Posted by Forest on September 3, 2008
I’m about 75% sure I’m going to buy-out my roommate and become the sole owner of this house. It’s a very scary but exciting prospect. I’ll probably make my final decision this weekend after I talk to my parents about it.
In other, sort of related, housing news. Our renter moved out this weekend and I’m sad to see him go. He was my college roommate and one of my bestest friends. He’s moved in with his sister for a bit while he finishes his house search which is winding down. I’m excited for him to take this next step in his life, but yes, sad to see him go. Also sad because everything just got more expensive. We lose not only his rent check every month, but also the third of the utilities that he covered! Not to mention that starting in September we now need to start paying $200 in association fees every month. So that’s another $100 bucks a month. I think losing our renter is going to cost me about $300 a month (remember we gave him a sweet deal on rent to get him to move here in the first place) Now it’s just C and I and we still aren’t getting along super well. To combat this, I plan on spending more and more of my time at Bird’s new place!
Oh, did I mention that with T’s departure, I now get my room back and I am done sleeping on the floor. Hallelujah. Actually, it wasn’t terrible, but it was getting old.
Posted by Forest on August 16, 2008
Issues with my roommate persist. This morning I found a pile of toenails on the coffee table. I kid you not, a neat little pile of six toenails. Totally gross.
With no interest from buyers and very little interest from renters, I’ve been considering a third option when it comes to my housing situation and that is buying out my roommate. We own the house 50-50 and he told me yesterday that he’d be willing to sell his share for $5,000 which is the amount he put down when we bought. It’s an offer that I’m seriously considering. There is a lot to think about because there is a lot of money involved. Not only the $5,000, but also the mortgage that would be fully in my name making me fully responsible for it. It’s a scary thought, but also exciting because I would own the home full out and I think in the long term, it might turn out to be a good investment.
As always, I’ll try to keep you guys posted as to what happens.
Posted by Forest on August 2, 2008
I’m cleaning the house this morning because we got another hit off Craigslist from a potential renter. It’s a single dad and his son and he said he’s looking for a longer term lease (3-5 years). He’s coming by at 1:00 pm to see the place.
I’m still not incredibly keen on the idea of being a landlord as I feel in over my head, but I’ve been in discussions with my roommate about potentially using a property management company. A friend of mine is using one which costs $100 a month. If we used them, it’d only be $50 each and I think that might be worth the peace of mind and lack of hassles. Of course, all this depends on whether or not we get someone that actually wants to live here and not just lookers.
Posted by Forest on July 25, 2008
We got an email today from the woman we showed the house to on Monday. She said she was going to pass because she has decided to search for something closer to her work.
I’m actually kind of relieved because I think we were getting ourselves in a little over our heads. I’m not prepared to be a landlord. The roommate and I have talked it over and we’ve decided not to pursue any more renters at this point. The house will remain up for sale, but we’re not getting very much action there either. I think we might just have to suck it up and ride out this market because we just can’t afford to lower the price any more.
Posted by Forest on July 21, 2008
Friday: So Friday night after work, HB and I met for a dinner date (Personal update - This girl I’ve been seeing that I mentioned before, well, now we’re official; I’ll call her HB) and then we were off to wander through some neighborhoods where she is looking to move in September. Dinner was pretty good and we ended up splitting the tab down the middle. We also got free dessert by registering for the restaurant’s e-newsletter. The chocolate cake was probably even more delicious because it was free! My half of the bill was about $13.
Saturday: I woke up to find an email from my roommate saying that we need to clean the house because we need to show the house to a potential renter. (Housing update: After absolutely no interest in our house, we listed it on Craigslist last week to gauge rental interest) The problem is, roommate broke his ankle last weekend and now sits on the couch immobile. He is going to be no help cleaning. And you’d think that the house was still clean because we were trying to keep it clean for showings while we were trying to sell, but no, the place had gotten kind of dusty and needed to be vacuumed. We just sorta had let it go a bit because we had no interest in the house from potential buyers. Anyways, so I started cleaning the house. Then a friend called who was in from out of town for the day. A surprise visit! Perfect. So she stopped by and we hung out and ended up running over to Jimmy John’s. I bought our lunch for about $10. Also bought the roommate two sandwiches (one for now, one for later) as he can’t really leave the house to get food at all. So he owes me $10.
As the afternoon progressed, I continued to clean because we were under the impression this woman was going to visit our house on Sunday. Once the place was clean, I had a birthday party to attend. We ended up going out to dinner for this friend’s birthday and I had to pay for my meal and a share of the birthday girl’s. This cost me about $30.
Sunday: The roommates and I picked up HB in the morning and went to church. After church we all stopped off at Arby’s for a quick lunch. There goes another $6.50. Then in the afternoon HB and I played some tennis. I was pretty hungry after tennis but I haven’t bought groceries in over a month. We ended up running over to Little Caesars and picking up a pizza for $5.
And that concludes my spending for the weekend! Yikes, one of the more pricier weekends in recent memory for me. Oh well, it was mostly fun. I could have done without the birthday party on Saturday night, but what are you gonna do? Also, the potential renter never called back on Saturday about seeing our place, so all that cleaning was for naught. She did eventually call Sunday night and is now coming to look at our place tonight!
Posted by Forest on June 25, 2008
We got an email from our realtor yesterday noting that we hadn’t received a single call about our house yet and that we were probably priced a little on the high side.
Basically, she was telling us to lower the price. And I knew from the very beginning that we were at least very close to overpriced if not just straight-up overpriced. But we’re also priced pretty much at the break even point. She’s the expert, so she should know, but it’s only been two weeks and everyone knew going into this that it wasn’t going to happen just like that! Patience is a virtue. I don’t want to lower the price just yet.
I’m not prepared to take a huge loss on this thing, so I’m not exactly sure what we’re going to do. I’d be fine with taking a small to moderate loss (not sure what exactly that means in dollar terms!), just to get it off my hands. But I don’t have to move. Yes, the commute sucks. Yes, things aren’t as good as they could be with my co-owner, but they’re not exactly terrible either. So we’ll see. Time will tell. As always, I will keep you updated.
Posted by Forest on June 17, 2008
Both of my roommates were out of town this weekend, so I had the entire house to myself. And I loved it! It’s a rare occurrence for me to be home alone, so I took the opportunity to lay low and just chill out all weekend, enjoying the peace and quiet.
Which got me thinking about living alone. Well, I’ve been thinking about it ever since things went a little sour with my co-owner last fall, but now that the house is for sale, it feels like a little more of a real possibility. If the place does ever sell, I’m going to need somewhere to live, so it’s worth thinking about. I’ve never lived alone before and the primary reason is because it’s so much more expensive than sharing the bills with roommates.
But now, at this point in my life, I believe it’ll be worth the extra money. Although, I’m not 100% certain that’s what I’m going to do. I have a few options of other people I could live with, people that I would get along with, people that I’ve lived with before. But I’m very tempted to go it alone, and that’s the way I’m leaning. I have several friends that are now living on their own and they swear by it.
Lots of people around the PF blogosphere have written about experiences being worth spending more money on compared to things, and I completely agree. I think living on my own would count as an experience worth spending a little more on.
What is your living situation and how do you feel about?
If you live on your own, is it everything it’s cracked up to be? Do you get lonely or do you just get a fish and start to talk to it?
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