We're moving!!

The long awaited search for renters has finally come to an end! After some serious failed attempts, no shows, dry spells, and one almost-serious attempt, we found a great couple who is going to be renting from us for the next year! This also means that we need to move out...cuz I don't think they want roommates. :)

Since this all happened last week, that meant that this weekend was devoted to searching for a future home for us. We had talked about possibly buying a few months ago, but with the risk of having two mortgages on the line, we decided to enjoy the flexibility that renting provides. The overall motivation for moving in the first place was to help improve Allen's commute - a 40 mile commute every day has really started to weigh on him. After that, there were a lot of other great reasons that fell into place, so we ended up finding a great place in Farmington Hills for us to rent - smack in the middle of Livonia and Birmingham where we both work.

Needless to say, we're really excited, but of course our moving falls right in the middle of my finals for school (since we don't have enough going on, clearly). We'll be moving in the next few weeks to accommodate our renters. Lucky for me, I have kinda the best fiance ever and he has taken on the bulk of the packing so I can focus and get through the next couple of weeks. Keepin it real crazy around here!

This has also developed into a need to purge a lot of our belongings. We have a TON of stuff, especially since I had my own place before we moved in together. This means we have duplicates of some items, so we've spent most of the past week and this weekend analyzing, piling, sorting, selling, and throwing a lot of stuff out. Most of the throwing out and selling were the result of many conversations like, "Do we really feel like moving that?" (and by we, I mean Allen) with the verdict oftentimes being a big fat NO. The result has been a crazy amount of Craig's Listing (which I hate, because of the sketchiness of many people - but love for the few gems of people that are out there and will actually buy from us). Of course, we want to offer these items to the people we know and love, so if anyone is interested, here are a few of the gems we're selling:

White leather recliner

Glass coffee and end tables (4 total)

Man cave TV

Treadmill

Grill

Patio furniture

We also have our ping pong table, couch and chair, vacuum, camping chairs, universal remote, racquetball sets, and much more! (Yep, totally advertising on the blog, sorry!) If anyone is interested, please let me know! 

All in all, it's going to be a crazy couple of weeks around here, but nothing we can't handle!! I'll for sure post pics of the new place once we get all settled too.

House trouble and scammers

As some of you may know, Allen and I have been playing around with the idea of buying a new house these past few months. There are a few reasons for this, including practical things like low interest rates, preferable things like a shorter commute for him (he drives 40 miles to work everyday - ugh), and other nice to have things like more space, bigger kitchen, etc etc. However, since we are incredibly under on our house right now like most people are, we are looking into the option of renting our house out instead of selling right away so we don't have to cut a huge check.

All good in theory, until last week. We had posted our house on zillow.com and got a message that someone was interested in setting up a walk-through! So we're all excited, and I call the woman last week hoping to schedule it up. She answers, and proceeds to tell me how she has been hunting around on other sites like Craig's List, and actually had found something in Southfield that she really liked (I know, I was wondering the same thing you probably are - why on earth is she telling me this?!). Well apparently, the guy who was renting out the Southfield house told her that it wasn't for rent anymore, but that he had another house available to rent while he was on a missionary in Africa. The address he gave her? OUR ADDRESS. This guy had apparently seen that our house was for rent on Zillow, or had just randomly picked an address, and it happened to be ours!! He let her know that since he was "out of the country" that she could just go to our house and look in the windows and if she liked the house, he told her that if she sent him a $600 security deposit with the first month's rent of $800 that he would mail her the keys.

*#$*)!&^@%#$)*(&$#)(*@#$&#$)(*!&$]

So this woman was kind enough to forward me all of his emails so we could properly file a consumer fraud report, file a report with Craig's List, and file a police report. Also, I flagged his ad on Craig's List so hopefully no one else gets scammed by this.

But there is a bigger question out there: Who the hell do these people think they are?! I mean really. REALLY?! Sending someone to trespass on another person's property? Scamming people out of money when the economy is hard enough as it is? Those people are the scum of the earth.

Needless to say, I was in a bit of a rage over this. The woman agreed to still come see our house this past weekend (especially now that she knew we weren't in Africa), so we were at least excited about that prospect. Allen and I woke up at 6:30 am Saturday and spent about 6 hours cleaning our house from top to bottom. So we were prepped, ready, and excited for this woman to come over so we could make a smashing impression on her....and she never showed.

Sigh.

We're both trying not to be too disappointed about things, since the house really needed a good cleaning (clearly since it took a long time), and we were still able to get our Christmas tree up and everything. I think that if the woman had at least shown up and decided that she didn't like the house that we would have felt better that we had at least gotten someone to come see it. Hopefully we start to get a few more prospects after the holidays so we can really get to the good stuff - finding the house of our dreams!