I forgot to say.... Ms Bunny..... I do the same thing.... with DH I stash my "STUFF"..... Hide it.... I DISGUISE it..... I bury it... Box it... Bag it.... Hide it in the bushes.... in the garage... in the attic... in a suitcase.... It's crazy.... but I can't stop myself... and... besides..... THEY MARRIED US>>>>> THEY ARE ATTRACTED TO US>>>>>> They.... better just ..... accept it.... WE ARE GARDEN JUNKIES ! ! ! .............. and I do NOT believe I would even want to be cured.... Supposin that there e v e n were a cure.... tee hee !!!!! You might take the girl out of the garden.... but..... you just simply can't take the junk'n out of the girl.... ! ! ! just can't be done...!>!>!>!> ( ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ God Bless ! Susiesunshine

we have just been thru almost the same thing - we found a home in the school district we want, in a nice neighborhood where homes dont come up for sale all that often. however it is a contemporary style home (which I donÂt love) and itÂs got a vertical crack in the corner of the foundation and there is some sagging of floors and some drywall cracks. neighborhood scuttlebutt about the house was really scary, it was falling off the hill, one estimate for repairs was reported to be $80K, in a prior foreclosure the house had been virtually destroyed by the POs, rumour rumour etc however, the house was priced in the 160s in a neighborhood of 200+K homes. we made an offer on the house and negotiated a lower price. we were not afraid at all to do this because our contract had a contingency clause that required the home/structural inspection to be satisfactory to us. we were candid with the sellers, that if the structural insp was ugly, we would use that clause. we found a structural inspector ( actually, I knew him personally bc I had tutored his kid for ACT and SAT) but anyway he had a great reputation and was highly qualified. by this I mean: he has a masters in engineering from stanford. he is licensed and registered in 5 states he teaches the classes in which home inspectors get certified he worked for the army corps of engineers for many years on big projects heÂs has done almost 10,000 home and structural inspections heÂs a nationally recognized expert - teaches and testifies on "foundation and structure movement and repairs - their recognition, causes and cures." heÂs an active member in several professional societies like the NatÂl Society for Professional Engineers and the American Society for Home Inspectors some other things I find charming about him: he likes puzzles. some realtors are irritated by him because he uncovers stuff they would rather he didnÂt, and **included in his services are return site visits while and after the work is done - he will provide a final letter, with professional engineer stamp, certifying that the repairs have been performed as recommended and the structure is now structurally stable.*** Love him!! IÂm sorry if this sounds like spam, IÂm just a big fan. I get this enthusiastic about Mike Holmes on Holmes on Homes too!! if you choose a structural inspector, make sure he's qualified! it turned out that there were actually 2 problems causing the visible problems. the front foundation wall of the garage was being moved by the soil pressure - the fix is actually suprisingly low cost. the buttress that resists the hill should have been around 5 feet thick, it was only 1 foot thick. The fix is to cut slots in the garage wall, fill them with rebar and cement, creating piers. Then they will make the wall stable by adhering a carbon fiber mesh to the wall that keeps the wall from flexing. Lastly they will put 3 helical tie-backs thru the wall into the soil (anchors). The second issue is that there is insufficient support for a couple of loadbearing walls, causing the sagging in hte floor and some cracks in the drywall. So, we have to add 2 beams in the ceiling of the garage and one beam in the basement. we didn't know before the inspection what to expect in terms of costs, we were thinking it was probably somewhere between $20 and $80K to fix, depending on what they found. The cost for all this work is estimated to be $16K not the rumoured 80K. It helps the cost that the work can be done from the garage and basement, not inside the home. no excavation. We insisted the seller come down on the cost in the amount of the repairs and she came pretty close (within $3000 of it). We are aware that we are assuming a risk - that something unforseen may turn out to be very expensive. But we have done what we can to minimize the risk. i think you can put in an offer with the contingency clause without fear. then you have time to do the structural inspection with a skilled engineer and worst case scenario you are out the money you spent on the inspection. then, fully informed, you can be completely anxious about the next bit ;) for us, we feel that the low price of the home (we are paying 30%less than recent appraisal) and paying 40% less than most other homes in the neighborhood - is an offset for the risk also, since it's a desirable neighborhood with good resale, we feel that we can invest some $ and not price ourselves out of resale value also, the estimates for the repairs came back suprisingly low. our lowest estimate was $12K, but we have better references for the $16K contractors, so we're going with them. i am wondering how much more cracking and shifting will happen when the beams are put in, since the house may be slowly readjusted, but we know that it may happen. we may also have to live with a small amount of sagging - the house most likely cannot be returned to itÂs original alignment, but the cracking in walls will be arrested. HTH - sorry for the wordiness, IÂm just house-obsessed right now. we should close at the end of the month, and the structural work will start immediately - so I can report back when itÂs done and let you know what the rest of the experience has been like :) Good luck with your decision!

I was in exactly your situation two years ago. We weren't really looking, but then found a house that was unique (it had won a major architecural award), and was perfect for us. And we knew it was not going to stay on the market long. We put in a full-price bid contingent on selling our house, and lost out to someone who made a full-price offer with no contingency. A week later our realtor called and told us the successful bidder had left the country on a business trip, and had not completed the deal before leaving. The seller was willing to cancel the winning offer and let us have it...if we went with no contingency. We decided to say 'yes,' even though we did not have our own house on the market. The only saving feature was that the house was being leased and the lease had 3 months to run before we had to close. We put our house on the market on November 1st and got an offer in the first week...that fell through. We got another offer in December...that fell through. We moved into the new house in January, with our old house still on the market. Even though the market was hotter 2 years ago, Thanksgiving, Xmas, and the first months of the year are not a good time to try to be selling. To make a long story short, it took 2-1/2 months after we moved to sell our old home, and it only sold because we agreed to come down in price by about 8%. Fortunately, we had no mortgage on the old home, but all of our equity was tied up until we sold. We had to take out a humongous interest-only bridge loan, and had about $2300 going out the door in payments each month for the privilege of owning two houses. In addition, we had utility payments and property taxes to pay for both houses, and had to drive across town to check on the old one a couple of times a week to clean up muddy footprints, clean sinks that had been used and left dirty, lock doors that had been left unlocked, and turn down the heat that had been cranked up. So how do we feel in retrospect? Great! We are really glad we did it, and still love the new house. It was nerve-wracking to have a huge (temporary) mortgage that we had to pay for out of savings, and it was annoying to have to keep checking up on the old house. But it was worth it. As long as you know what you might be getting into, go for it. Just have a backup plan. If the seller doesn't take a contingency offer, are you prepared to make another offer that's not contingent? (You could make an offer that is not contingent, but gives a closing date several months off.) And how long are you able to handle having two houses, both financially and emotionally?

Oh, I really like that little house out back. #27 I think in the photos. Those houses are lovely, but too big to live in, for me. We 'grew up' playing in a Kirtland Cutter home and it had some of those same details. Similar sized rooms, but more like photo #14 in style. Interior (back in the day) And now....this is the largest room and it's not as big as it looks in the picture. Believe it or not, the balcony used to be the master bedroom and the other bedrooms were on the opposite side of the house. The library, dining room, sunroom and other main floor rooms were all smaller than this one. It was for dances and such, back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Now they have weddings there and I'm guessing those upper level tables are probably bistro sized.