We're past the car

Ok...good news. Sarah and I had dinner and sorted through all the ugly details of 'abandoned' car. We're ok and moving forward but I'm sorry to report though that I believed this car has cause some 'hard' and 'hurt' feelings that we both have to sort through. This will take time.

The 'Sarah Situation'

With Sarah, there always seems to be a 'situation'.

Today, I learned that Sarah's boyfriend has bought her a car and she's afraid to call me to tell me the car I bought for her is broken...for good this time. So, for all practical purposes, she has abandoned the Ford Taurus. This makes me feel sad on so many levels.

Is that my car?

I can't believe it! Ed and I found the 2005 Ford Taurus that I bought for Sarah Nicole Rinehart sitting in the parking lot of Long John Silver's ... 2 blocks from our house. I asked the Long John Silver's employees if they were aware of this car and they said yes "...it had been sitting there for about 2 weeks...with the window down'. They were getting ready to call the police to check and see if was stolen. Another Sarah situation!!!

Of course, the car would barely run. It sounded like the engine was going to shake out of the hood and it probably would have if you left it running very long. We were able to drive it home with the spare key (that I spent $100 to make before giving it over to her) and parked it in the garage. I'm waiting for that phone call when she actually does go check on it again (who knows, maybe she never will) and it's gone. Not sure if she'll call the police or me!!!

Anyway, Mitch took a look at it and said it had thrown a rod, and the back window was busted out. Thanks to Sarah, in less than 1 year (8 months to be exact) the car is ready for the trash can. I've already had to replace the head gasket back in May. I remember it well, I gave it back to her, directly from the mechanics, on her 20th birthday, May 7th.

The poor poor Ford Taurus is now going to the auction and hopefully will find a nice person to take car of it.

As for Sarah...who knows how she'll get around? She's got something going now as I haven't heard a peep from her.

And me...I'll never buy Sarah another car...possibly nothing ever again! She seems to believe in disposables. If it doesn't work or she doesn't need it any longer...throw it away!

Very sad. Hurts my heart.

The Bridlewood house passed inspection

Good news again today! The Bridlewood house passed the home inspection today without any big surprises. Just a lot of cosmetic and handyman type things.

Laura has a walk-through scheduled with a property management company tomorrow for the Carrollton home. After that, we'll start on the North Richland Hills (NRH) home.

Things are moving along!!!

Securing financing is next.

We're not selling the Carrollton house after all!

Today we spoke with Lee Heffley, our accountant. Ed told him the whole story and Lee told Ed all the benefits there is to owning rental property. After a long conversation with many questions, Ed and Lee hung up and Ed decided we needed to keep the Carrollton house and rent it out.

My sister Laura, our real estate agent, is going to be so confused. We've had two offers to lease the house while it was on the market (135 days) with no buyers and now that we have a buyer, we want to lease it. Crazy!!!

Anyway, so the new plan is to hire a management company and let them rent it out and manage it for us. Neither Ed nor I have the time or patience to do that...AND we can write off the cost of the management company - win/win!

So here's we stand today.
1. Both houses will be rented by utilizing a management company
2. Bridlewood has contract is at the underwriters
3. Ed and Lisa need to secure financing

More to come!

A sudden turn of events

Wow...who could have predicted today!!!

Ed is in crazy meetings all day, I'm working in the morning which included my annual review with my manager (good news! that went well) and then off to a funeral; my good friend Larry Borne's mother passed away. After the funeral, I was talking with Larry's son-in-law Austin, about the house he recently purchased as a rental unit. He was telling me about all the tax benefits there is to owning rental property vs. your primary residence. Wow...that certainly sounded interesting given the fact that we haven't received an offer on our Carrollton home.

As soon as I got in the car from the funeral, Laura called me to tell me we received an offer on the Carrollton home. I immediately thought 'Praise the Lord'! Then she went on to tell me about the low-ball offer they gave us. As we were talking, Ed called into Laura and we hung up. I knew Ed wouldn't be happy with the offer but I also knew how much he wanted to sell this house so we wouldn't have three mortgage payments. I thought for sure he would accept the offer and we would walk away with a 'sold' house...no, that's not what happened at all.

Ed countered the offer.

Ed knew something I did not know; Ed had received his commission check from his Q2 deal and now things had changed! Finances were not as important as before and now we're needing more tax shelters than we did earlier that day. Remember, I was just talking to Austin about tax benefits less than 30 minutes earlier. We decided to call our accountant tomorrow to learn more about this to help us make a educated decision.

Still, no word

Well, we still haven't heard anything on the Carrollton house. Keeping the fingers crossed!

A little less stressful!

Today was a relatively quiet day comparatively speaking and a lot less stressful. There were a few addendum's to make to the contract; basically, we pushed the close date to Sept. 3rd from August 26th. Still searching for the 'perfect' financing but I'll will stop after we've checked out three different companies. Hope to have that accomplished tomorrow.

Carrollton house update: Sorry to report...still no offer! My tummy is getting a little nervous but for some reason, I still have a good feeling. Only time will tell and this is definitely a wait-and-see game!

Laura says that Kristin is searching for a roommate to move into the townhome with. I hope it works out for her although I hope it's not too much for her in the end. I certainly wouldn't want to put her a place that would overextend her financially.

Until tomorrow.
Lisa

We were what??? Accepted.....ALREADY?

We were finally able to get the contract submitted today and within 2 hours, they accepted our offer. OMG...now what do we do!!!

Hopefully, we'll get that offer on the Carrollton house tomorrow. That's what the Real Estate person said today! Please Lord!!!

We're not ready

Wow..today was a whirlwind!

Now what do we do? We found a house that we love, we have another house for sale (that's been on the market for 130 days without an offer) and we live in yet another house. Do we really want 3 mortgage payments? Why of course...it's the American way!!! Actually, we don't want 3 mortgage payments so we decided to pray. We asked the Lord if this was NOT right for us...then to close all the doors quickly. However, it was from Him, than to let this happen quickly and effortlessly.

So today, was a day of preparing and learning.

We learned that Fannie May was selling this house and offered a special finance program for foreclosures called 'Home Path' financing. We were able to get a pre-qualification letter from one of the Home Path lenders in order to submit an offer and also started putting together the financing and contract...but what offer do we submit? This took longer than expected.

Carrollton house update: Laura called to check on yesterday's showing with the Real Estate person...good news, they're going to submit an offer!

This house has good bones!

We asked Laura to get a key so we could see the inside of the house, and low-and-behold, the selling agent was holding an open house...how convenient. There were several other folks that came in to see the house too while we were there. However, meeting Michael helped seal the deal. The next door neighbor, Michael came over to see how much they were asking for the house - just out of curiosity. He told us that the house had a new air conditioner and the pool actually worked (even though it was green) and only needed a couple things fixed to run like new. He had been putting 'shocker' in there monthly and running the pool so it wouldn't turn into a mosquito pond because he has young kids. Anyway, he said the house was in good condition it just needed some TLC as it hadn't been cared for in several months -- and that was quit evident.

We loved the house even though it does need some work. Laura said it well when she said 'this house has good bones'.

Ok...what's next!

By the way...we had another showing on the Carrollton house today. Somehow, I have a feeling this might be good.

I think we found a house

Ed and I have never been able to decide if we wanted to stay in the townhome, mainly because it's kind of small for both of us, but we could pay it off and live mortgage free OR should we purchase a little larger home that we could enjoy for many years to come. Because of this, I registered with Zip Realty and they send me all new houses postings in the zip code of my choice. Well...I've been doing this for about a year now and have seen many wonderful houses come up for sale, but none that I have ever thought was the 'one'...until this one. Not sure why, but I just really liked this home when I saw it and there weren't even that many photos of it but for some reason, it just seemed right. I asked Ed if we could drive by and just look at the outside of it. As we were driving into the neighborhood, we both kind of sensed something. Anyway, to make a long story short...we both fell in love with it. It was exactly what we have been looking for. The only problem is that is a foreclosure and that meant complications and a little more work than we were really wanting. In addition to this, our house in Carrollton is still on the market...and has been for 129 days, without one offer. What the heck...we have to see it!

We're Celebrating our 1st Anniversary in Paris

Ed surprised me with a trip to Paris to celebrate our 1st wedding anniversary!!! How wonderful was that.
We flew out of DFW on Friday, July 2nd and arrived in Paris on Saturday, July 3rd - our anniversary day. Ed had an incredible lunch planned for us at Le Jules Verne in the Eiffel Tower.

As you can see, this was a beautiful restaurant (which takes about 2 months to get a reservation --- even for lunch) and the only problem was that we were sooo tired and because our room wasn't ready, we were unable to change clothes so we had to wear the clothes that we left Dallas in. We felt a little uncomfortable, well, I should say that I felt uncomfortable! Anyway, we had a lovely time!!!