LAKE HOUSE . . .

It's been a long month.  

Last month, January 23 to be exact, (really?  that's all it's been?  it feels like FOREVER!), we wrote a contract on a place at Nolin Lake.  Now, before you start thinking, 'oh, they must be rich!', it's a $38,000 home.  NOT exactly Trump Tower!  But that's okay.  IF everything works out, it'll be perfect for us.  It's 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, great room, kitchen, laundry room, deck, room to park the boat.  Yes, it needs a lot of work, but for $38,000, it'll be worth it.  

We've been looking, off and on, for almost 5 years.  We've gone back and forth about whether or not to get a place.  We LOVE spending time at the lake.  And so do the kids.  But as much as we enjoy it, it's not as much fun unless we can take people down with us.  And for that, you need to have your own place.  But everything we looked at only had 2 or 3 bedrooms and 1 bath.  And they were all 600 or 700 sqft.  

Now, keep in mind, we SAW bigger places that we liked.  LOVED actually.  But they were all out of our price range.  Some of them were more than what we paid for our current house.  I'm sorry, but I'm NOT going to spend 200K on a house that we'll only use for less than 100 days a year.  NOT going to happen!  Of course, we have beer dreams, on a champagne budget.  We wanted something big enough for our friends to come down with us, but that didn't cost an arm and a leg.  NOT an easy task!

Then this one came up.  It's a foreclosure that's been sitting for almost 4 years.  And it was well within our price range.  You know the old saying, "if it's too good to be true?"  Well, we should have listened!  There's a REASON it's been sitting that long.  The floor in the kitchen looks like a roller coaster.  LITERALLY.  But JUST in the kitchen.  The carpeting in the rest of the house is stretched and some of it is stained and has holes in it.  There are holes in some of the walls.  The WALLPAPERED walls, I might add.  The back half of the driveway and retaining wall are encroaching on the property behind it.  Oh, and the biggest issue?  There's a problem with the Septic System.  A MAJOR problem.  What is it, you ask?  Well no one seems to know.  And because it was taken back by the bank and is now a foreclosure, no one really cares to find out WHAT the problem is.  Except the morons, of course, that want to buy the property.  Yep, you guessed it - that would be US!  Nice, huh?!

So tomorrow we're going down for a Home Inspection and a Septic Inspection.  If everything turns out okay, then we'll be proud owners of a home at the lake that needs lots of TLC!  

But these last few weeks have been HORRIBLE!  I've decided that I am, without a doubt, the WORST client I've had in 18 years of real estate.  How sad is that?  But, again, if it all works out, it'll be worth it.  So now we wait, another day, for another inspection, and another report.  And hopefully, by this time tomorrow, we'll have the answers we need.