2009 in Review

I'm really going to try to keep a blog updated this year. For realz. But first, last year in review.

January, 2009 started with a worsening economy and lots of cold job leads. By the end of the month, things looked grim. I took a chance on a very shady Craigslist post regarding some employment with an athletic facility that involved marketing and customer relations. Which in February lead to Chicago Sailing...


Within two months of starting at Chicago Sailing, I'd traveled from the North Branch of the Chicago River to Belmont Harbor aboard a houseboat. (Remember when Chicago was trying to get the Olympics? So glad that didn't happen!)


I spent a harried 6 months learning a different business (though still a leisure activity), new "life skills", and meeting lots of very interesting people... More about that later! Once October rolled around, I realized how busy I had been and had something even more pressing to work on.

See, one Saturday in late March or early April, the manfriend and I were getting ready to go out. He had worked the night before with one of the Long Room bouncers who has a day job working as a real estate agent. We had been tracking Craigslist and looking at 2 or 3 bedroom apartments to move in to when our leases were up at the end of July (coincidental, no?). Jeremy had been talking about houses you could buy, in Chicago, for under $200,000.

By the end of April, we had a contract on our little piece of property in Chicago.


A classic Chicago bungalow, on 1 1/2 city lots, the picture of the outside is much better than the inside. Over the course of 4 months we discovered mold, evidence of squirrels and many involved projects. We finally closed at the end of August and spent one month trying to get it ready to move in to! THIS WAS NOT ENOUGH TIME.

It looked good on the outside.



On the inside we chilled in our bedroom, luckily it's big and about the size of a studio. Last week we got running water on the first floor. And a working kitchen. The joy I hold for things such as running water cannot be explained to people who have not gone through a rehab!

So, in short, 2009 held a new job, moving in with the manfriend and a homestead of our very own - desperately in need of repair. I'm hoping for a calmer 2010, but in the meantime, lots of posts to process!

The other thing I've been up to...

So about 6 - 7 weeks ago the man-friend and I were cooking dinner and he started talking about these houses in Albany Park that were selling for $150,000. In short, we determined that we should investigate. When again were we going to get the legitimate opportunity to buy a single family home in Chicago at a price we can afford on the brown line?

For the last month and a half we have learned a whole lot about buying a home.

The first weekend we drove around just looking at the outsides of buildings and the areas they were in. Were these places we would be happy with? As it turns out, they were. So then we looked on the insides (luckily we have a friend - Jeremy Segal with @ Properties to show us the ropes). There was one really terrible place and a few others that we could actually see ourselves living in, with enough work.

So then it became about financing, which is when I learned the two biggest take aways I have found thus far.

1. Your credit score is not as bad as you think it is. Ok, that may not be true for some. But for me, I was totally scared that the random times I got caught up with work and forgot to pay my utility bills had ruined my credit score. Not true at all. There are other factors involved, such as assets to debt. I have always maintained low balances on my credit cards and consistently paid them off, this certainly helped. There are things you can do to improve your score, now is the time to do that. Especially with credit cards increasing interest rates and tightening their lending.

2. The myth of "pre-approval." Jeremy hooked us up with a few brokers and we filled out a form. What we then got back from that is a Good Faith Estimate. That means that a broker thinks they can secure you financing at that interest rate. After you decide to make an offer, your broker can provide you with a pre-approval letter.

I guess there could be a third, your offer is just a starting point especially with bank owned properties.

At this point we have made an offer on one property and were asked for our best and final offer due to their being multiple offers. Now we play the waiting game. Either way I'm having a panic attack when we hear.