Playing the Waiting Game and My Wife's "Vision"

I got word from my agent that things are set to go for this Friday to close. I emailed her back about the insurance fiasco, and told her I hoped it was all cleared up by then. According to the loan officer, they should get the final settlement papers today. So, now I'm just playing the waiting game. And I hope that the insurance policy change doesn't send my financial plan out of whack. I've heard NOO policies are a lot more expensive than plain OO policies, so I'm expecting the worst and hoping for the best.

In the meantime, I've contacted the electric and water companies to have them transferred to my name, so I have them this weekend when I go to clean up the place. I haven't called the gas company yet, mainly because I won't need gas hookup initially. What burns me about both the electric and water companies is that they won't reimburse me or give me any kind of discount since I already had them turn on/off the utilities for the inspection in March. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have just left them on and put locks on everything.

I have also been looking for cheap stuff I'll need for the house. My agent said she knows a locksmith that can rekey all six locks on the house for $45. The only problem is the deadbolts are missing (thanks HUD), so I still need to get them replaced. Lowes has some cheap sets, and I think they'll rekey the locks for free if you buy from them (that's something on my to-do list). I also have to order the microwave/vent hood, but I want to wait until I can get the measurements. I originally was going to rent a steam machine from a local grocery store to clean the carpets, but I remembered a friend has one. I emailed him, and am keeping my fingers crossed. That will save about $20-$25. And I found a cheap coach light at Walmart for $10. I generally don't like to shop at Walmart for personal reasons, but since I have to treat this as a business, I need to find the cheapest (but still reliable) products.

Last night, I finally had time to discuss some issues with my wife. We have a 2yr old that is constantly in need of attention, so its almost impossible to have any lengthy discussions these days. But we found a few minutes last night to talk about this deal and other future deals. The good news is that she is onboard as far as starting a legal entity to do more deals - she even has some names lined up. The bad news is that she is still looking at this venture through pessimistic glasses. I mentioned in an earlier blog entry how her parents know a guy who was a real estate investor. Unfortunately, everything he told my wife's parents about REI was negative. He owned lots of SFR's and commercial buildings, and leased them all out. My wife claims he had a property management company oversee everything, but that's not what I heard. Anyway, all he would ever do is complain about bad tenants. So much so that it gave my wife and her parents a bad taste about being a landlord. I tried to convince my wife that one person's ordeal is not a blanket view of things, but she has it in her mind that we won't be doing any buy-and-hold investing. I did manage to get her to side with me after more discussion, but she is deadset on not doing any buy-and-hold investing in the near future. She just wants to buy properties and sell them via an agent or FSBO, or wholesale them to other investors (I was shocked when she actaully used the word "flip"). She also said she doesn't want us to go buy another HUD foreclosure - ever. It was just too much of an ordeal (which I kind of agreed).

Therefore, after this property is closed, I will start the wholesale route. I told her that even buying properties from motivated sellers instead of HUD or banks would still require captial up front (i.e., bandit signs, stakes, biz cards, and so on). She seemed to like that idea better than the back-n-forth runaround we had to deal with with this HUD property.