Tips on Purchasing a Foreclosure - Part 1

This will be the first in a series of posts about the process of purchasing a foreclosed home. It's a tough process and takes a certain mindset, personality and a LOT of patience. Micheal and I learned a lot going through the shopping and buying process that might be helpful.

Part 1 - Getting in the right mindset.

If you're purchasing your first home you might find out very quickly that there may be a large discrepancy between your "dream home" and what you can realistically afford. Especially if you grew up in Kansas and you're now purchasing a home in the greater Washington DC area. To say that we were shocked by what our preapproval could purchase would be a gross understatement.

After much searching we soon realized that even with the recent downturn in the market the only houses that were in our price range were either short sales or foreclosures (more on the difference between these later.) So the dream of walking into a pristine beautiful home was let go and the mindset of 'what can we feasibly deal with' and 'what can we feasibly fix' was embraced. It's definitely not puppies and rainbows but it's reality. We are very fortunate in that both Micheal and I have experience renovating homes and with an electrician, a plumber, a general manager, the owners of a real estate business, and a landscaper a phone call (unfortunately 1,100 miles...) we had faith that would could transform the proverbial "diamond in the rough" into our dream home.

So in my humble opinion these are some general tips on the who, what and when of purchasing a foreclosure.

If you have unlimited time and funds - anyone can buy a foreclosure! Unfortunately we did not have either of these...

Purchasing a foreclosure is not for you if:

• If you are easily grossed out. We walked into homes filled with mold, bugs, trash, food on the counter from who knows when and regularly just filth.
• You don't think you could live and renovate at the same time. This has been a very taxing experience and we're only just beginning. It's difficult to finish projects and there is always something to fix...
• You do not have A LOT of patience. We looked at what seemed like an endless stream of houses that all seemed to blend together including several days of marathon (exhausting) searching (Thank you Sharie!!) - the searching process requires patience, the purchasing process requires even more patience, and then renovating your new home, in our case with your new spouse, might test the patience of a saint.
• You are an pessimist. To do this you absolutely have to be able to see the bright side, the potential and the silver lining. You can easily get bogged down in feelings of defeat and frustration and become amazingly overwhelmed.
• If you can't curse the person who lived in the house before you! Someone has to take the blame for all the ills that you will experience during the renovation process. I don't know how many times Micheal and I just look at each other and say "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING??" Yellow walls with blue trim, really?? You're going to need to blame someone, directing it away from those in your direct presence is a good thing.

Purchasing a foreclosure IS for you if:

• You can see the beauty and potential in anything.
• You are willing to sacrifice comfort in the short run for the long-term greater good.
• You are type A enough to help navigate the difficult purchasing process but type B enough to make it through the renovation process.
• If you go to garage sales or cruise craigslist looking for old furniture that simply needs a makeover.
• You either have the skill or money to transform your foreclosed house into a fabulous home.

Obviously I'm not trying to encourage or discourage anyone from purchasing a foreclosed home, but from my experience it's not for everyone.

Stay tuned for Part 2 - I'm ready to start shopping...now what do I do?

Craigslist Finds!! Outfitting your new home on a budget.

When moving into your first home, especially if it needs a lot of work, you likely don't have a lot of extra money laying around for upgrades beyond the necessities. However, if you are like us are still hauling around some furniture, housewares, etc. that have seen better days...you might even still have that free dresser that was left behind by some college freshman from you days as an RA... (yeah, it's that bad.)

So we have had to figure out creative ways to either update or replace our household items: enter Washington DC area craigslist. Craigslist is a free classifieds website where people can list their goods for sale. KC craigslist is okay, Richmond craiglist again, okay - but DC craigslist is insane!! I am fully convinced that if you have a truck you could furnish your entire house virtually for free. People in this area are fairly nomadic and instead of moving their furniture they list it on craiglist or put it out on the curb.

Here are two recent scores that I am really excited about - Micheal claims I have amazing craiglist luck - I maintain it's total skill. :)

This is a dresser that we bought for $25 - it's a really really nice piece that just needs some love. It has dovetail joints and is real wood. Just going to give it a light sand and restain!


This is a beautiful antique sewing machine table with a Commander sewing machine. It's in amazing condition and the machine still works. I got it for the bargain price of...

...FREE!!! I saw some at the Community Forklift in much worse shape priced around $150 so this was a steal. I was just going for the table to put my sewing machine in but I think I'm going to keep it in tact.

We also bought a piece of furniture today to make my custom closet, look for a post coming up on that!!

Attacked!!!

This morning Micheal and I got up and decided that we would go remove the black plastic garden dividers out of the front yard. They were no longer really doing any good and were a part of an old landscaping scheme that we're going to move away from.

So I go out all gung-ho and just start ripping out the one surrounding the flower bed then we moved on to the one on the other side that really doesn't seem to be surrounding anything...

We pull...and pull...and it seems to go on forever... Finally the last piece is pulled out and Micheal almost fell over! (Unfortunately I don't have a picture of that!)



This is where it started. Micheal starts walking back around and all of a sudden I hear "OUCH!!" I look over and see two hornets trying to attack him! They're swarming all over the earth we have disrupted and Micheal was stung four times.



He yelled at me to get inside, so I open the door to go inside and who sneaks out the door? Kali! Of course this is the first time she makes a run for it with pissed off hornets swarming all over the yard. Micheal ran after her and finally caught up with her. They came around the back of the house to avoid the bugs.

They all seem to have dissipated now and we are going to have to find where their underground nest is to dispose of them...oh joy...

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Catching up!

So I wanted the blog to be a bit more "together" before we released it to the public but with limited time to just sit and mess with the layout the blog, like the house, will be a work in process. So now we're going to catch you up on some projects that are in progress!

The Master Bedroom - Wow this room was special...



Not only was the wallpaper lovely, the yellow and blue paint was a cheap oil-based paint painted over latex. It is NOT a good idea to used oil-based paint over latex, it just peels right off and leaves a nasty finish.

The renovation plan:
1. Strip wallpaper (check!)
2. Sand & repair walls (check!)
3. Prime & paint walls (check!)
4. Stripe & paint trim (partially complete)
5. Paint ceiling (still to do)
6. Replace ugly can lights in ceiling with a ceiling fan (still to do)

Kari's How To Guide for Stripping Wallpaper

So in our house there are a few decisions that need to be made before starting any project. First - do we have everything that we need or do we need to make a Home Depot run; Second - is this a one person or two person job; and Third - Is this a kitty friendly or not kitty friendly job?

What you'll need to strip the wallpaper - a sprayer of some sort (I used a garden sprayer - super time saver!), fabric softener, scraper (metal or rubber), and a plastic drop cloth.

This is a one person job, it might go a bit faster with two but it was easily done with just one. Also, this is not a kitty friendly job - it makes a huge mess! So we had to put the cats up in another room (as we currently have no door on our MBR.)

So, fill your sprayer with warm water and put in some fabric softener - I don't have exact measurements, I generally "feel" things out as I go (Micheal hates this...) Before you start spraying or scraping put down your drop cloth, it will make cleanup SO much easier. Then spray down the seams of the wallpaper. At first I was spraying all of the wallpaper and this worked, but I found it much more effective to just spray the seams to get the peeling started and the rest of the paper peeled much easier when dry.

My wallpaper came off in two layers, the outside paper and the layer underneath with the glue. Work in panels, spray a seam - let it set for about 2-3 minutes and tear down that panel. Then saturate the remaining glue/paper layer and let it sit for 5-10 minutes. For me it nearly fell off the wall when I put the scraper to it. Using this method I got the wall done in about a half and hour and didn't have to actually "scrape" any wallpaper off, it just peeled and fell off as I went.

The process:



You can see all steps in this photo - on the left is the clean wall, in the middle is the glue/paper layer that needs to be saturated and peeled, and on the right is the lovely wallpaper.

Clean all that up and then patch any holes that are in the wall. We had to removed several sheet rock anchors that left pretty big holes in the wall so that was a fun process. After you've patched your holes (we used the hole-patching material that comes in a tube and turns from pink to white when dry) sand the patched spaces and the old paint on the walls. Clean all the dust off the walls, tape, prime and paint!



We used one coat of primer since the yellow was easily covered and then painted with a Low VOC paint called Harmony from Sherwin Williams. It was AMAZING, almost no smell at all! Good for us and good for the environment. It took two coats of green paint to get the the color and consistency that we wanted.



We have now taken down all the trim to refinish it...(that will be another post...) and are hoping to finish this room up soon! Leave us some love in the comment box, anyone can leave comments even if you don't have a Blogger or Gmail account. I'm trying to set up an option so you can subscribe to updates by email. Check back soon for more updates!

Welcome to Our Blog!

Hello all! This blog will be dedicated to the herculean task we have undertaken of renovating our first home. We purchased this home as a foreclosure in July of 2009 and intend to transform it over the next few years and return it to it's original glory - i.e. transform it from a sad foreclosure to a fabulous home!

Our goals for this blog are to:

1. Provide tips and insight on shopping for and purchasing a foreclosure.
2. Share our renovation successes, failures and ideas for renovating on a fixed budget (DIY!!)
3. Allow our friends and family to keep up with our progress and entice them to come visit!
4. Keep a record of our progress so if (when) we feel defeated we can look back and see how far we've come.

Posts to come include:

1. Introductions (Micheal, Kari, Kali, Indi, & Moshe!)
2. Shopping for a foreclosure
3. The offer/purchase/closing process
4. Catching you on up the projects we already have under way

Add us to your reader and check back often for updates!!

-Kari