. Sounds like you might still have a few good options though.

I'm sorry to hear that. I was really pulling for you.

Funny, because I would love to have that house too.

Apparently, so would everyone in frickin LA. Sheesh!

Well, the realtor said that if the high offer falls out, the buyer really wants to sell to us. We're not holding our breath, but there's a slim chance it might still happen.

Ach damn smooth, bad luck mate. Fingers crossed for that slim chance eh.

Or he is bullshitting you to get you to put in a higher offer, I wouldn't put it past an agent in this poor market. Becareful.

Good point, he is working for the seller, and him/herself, after all.

We have a Realtor that we really trust, and have a long-term relationship with. I don't think he's pitching us turds to see if we'll swing.

In any case, we have a strong sense of what things are worth to us, and aren't willing to jump price just because of the adrenalin rush of a bidding war.

Ah, got it - you meant the selling realtor. Yeah, he might be full of crap, but our guy doesn't think so, his read is that this really is a valuable property that happens to be priced about 100k (or more) below market value, a bunch of people recognize that fact, and one of them just happens to have more room to negotiate than we do.