Inspected, Detected, and Deflected

The first business day after getting your home offer accepted is busy.  

Because of my work, I've recently come across this phrase about being busy: "Busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest."  Although I've not run into this phrase before, Chris assures me that this is a common phrase, and I must believe him being as how he's only lived in the U.S. 20ish years.

Happily I appear to still have both legs, I still don't feel I qualify as a man, and as for my ass... aside from a few pimples that I'm blaming on peri-menopause, it seems certainly unkicked.  However, I have spoken to the lender possibly nine times in three days, exchanged about 27 emails in the same amount of time between various parties doing various pieces of the work, uncountable text messages to and from Melissa who's orchestrating the entire process like an air traffic controller at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (which is to say, efficiently), and read mountains of paperwork so long, they conspicuously didn't list on the site how many pages it was.

And then I read and signed more papers.  Chris has been getting home insurance estimates since his name is on our vehicle insurance and has read and signed most of the same paperwork.  Oh, and he's gone to work at the butt-crack of dawn at least one of the last three days.  I feel like that deserves special consideration (especially since it means I have to get up early too to feed the animals who do not eat at 0330 when Chris has to get up).

Per all the deadlines in the contract, there were many things that had to be set in motion all at once.  The appraisal had to be arranged within 24 hours.  We had to get the loan paperwork going because it takes time and we only have... I think 21 days to back out if our loan doesn't pan out.  The EMD (earnest money deposit -which is a portion of the down payment you put in an escrow account to show you're serious) had to be wired today, and the inspection contingency period ends in 19 days so the various inspections had to be scheduled so we could see the reports in order to make a decision about really going through with the purchase.

So, I honestly do not know what is so special about manufactured homes, but they appear to be special.  I can tell you this because apparently, near to no one will appraise them without a lot of grumbling and claiming they can't do it, and our really good loan rate of 3.062%?  Nope.  Not for a manufactured home as the lender explained to me when he called to apologize for not seeing that it's a manufactured home before quoting us that rate.  The rate for a manufactured home is higher, though not a lot higher.  I am still well displeased about the fact though.

The vast specialness of a home that's manufactured is manifest in higher costs for some things, and also in the necessity to redo a lot of the paperwork to reflect the cost differences.  And because our intended home is sooo far out in the sticks (it's about 20 minutes from the nearest town, Rancho San Diego), no appraiser wants to come out to appraise it.  The cost went from $500 to $800 just to get someone out in time to get us the appraisal.  I remain mumbly and grumbly about these things and feel that if we still live in a place that has road side trash service and mail delivery at your home, it shouldn't take $300 extra to get an appraiser.  But I don't set such prices.

Anyhoo, the general inspection and WDPO inspection was today (Wood Destroying Pests and Organisms).  It's average to have the home buyers pay for the general inspection but we let the sellers push the WDPO inspection off on us.  It only cost $75 and it seemed worthwhile to know if there were things eating the house.

The first inspection was at 1400 so around 1200, after I'd done a bit of work, I decided I should shower.  I saw that my hair was actually starting to get a bit longer than I like it and sadly, it was bushy enough to house a sparrow family.  I set about trimming the front and then looked at the back in the mirror just to make sure that the lines weren't super weird.  Well, the back was rather a travesty too, though not because I'd cut the front, so I set about doing a whole haircut.

The nice thing about having curly hair, is that if you're brave, you can cut it yourself.  Oh, I have no doubt that it would be much better if someone who knows how to cut hair were to do it.  It's just... pandemic, and I've never been able to adequately explain the style I want to any hairdresser.  So I end up getting a great cut in a style that isn't the one I want.  The point is that with curly hair, give it a week or so and any weird lines you accidentally cut into your do get all covered up by the naturally irregular state of curly hair. 

The downside to cutting your own curly hair is that week when you're waiting for it to look better.  As you might have picked up, I'm a bit of a perfectionist.  So when I cut my hair, I do it carefully and I do actually check the lengths against each other.  The issue crops up that my hair curls all differently due to many factors (humidity, cleanliness, product, brushing when wet or not...) and some bits of my hair are more curly than others.  I usually remember to take this into account.  Sadly, today I forgot.  I jumped in the shower after the cut as I was well covered in little hair daggers, got out, ran my brush through my hair as I always do and started out for the inspections.

The very first thing Melissa said to me was that the owners of the home had been there when she arrived and wanted to know who in the darn hay wagon she was.  So she told them and they were so confused because they thought their agent was our agent and she was like... "On the contract you signed... it says me... Here's my card..."  So they left, which was nice of them. 

You know, Chris has done me a great service in life by instilling in me some of the German precision around being on time.  And do you know that Melissa has always been at a place before us?  I think she must tell us a different time than she tells herself and in the case of a situation like that, it's a good thing.  Like, I've never met these seller's and that's just fine.  No one needs to think the other is a jerk because someone messed up when an inspection is scheduled.

The second thing Melissa said to me was "Oh, you cut your hair" which let me know in no uncertain terms that it had dried in a way that did not look like it has before I showered.  Yeah, people raised female do tend towards noticing such things at a slightly higher rate (Chris said nothing), but it didn't look that different before I got in the shower.  The nice thing about being where I am now in life is that I really don't care that much.  I checked later and yeah, I looked like a lopsided poodle, but honestly, a few days and that'll be gone.  It's just that one side of my hair got really excited to have the additional weight lifted so it curled up in tight corkscrews that would not relax (much like my mental state on certain days).

The inspectors poked and prodded.  Melissa had to do her own report similar to the sort of thing you do when you move into an apartment and note the stuff they could charge you for when you move out, except she did a really thorough job while most of us go through the apartment cursorily and only notice if a wall is missing. 

Chris had arrived about three minutes late because of someone not very timely at work and he went off to eat some lunch I'd brought based on how long his coworker was taking.  I putzed around and took a few pictures of things I'd forgotten to the other day.

For instance, here's the manicured area on the other short side of the house (near the front/side door).

I have no idea if they're leaving the drum grill.  They also have a smoker.  A huge smoker.  I doubt they're leaving either.  The square planter is nice but I think it would actually make a really nice fire pit if we could relocate those plants.

Here are pictures of other planters and things in the planters.

Hoping they take their gnome with them

And the carving of a bearded person doing... something

I identified basil and dill... not sure what the others are

We will not intentionally have a yellow jacket watering hole... 

I'd be happy without the frog in a top hat too though kudos on creativity

I noted that we are going to need to learn and get the equipment to care for palm trees.

Yes, the house is up a steep hill

I really like palm trees.  It's one of the things I really like about living here.   Palm trees and cacti.  I've never wanted to live with our own palm trees though because my understanding is that they are expensive and/or difficult to care for.  And really, if they're not giving us coconuts or dates... why?  But caring for them is a good thing because apparently rodents like to go live up in them and, while they're cute and furry, no one wants Hantavirus.  

I don't know what kind of palms these are.  This part of CA has a number of palm species, but I just call these the basket palms because their more recently shed leaves make a basket weave pattern on the bark.  

Speaking of rodents, this is the opening to the crawl space.  It's really a crawl space.  We could hunch over in the last home's crawl space we had.  Not this one.

According to both inspectors, there is a mega buttload of rat poo all in and around the crawl space.  Nothing really surprising but you know, it's better not to live with rats that are wild.  

I definitely started seeing the home in a different light this trip whilst having three people point out it's sore spots.  Not that I was oblivious before but since the seller's didn't know we were coming they hadn't cleaned up as well as before.

The counter in the kitchen is really literally a thing where someone put some paper they liked on boards and then poured epoxy all over it.  There's water damage in several places.

This is behind the dishwasher where one of the inspectors stuck a tool and it sank in like a hot knife in butter

There are bumps and bruises like any house will have.  Melissa commented that she kind of couldn't believe they hadn't done more to make the house attractive like clean or get new outlet covers.  I pointed out that she is a real estate agent and, not to be pigeon holing someone in a gender norm, but she is female. 

The tub wasn't nearly as cruddy as I remembered.

The master bathroom was actually cruddier than I remembered.  Mostly though it seems that the space used to have a tub and a shower and got converted into a shower with a really unfinished closet space.  Also, Melissa pointed out the ick toilet both times.  Seems our homeowner has never heard of a pumice stone.  I am hopeful a pumice stone will take care of that particular ick, and not by my hand if at all possible.  But at least while we live there, that toilet is likely to be dedicated to the cats anyway.

The steps are as rusty as I remember.

Then there's this oddness.

Turns out its a rainwater measurey thing

So, it's maybe a bit tough to look at all the bad things about the home you're wanting to buy, except of course you have to know what you're getting into.  The big thing the inspector found?  The foundation isn't really permanent according to him.  This could be a huge problem for the loan to go through.  He said that the jacks holding up the steel beams under the house are on wood that are on dirt.  As opposed to the jacks on concrete.

Now, Melissa talked to the other agent as she was driving home and says that the seller's had a foundation report done for their FHA loan and it's certified as being permanent.  So maybe we'll avoid that snafu.

Despite the home definitely not having the shine it had the first time.  And noticing how grungy the appliances are (Chris said he really hopes they clean the fridge and I said "don't count on it").  And having all the house's imperfections pointed out.  We still like it enough to live in it while we figure out if we can build up on the upper pad.  We went up there and... it's just really nice.  Less street noise and a great view.  Space.  Melissa contacted a fire dept person for us to get us the necessaries about permitting from them and at least at first glance it seems plausible.  

We are trying not to plan because we may not end up with this home, but it's hard not to.  We agree that basically we should do just the things that make this home livable to us, which includes putting up a fence for the animals to use the outside, and painting away that horrible cat shit brown color.  I'm not that good at interior design, so while I am pretty sure I want to do the bedroom in a darkish green tone, I'm very open to wall color suggestions for a fairly dark space.

I had wanted to spruce up the area of the outside that has the odd carpeting on the ground.  My thought was to make a walkway out of laid stones (not field stone... those nice grey granite stones you make walkways from...) to a laid stone patio kind of area where they have their lawn furniture now.  But as I walked on the ground carpet this time, I recognized that there are these geometric shaped concrete slabs under it.

There's a round slab pushing up the carpet there near the center

Idk who's grand idea this was but I don't think they'll be fun or easy to remove.  But that kind of project isn't really on my list of stuff that makes the place livable so I'll likely forgo it until we secure some kind of assurance that we have money enough to start building our earthship provided we can get it permitted.