The hubby and I are continuing our growing quest to buy a home of our own. Tomorrow we are looking in downtown Jersey City at two more places.
Our quest started in March, when, on a whim, I decided to fill out an online pre-approval form for a mortgage. Shortly after, we discovered that, strangely enough, we could actually afford to buy something and what’s crazier, it’s actually a buyer’s market right now (if you don’t already own). Perfect! After some initial digging we found that Jersey City Heights was our best bet, the condos were in our price range and we were still close enough to commute to the city. Plus, it seemed like a good investment.
After our first quest with a broker (we looked at 8 condos in one day) we fell in love with one and made an offer on it. The process went super smooth and was beginning to worry us. We agreed on a price with the seller, had it inspected, flew through attorney review and it was time to get the appraisal done. At this point, the closing date would have been May 30th, shortly after we returned from our wedding. [I know it was a crazy time to buy with planning for a wedding, but it all just happened so quickly.] When the appraisal came back, it was $20k lower than the agreed upon price (which, mind you, is over $40k less than the original asking price). This became a big problem for our bank. The bank refused to give us a mortgage for $20k more than their appraiser thought it was worth. We had comps (comparable properties that have sold) run for the whole area and they weren’t that off what our deal was. Yet the appraiser refused to budge. He didn’t shift his original number in the least. Our problem, besides the obvious, was that we tried to offer less for the property, but the seller could not do it. He would have to come to the table with over $25k to close out his mortgage and it just wasn’t a possibility. So, as quickly as it had all started, it was gone…just like that.
The disappointment over our first foray in realty was lessened by our wedding and surrounding festivities. It wasn’t until we were home for a few weeks, coming out of our newlywed bliss, that this all began to hit us.
After countless hours (for both of us) online, looking for the perfect deal, we were running dry on leads. Strange, being that we found the perfect place our first time out. There was nothing else like it. DAMMIT! During this dry period we looked at other places and nothing came close to being worth leaving Brooklyn for.
Suddenly, the market took another small drop and things started to become available in the neighborhood we thought we couldn’t afford: downtown JC. Now, the hunt was on. Again, countless hours were logged online and many phone calls with our broker were taken. During our research, we learned that Jersey City Heights has been up and down since 2000 and been in a steady decline for quite a bit now. That good investment was looking a little unstable now. Jersey City was starting to seem further away than just across the Hudson river. Further research revealed that downtown JC has been consistently high since for the same time period and only dropped slightly last month, allowing certain condos to crawl into our price range. Yeah! We came to terms with the fact that if we wanted to make a better investment for our future, we would have to spend our present in smaller square footage than we had originally planned. It’s a hard sacrifice to make, especially when you have three large male cats in your entourage.
So, here we are about to look at one place that I have been eying for awhile, but have been, up until this point, unable to get a showing at. We’ll see how 650 square feet looks at 10:30am on a hot Saturday morning in downtown Jersey City. Probably not as delicious as all of the young jogging men I’ve also been eying in the hood, but maybe it’ll come close…
