So I just off the phone with our credit union and they had to counter offer on our loan request because we haven’t owned our dog grooming business for 2 years.  They can’t use the income we make on our business till we have owned it for two years.  Unfortunately this makes our loan significantly less then what we had wanted.  I’m going to get back in touch with another lender that we had a pre-approval with and work on getting another pre-approval from them again, since they were able to to do it back in Sept.  Just a little road block in our pursuit of happiness.  Nothing we can’t work through.  I understand the reasoning and would like to keep the loan under our bank, but it just might not end up that way.

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Actually this isn’t the begining, but it is the begining of us really house hunting.  For the past 6 months we have been using Redfin and Trulia to search for homes that we might be interested in.  The problem we ran into with Redfin is that the concept is great and their search is top notch, but they won’t work with short sales.  Now hold on before you tell me short sales suck, I already know this.  I’m just interested in trying for the homes we like, and if that involves the possibility of a short sale I want to be able to make sure I’m using a Realtor that wants to work with us to find our home.  This is what brings us to our possible new Realtor, Dan Slater from Orange Realty.  He seems like a really nice guy so that’s a start.  He mentioned he is a board member on the city of Orange Chamber of Commerce and he knows one of the marketing guys at my work.  Next I’ll have to see if my barber knows him (Dick seems to know everyone).  Here are our housing qualifications.

We are looking for homes under the $400k range and we don’t want to deal with PMI
We love Orange and would love to live in the Plaza area but we know we can’t afford that, so we are looking in a couple various Neighborhoods in Orange and also Garden Grove.
3 Bedroom 1+/2 Bath
1000+ Sq/Ft house on 7000+ Sq/Ft lot
Prefer to have a back yard without a pool
2 car garage is a must

He’s going to take us out looking at homes on Sunday, so that should be fun.  I will keep you all posted on how things go and I’ll try to take some pictures of the homes we go look at.

Oh and for you political fans, no this is now Dan Slater from Colorado. ;)

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Woo-hoo! Good job American bank CEOs! Thanks for doing your part in ruining the economy!  You did one heckova job!  Oh and thanks to you US Government for taking such a proactive stance in the ridiculousness of the housing market!  Mission Accomplished!

Thumbs up to you all!

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I wrote to my congressmen for the first time ever today.

Dear Congressman Campbell,

Watching the news lately it has come clear that many recent homeowners and a number of banks and investment firms made bad decisions when it came to mortgages. The US government has no reason to bail out anyone for bad business decisions. One of the main detractors to many investments are the possibilities of risks, they are known and are accepted as such. Companies should not be bailed out when they make bad investment decisions; all this will do will condition other companies to conducting the same types of investments and look for handouts as well. Along with these businesses the “homeowners” that decided to make bad decisions when it came to purchasing a home deserve no assistance with their bad choices. People should be responsible for their own actions and their own mistakes, and don’t deserve a pat on the back and a bail out for their poor choices. My wife and I choose to not purchase a home the last couple years because we understood that the housing market was a mess, we didn’t want to overextend ourselves on a home we couldn’t really afford. It was our choice to not buy a house, just like it was others choice to buy a house. I ask you to please vote against any bill that offers to give money to companies that made bad business decisions and wasted away billions of dollars on bad mortgages and debt. Please don’t condition these businesses and people that they will be helped out by the government every time that they make a bad choice.

It’s frustrating to see that my good choices are being punished while others bad choices are being rewarded. I can’t vote for someone that decides to reward these businesses that made poor choices, just like I can’t vote for someone that is going to bail people out because they can’t responsible for their own debts that they signed on the dotted line for. I do agree that there should be regulation of some type to prevent this in the future, but what’s done is done. My vote for you and your party holds in the balance with your vote on this bill. Don’t waste away $700,000,000,000.

Regards,

Daniel Schoonover

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I’m going to save this here for prosperity.  This is a quote from me on 07/26/07.

What sucks here is if I move out of Orange County, I’m still paying 500,000-900,000 for a house.

The problem I see in LA/OC area is they build these HUGE houses with barely any front or back lawns. Talking 2000 sq foot plus places with 4+ bedrooms. They really pack these places in. So you are right up next to your neighbor. My wife and I just want a nice small house we don’t need something gigantic. Honestly the LA/OC market is built on greed. People want huge houses, tons of toys, and huge profits. I hate the market here… We’d move but all our family is here, and we just bought a business and I have a great job. I don’t understand how people our age afford this stuff, other then they are putting themselves in major debt.

We got approved for a mortgage, too bad nearly every house in Orange County that fits our current price range is a distressed property.  This type of ridiculous shit is a joke.  And now we, being smart taxpayers that didn’t want to get in over our head get screwed even more since the government has decided to bail out all the idiots that decided to do creative financing.  $700,000,000…  Not to mention my retirement fund has lost a bunch as of late.

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For those of you that have never gone through the process of getting pre-approved for a loan, it is a bitch.  You have to get everything that shows you have money together for the last two years and give it to the bank so they can make sure you are viable for a loan.  Even when you think you found all the paperwork you end up having to find more paperwork!

And we aren’t even sure if we are buying a house yet, this is just to get pre-approved so a realtor will actually work with us!

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