usctrojancpa
Well-known member
Before I get into the details of the home search and eventual purchase of the home, I would like to thank all of my previous and current clients on here & IHB (including their referrals). It wouldn?t have happened without you guys!
Some of you guys may remember that I sold my Ambridge Plan 4 condo in Quail Hill back in the fall of 2008 for $620k. I missed the peak where I could have gotten $725k-$750k in 2006 but I?m still happy because I bought it for around $550k and prices are now $540k-$550k for the same floor plan. After the sale I became a TIC renter again. I was fortunate enough that several of my buyers had similar budgets and requirements for their home as I did so having seen hundreds of homes in various cities like Irvine, Tustin Ranch, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Niguel, Foothill Ranch, Orange, Costa Mesa, etc?I began to learn quickly on what each city had to offer in terms of a home for my price range. My ?must-have? requirements were the following:
- Detached single family home
- 3+ bedrooms with a downstairs bedroom or office/den
- FULL driveway
- 1,800sf+
- Under $700k
- Not near railroad tracks, the 5 or 405 Freeways, backing up to a big street, or near power lines
There were a few floor plans in Laguna Niguel, Orange (Serrano Heights), and Aliso Viejo that fit the bill but ultimately I determined Irvine was where I wanted to be. I have lived in Irvine since 2000 and my mom lives here too. Also, most of my buyers are looking for a home in Irvine and Irvine/Tustin Ranch and since that area is centrally located it was an easy choice. I identified a few floor plans in West Irvine, Oak Creek, Woodbridge, and Portola Springs that we on my short list. The front runner was the Plan 2 over at Las Ventanas. The game plan was to purchase a home sometime in 2012 as my finances were ready and a combination of lower prices & super low interest rates made the numbers (I?m a numbers guy afterall) make a lot of sense to buy. Besides, I was telling my buyers that it was so good if their intent was to live in the home for the longer term (7+ years) so what better way to put my money where my mouth was.
I obtained a loan pre-approval letter in the summer of 2011 in order to make a few offers on homes that caught my fancy. I submitted a few offers on homes in Woodbridge and West Irvine but nothing panned out. Then the home that I purchased came along?.a dreaded short sale in West Irvine. I knew the floor plan and submitted a semi-low ball offer sight unseen (I could have always pulled the offer later on if the inspection turned up some deal breakers). The listing agent was a regular West Irvine listing agent so I thought maybe things would go on the ?up and up? for a change with this short sale. After about 2-3 months of radio silence, the listing calls me out of the blue and says that they got a verbal short sale approval from Bank of America with my offer price and start getting things going on the inspection and loan side. The short sale had 2 Countrywide (BofA now) loans so we all figured we just needed approval from the first lender and we?d be good to go. Unfortunately, a week later the listing agent calls me back with some bad news. Apparently the second loan was owned by a different set of investors so we?ll need to get a separate short sale approval from them and the list agent said that I might have to ?kick in? some additional funds for the second if what the first lender offered wasn?t enough. I said no problem as long as it?s not a huge amount. So two weeks later I get a call from the listing agent saying that the second lender would only approve the short sale if they got $X which meant that I?d have to kick in about $10k more into escrow to make it happen. I already built in a bit of wiggle room on the offer price so the extra funds to the second were within my max price for the home.
After the short sale approvals were received, I scheduled my inspector to come out (Matt) to go check out the home. The home was a MESS?basically a combination of a packrat, slob, and pig all rolled up into one lived in the home. It needed a LOT of cosmetic work but the good news was the inspector said the bones of the house were solid, basically calling it a diamond in the rough (the perfect description for the home). The home had a large lot for Irvine (5k SF), built-in Viking BBQ with the gas line attached, and a pool/spa that needed work (net positive for me). Being that I?ve gone through a few renovation projects in the past, I was more than fine with a bit of a fixer project. The condition pool/spa did raise an issue with the lender even though the pool/spa was fenced off. Basically the lender classified the pool/spa as a safety issue since it was basically empty and not functioning. The lender stated that I would have to repair the pool in order to close on the loan. Well, that wasn?t going to happen because the seller would not allow me to do it and I wouldn?t do because there was no guarantee that the sale would close. The solution was to have the appraiser ?take out? the value of the pool/spa from the home and since I was putting more than 20% down there was no appraised value issues. So we cleared that hurdle.
Some of you guys may remember that I sold my Ambridge Plan 4 condo in Quail Hill back in the fall of 2008 for $620k. I missed the peak where I could have gotten $725k-$750k in 2006 but I?m still happy because I bought it for around $550k and prices are now $540k-$550k for the same floor plan. After the sale I became a TIC renter again. I was fortunate enough that several of my buyers had similar budgets and requirements for their home as I did so having seen hundreds of homes in various cities like Irvine, Tustin Ranch, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Niguel, Foothill Ranch, Orange, Costa Mesa, etc?I began to learn quickly on what each city had to offer in terms of a home for my price range. My ?must-have? requirements were the following:
- Detached single family home
- 3+ bedrooms with a downstairs bedroom or office/den
- FULL driveway
- 1,800sf+
- Under $700k
- Not near railroad tracks, the 5 or 405 Freeways, backing up to a big street, or near power lines
There were a few floor plans in Laguna Niguel, Orange (Serrano Heights), and Aliso Viejo that fit the bill but ultimately I determined Irvine was where I wanted to be. I have lived in Irvine since 2000 and my mom lives here too. Also, most of my buyers are looking for a home in Irvine and Irvine/Tustin Ranch and since that area is centrally located it was an easy choice. I identified a few floor plans in West Irvine, Oak Creek, Woodbridge, and Portola Springs that we on my short list. The front runner was the Plan 2 over at Las Ventanas. The game plan was to purchase a home sometime in 2012 as my finances were ready and a combination of lower prices & super low interest rates made the numbers (I?m a numbers guy afterall) make a lot of sense to buy. Besides, I was telling my buyers that it was so good if their intent was to live in the home for the longer term (7+ years) so what better way to put my money where my mouth was.
I obtained a loan pre-approval letter in the summer of 2011 in order to make a few offers on homes that caught my fancy. I submitted a few offers on homes in Woodbridge and West Irvine but nothing panned out. Then the home that I purchased came along?.a dreaded short sale in West Irvine. I knew the floor plan and submitted a semi-low ball offer sight unseen (I could have always pulled the offer later on if the inspection turned up some deal breakers). The listing agent was a regular West Irvine listing agent so I thought maybe things would go on the ?up and up? for a change with this short sale. After about 2-3 months of radio silence, the listing calls me out of the blue and says that they got a verbal short sale approval from Bank of America with my offer price and start getting things going on the inspection and loan side. The short sale had 2 Countrywide (BofA now) loans so we all figured we just needed approval from the first lender and we?d be good to go. Unfortunately, a week later the listing agent calls me back with some bad news. Apparently the second loan was owned by a different set of investors so we?ll need to get a separate short sale approval from them and the list agent said that I might have to ?kick in? some additional funds for the second if what the first lender offered wasn?t enough. I said no problem as long as it?s not a huge amount. So two weeks later I get a call from the listing agent saying that the second lender would only approve the short sale if they got $X which meant that I?d have to kick in about $10k more into escrow to make it happen. I already built in a bit of wiggle room on the offer price so the extra funds to the second were within my max price for the home.
After the short sale approvals were received, I scheduled my inspector to come out (Matt) to go check out the home. The home was a MESS?basically a combination of a packrat, slob, and pig all rolled up into one lived in the home. It needed a LOT of cosmetic work but the good news was the inspector said the bones of the house were solid, basically calling it a diamond in the rough (the perfect description for the home). The home had a large lot for Irvine (5k SF), built-in Viking BBQ with the gas line attached, and a pool/spa that needed work (net positive for me). Being that I?ve gone through a few renovation projects in the past, I was more than fine with a bit of a fixer project. The condition pool/spa did raise an issue with the lender even though the pool/spa was fenced off. Basically the lender classified the pool/spa as a safety issue since it was basically empty and not functioning. The lender stated that I would have to repair the pool in order to close on the loan. Well, that wasn?t going to happen because the seller would not allow me to do it and I wouldn?t do because there was no guarantee that the sale would close. The solution was to have the appraiser ?take out? the value of the pool/spa from the home and since I was putting more than 20% down there was no appraised value issues. So we cleared that hurdle.
