The Story of How We Got Our Studio
Yes, our story is long. It involves 2 purchases, 3 mortgage companies, a dream house or maybe even two, and yes, photos at the end.
The story of how we got our studio began with the words “I’m selling this house” uttered by our landlord about 10 weeks ago. We were due for lease renewal and he just didn’t want to do this anymore. Our landlord is a great guy and doesn’t want to run a “business” by being a landlord. Too stressful & money sucking sometimes. With his fateful words began the question – so do we continue to rent or do we start looking for a house now? Is it the right time? Is any time the right time?
Right away we decided that it was time to find a studio – we need a place to shoot, renting is throwing our money away, and we need a VERY nice place to meet with our clients & potential clients. So, the search began. Sarah and I are the type of people to move very quickly on a project. We secured a “pre-approval” (which is supposed to be better than a “pre-qualification”) from Syracuse Securities. They said we were qualified for $75-110,000 for our first home. Not bad we thought. As soon as the pre-approval came in, we were on the phone with real estate agents within an hour. We called our favorite Syracuse agent, Linda Pelland, and a few agents in Auburn, where we know that you can buy a great house for WAY less money than in Syracuse.
Linda scheduled an appointment with us to view homes and Marilyn Barth from Murphy Real Estate in Auburn setup a few viewings for us as well. Marilyn worked VERY quickly for us, showing us the first houses the SAME DAY we called her. We also met with another woman whose name unfortunately escapes me. She was also very nice but the home she had listed was not what we wanted.
By five days later, we had looked at 17 potential homes. 5-6 through each agent and a few via other avenues. We re-visited a FANTASTIC home on Lake Ave. in Auburn and decided to put a purchase offer in on that house. We ended up with an offer of around $83,500. This is the house I posted to the blog first. We LOVE Lake Ave. It had two staircases, old woodwork, hardwood floors, great shooting space. It was also well within the 75-110k limit we’d been given. Low end actually! Felt nice!
What happened next is the subject of many-a-speculation. Syracuse Securities took our paperwork to do the actual approval. About 10 days later they said we were approved & we were getting our commitment letter within a few days. We celebrated – we called everyone & told them we were APPROVED for our mortgage at Lake Ave. and we were ECSTATIC!!! The home of our dreams – ALL OURS!!!
After three more days, Sarah did not receive her commitment letter. She called Syr Sec and was told “oh that went out – it’s probably on the way.” 2 more days. “I’m sure it got misplaced.” 2 more days “we don’t have you a commitment letter – we’re trying to get one and the underwriting company needs X & Z & Y documents. WHA?
At that point we thought we could meet their requirements. Fax a few forms, print a few documents, send a missing page of a tax return – whatever. We’re pre-approved, that’s good. We were approved!! Nope. Not approved. Because of our self employment and tax issues, we were not. We spent weeks going back & forth with our rep at Syr Sec and in the end we went from “5000 at closing, 6.75%” to “12,000 at closing, 10.25%” which of course is ridiculous so we said no thanks & moved on.
During this period, our landlord told us he hadn’t sold the home and he was looking to rent it over the winter. He wanted our “final answer” on what we were doing – renting, moving on, buying? We had NO idea. We didn’t have an answer let alone a “final, end answer.”
Our contract for Lake Ave. expired Nov 24th – a Saturday after a holiday. We knew if financing wasn’t arranged by Wednesday that there would be no 8 Lake Ave. As hard as it was to do, we just said “it’s gone” and moved on. We began looking at other avenues while we worked with a new mortgage company (Mark at Territory Mortgage is fantastic to work with and our great client Pete B. also works there!) Mark knew it was going to be a longshot to finance us in less than a week but he did his absolute best. In the end, a “best” wasn’t good enough as the new underwriters had different requirements, needed different docs and basically needed stuff we couldn’t get in less than a week.
It was over – Lake Ave. died Saturday November 24th.
We’re nothing if not persistent. However – around Nov 23rd here was our situation – banks are closed, no financing, Lake is dead. We had seven days to find an apartment and move out of our current apartment. This place has been rented and we had nowhere to live. Our landlord gave us as much time as possible but in the end, he needed to know he was leasing the apartment and we needed a final decision. We gave up on keeping this place and decided to look for a new apartment or something.
During the week, I had been unable to give up the “American Dream” of owning a home – I looked everywhere. Craigslist, Syracuse.com, Ebay!!! Anywhere to see if our home existed. I found an absolutely AMAZING property and contacted the owners. We told them our ENTIRE situation and asked if it was even remotely possible to make it work in less than 7 days. They said “we’ll setup a viewing Friday.”
We left Thanksgiving dinner (after dinner) for about 30 minutes – viewed the house, came back & couldn’t wait until Friday. We saw the property Friday and decided to meet with the owners Saturday to discuss financing.
Unbelievably we closed on the property Saturday. We bought a home IN Syracuse – statistically a 4 BR, 2 BA, 3000 sq. ft property with a 2 car garage, full basement & attic. Those same hardwood floors and wood décor as Lake Ave. We have a bit more land (still not a ton) and we have some work to do before it’s presentable to clients. BUT – we DID it. We closed, it’s ours, we OWN a house/studio!!!!
We do not have interior photos as we looked at the property Friday AFTER doing a Black Friday shopping trip – our brains were fried, we didn’t bring cameras. Out of the 25+ homes we ended up looking at, we have photos of something like 3 of them. Crazy.
We move in Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. There *will* be photos by Monday. Once we have our Internet back up (12/4 after noon) we will post those photos. For now we do have some exterior photos.
I’m sure we’ll be talking about the new place more in the VERY near future as well as explaining everything that’s going to be going on in the next year for Picture Infinity but for now enjoy the photos and hopefully you made it this far!! Thanks for listening!!!
