Spring update

Hello all, spring is finally here and I thought I’d give an update of what I’ve been doing since I finished the Epic road trip.

This is going to be a long home buying post, so if your not interested in that punch out now!! 🫣

Having decided to settle in the Pacific Northwest and the Vancouver Washington area specifically, I started to research what housing options would look like. As I’m sure you are aware the housing market in 2022 is just as crazy as everything else is these days, rentals are as expensive as home ownership from a monthly cost perspective and I decided to take advantage of my VA benefits and see what I could do on a purchase. I prequalified with Veterans United at $350,000 and they referred me to Kristin a local real estate agent.

It quickly became apparent that my dream home was not going to be doable at $350k, even manufactured homes were out of my price range so I followed up with the lender and got an increase to $400k and that allowed me to at least start to look at some properties.

Having been a city dweller for the last few decades I really wanted to be “out in the country” or at least at the urban boundary on a larger lot of say around an acre, maybe room for a shop to support my car hobby and space to grow a garden and keep some bees would be ideal.

At that price point I found myself continually compromising my wish list and basically looking at smaller homes in neighborhoods on your standard sized city lot. I was working the I-5 corridor North of Vancouver as well as some neighborhoods in Vancouver proper.

The market rhythm showed that new homes would appear on Zillow/Redfin/Realtor.com sites on Thursday, you rush to view them and the seller reviews offers usually on Sunday or Monday and the houses are gone. Only very overpriced or less desirable properties seemed to last more than about a week! 😳

I was working the listing sites and had alerts configured for anything in the 3 counties I was interested in so that I would hopefully be able to jump on things as soon as they listed. If something looked interesting I would drive by and then let Kristin know if I wanted to see inside and she would make the arrangements. I also hit any open houses that looked good.

I had pretty much settled that my outer limit away from the Vancouver metro area was going to be Kelso to the North and Stevenson or Carson to the East.

Kelso is a town of about 12,000 and is part of a metro area that includes the working town of Longview which I wasn’t crazy about as it feels too industrial for my tastes. I was working the Kelso area hard, driving the town trying to learn what areas I liked and I found a nice home in a good neighborhood that I really liked.

This little sweetie was a 3/2 ranch style, very nice inside, hardwood floors and had a small area to the left of the garage that could accommodate a shop and also provide extra parking. It was listed at $390k, however, the other game being played in the market right now is to list low and let the bidding wars start.

I had also applied and got pre qualified with my credit union with better terms and most importantly a rate lock for 60 days, my new upper limit was $425k. Very excited I went all in and made an offer at $425k.

Waiting on pins and needles all weekend was hard but by Monday I got the bad news, the seller had accepted a “more favorable offer”. Kristin decoded that to mean an all cash offer, likely with the buyer also waiving inspection and taking the home “as is”. Also with a cash offer the escrow can close in as few as 7 days. Back to the drawing board 🤬. (I found out later the house sold for $411k, the seller left $14k on the table so as not to have the hassle of a financed deal with all the inspections and 30 day escrow etc, wild eh?).

Not one to take rejection easily I doubled down and viewed about 10 more homes in the following week. Bless Kristin’s heart, she hauled me all over 3 counties as we were really working to see all the homes in my price range. One thing I discovered when I was making some edits to my filter on Zillow, my price range was still capped at $400k. I updated all my searches to my new upper limit and the ONE appeared!

A 3/2 ranch in the tiny town of Goldendale, it had every item on my wish list! The only exception was that its a bit further out than I had thought I wanted to be, its located up the Columbia river about 100 miles east of Vancouver. Listed at $419k it was back on the market after being off for about 10 days (the inspection period allowed during the sales process, so my agent thinks the buyers changed their minds, a common thing). I asked to see it on a Thursday and we were told that they had an offer already but would hold off until I could see it on Friday. Well, wouldn’t you know it we had a late season snow storm and there were 6″ of snow overnight! Luckily the appointment was at 3pm so the roads were clear and I got to see the place.

It looked a bit different in the snow, but I really like the house and the neighborhood. Here are some inside shots from the listing.

I really, REALLY liked the place! It is on a double lot at almost 3/4 of an acre so plenty of room to ramble and the garden raised beds are already done and did you see that shop?! I had Kristin text the listing agent and let her know and offer would be coming in, once again I went all in and offered $425k.

We had looked at one other house in a different neighborhood in Goldendale so that was about all I knew of the area, so over the weekend I explored the town and general area. Its a cute little town with an old fashioned main street with a few businesses, also a grocery store and a gas station so all the basics are covered. It is also the County seat of Klickitat County. I wandered the grocery store and had a lunch at the Dirty Cowgirl bbq place (great name, right?) 🤠 Folks were friendly and I got a good feeling about the town.

While I really liked the house, I was struggling with the location. The nearest city is The Dalles on the Oregon side of the river, about 20 minutes away. The Dalles has about 16,000 people and some shopping including my favorite Grocery Outlet, yeah!

The nearest big city at around 100,000 is Yakima 1 hour North, it has all the big box stuff, Costco etc. As a plus there is the Yakima indian reservation in between with really cheap gas, like a $1 a gallon cheaper than locally. I explored as far as Richland, and Grandview WA to the east and found that it is mostly a high prairie and not really that scenic. Getting around is pretty simple as there are good roads paralleling the river on both the Washington and Oregon sides, the center of the Columbia river is the state line in these parts…

The Columbia River gorge in this area is so pretty, the sheer basalt cliffs dotted with waterfalls and the wide lazy Columbia river make for many great views. You can see Mt. Adams from the street and with in 10-15 minutes drive you can also catch sight of Mt St Helens and Mt Hood. The Cascades also provide the area with a rain shadow effect, meaning that the area only gets an average rainfall of 18″. Compared to Kelso with 50″ I think my sun loving self will like it much more out in the country.

There are several very nice winerys in the area and its only 2 hours to Bend, Oregon, a town I really like. Ultimately I realized I just needed to let go of my commuter mentality, it’s not like I have to be anywhere at a specific time, I am retired after all! Once I settled down the good news came in on Monday that my offer was accepted!!

The next step in the home purchase is the 10 day inspection window, this is where you get all your experts in to have a look, home inspector, pest inspector and anyone else you want to have a looksee. I was happy to find that the home inspector wants you there during the inspection. From the list provided I selected Hank Roney and he was great, luckily there were no major issues and I got to spend a pleasant 3 1/2 hours following Hank around asking him stupid questions. He was very patient with me and explained any findings as they came up.

I was also lucky and got to meet the seller Donald and he showed me around the house and pointed out some of the cool features like the extra well on the property for irrigation and also hot and cold running water taps on the back deck so you could wash your dog.

After wrapping up the home inspection you send a wish list of repairs to the seller and they respond, either by fixing them or by telling you to go pound sand. Donald was great and addressed the few concerns I had.

Do to the remote location it was a struggle to find a pest inspector that could complete the specific form the VA requires for the termite inspection and also it was very difficult for the bank to locate a VA appraiser. Ultimately we did find a pest inspector and the bank found an appraiser from Yakima county that would make the trek out for an extra $150.

Having cleared the home and pest inspections the appraisal was the last item required and of course there had to be drama. The appraisal is ordered by the bank, so as to prevent any funny business, they are meant to be an independent voice as to the value of the home, I think mostly to protect the bank.

At this point in the process, you have an accepted offer, the inspections are completed and as a buyer your lender has either begun or has completed the underwriting process to finalize your credit worthiness, this is the annoying process where you have to prove where your down payment comes from as well as any other large recent movements of money in your accounts and explain any other anomalies in your credit file. You will have set a closing date with the title company and the clock is winding down. In my case the seller had also begun a purchase of their next house contingent on the sell of this house.

The last thing that can trip you up is the appraisal.

VA appraisals can be lower than a traditional loan appraisal or at least that is the rumor on the Internet. If this happens you have what is known as an “appraisal gap” and as a VA buyer you are allowed to walk away at this point and get your earnest money deposit back, or you can bring more cash to the table to fill the gap.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. At the time the bank asked me to authorize the additional $150 for the appraiser the appraiser also asked for a 20 day extension, at the time I didn’t think anything about the timing and just said yes to increase and keep the process going, besides what other choice is there? I had looked at the Washington state appraisal board website and found there wasn’t a single active appraiser in Klickitat County or the rural county next to it! Great.

My credit union is great, I’ve done many car loans with them in the past and they are always just right on top of it, I mean faster than you have a right to expect, like FedEx next day here is your check fast. Well this experience with the mortgage department wasn’t quite as “peppy,” maybe it was just the loan officer I got assigned but it felt like he was just “pushing paper” and not feeling the sense of urgency that the rest of us in the deal were feeling. At this point you have lots of people invested in this process; the seller, the buyer, agents on both sides and in this case another set of all of the above due to the contingency purchase of the sellers next home as part of this deal. Its enough to field a softball team.

It’s now the beginning of May and we are not hearing when the appraisal is going to come in and the clock is winding down. I look back at the email to do the math on the 20 day extension that I granted the appraiser and that puts us literally on the close date of 5/13. So now I start to wonder, is that 20 BUSINESS days? Is that when we get the appraisal or when they go out to do the appraisal? And then what if the appraisal comes in low Argh… 😱.

I team up with Kristin and we start to agitate the loan officer on getting a firm commitment, and when the loan officer says to me “we can just move the close if the appraisal doesn’t come in on time” I lost it 🤬 For the first time in my adult life I went full on Karen and lit the poor guy up to his manager. The next day we get a firm commitment of a date for the appraisal.

Now all I have to worry about is that pesky appraisal gap!

All the real estate sites offer some form of estimate of home values and I was certainly within a decent range according to them, and of course the listing agent does a market analysis when they work with the seller to determine the listing price, but this market is whack, who knows and I have nothing but time to worry.

On May 6th the loan officer sent a one line email with the subject: Appraisal

“$426,000 as is”

BOOM, done and done! Happy ending and the beginning of 30 years of working for the bank.

Here I am on Friday the 13th signing the papers.

The sellers needed time to move and will rent back until June 1st so I’ll be moving in then. Super excited to start nesting!

In the meantime, I’m trying to be patient which as you maybe can tell is not my strong suit, but I am using the time to explore the area and will be doing my next post on some of the Columbia River gorge scenic highlights.