The House

Well, we're finally in the new house more pictures - it has now been 5 weeks since we closed. The good news is that with all of the potentials for serious debacle we ended up with a fairly nice new house built by Centex Homes, in a decent neighborhood (Howell, NJ) and things are going ok. Thankfully Kara Homes let us out of our contract when they were unable to start work on our originally planned house. The timeline of the transactions went something like this: - September 17th - Give a downpayment to Kara Homes - About a week or so later - Give a much larger amount of money to Kara - About a month or so later - Give even more money to Kara - No activity through October, November or December on a house that was originally going to be delivered by the end of January December 21st - PANIC - begin looking for something as we are selling our home in Pittsburgh and it is set to close on January 14th. We called Newhomes.com I called a number and there was no answer so I didn't leave a message. About 3 minutes later my phone rang and it was Sandy Lefkowitz from newhomes.com - he was standing in the delivery room waiting for his grandchildren (twins) to be born, and told me he would have someone call me right away. Within 2 hours Tom Burdett (not the comedian) called me back and I explained my desire to find a house as quickly as possible. He took down some of my requirements and began a search. He called me back and had found a house in Marlboro, NJ that looked to be ok. We packed up the family and on December 23rd drove from Pittsburgh to NJ to look at the house. Unfortunately it was not what we had hoped. The property was very tight and constricted, and the houses around it were on top of each other, so we headed back to Pittsburgh very unhappy. Tom had found another place for us to potentially purchase but we wereheading off to vacation to spend New Year's with Mickey in DisneyWorld (the plans had been made before we even knew we were moving). While we were in Disney Kara called and stated that they had received notice from thetownship that they could not continue building or start any new houses, ours being one of them, and they would be having a meeting to discuss all of the details with all of the homebuilders. In the meanwhile we were still in Florida and it was looking less likely that we would have a place to live come Jan 14. I decided to end vacation early and head up to New Jersey on Sunday Jan 2 to see the house. When I walked in the house looked pretty good and a took about 70 pictures and emailed them to my wife. I gave the builder some hand money and said we would buy it. Now we had to get our money back from Kara. All the while we had been speaking to Kara we had been cautious to not set a bad tone as they had essentially our life savings in their account. We called Kara and stated that we simply wanted our money back and would move on with our lives. After a few phones calls with a few different people and assurances from methat all I wanted was my money - no blood, no foul - I'd walk away with a handshake, a kiss on the cheek and that was it, they decided that it was fine and agreed to give me the money back. On Jan 13 the moving company came and packed up the house and drove away with all of our belongings. We closed on the house in Pittsburgh on Jan 14 and moved in to the Marriott Suites. A harrowing two weeks to be sure. While attempting to secure funding for this new purchase the appraisal forthe house came in below the asking price. Centex wanted to keep the price where it was and while I wasn't ecstatic at paying above appraised value, but I was stuck without a place to live. I made an offer that was above the appraisal, below the asking price and still left me money for a McDonald's happy meal at the end of the day. They accepted this offer and on Jan 23 I drove my older daughter's car to New Jersey. On Jan 27 my wife obtained a large cashier's check from the bank and headed to New Jersey with my younger daughter to live. On Jan 28 we closed on the new house in New Jersey and on Jan 29 the mover's brought all of our stuff to the new house. Whew - that felt like quite an event. Next: furnishing this thing