Just to put it out there...

Alright...so here's an update on what's going on in the real estate world as far as I'm concerned with it.

The house that's on 5 acres, on the creek and near an airstrip, is still at $400k. What's interesting about that house is that the 2009 tax assessments came in. Keep in mind over a month ago, we informally offered them $325k and the man quickly turned us down. I'm wondering if he ever even mentioned it to his wife. Anyway, on the 2008 assessment, the 1920sf shop was not listed, meaning the value was not included in the $341,400 assessment for last year. This years has it on their valued at about $31k. Here's the kicker: the total assessed value for that home is now $324,500! Ha! How odd is that that it came out nearly a month after we offered them $500 more than that?!?

Alright, so then there's the house, I think I've written about...I will have to double check. I know I've told my sister about, but can't remember if I blogged it. Anyway, another house that is right down the road, viewable from my inlaws' property. That house is on 40 acres (only about 10 or so are actually usable...the rest goes into the lake). How can you sell land under a lake? But then you can't own water?? Anyway, last summer they were listing at $450k, then came down to $400k (at the same time the other house was $400k). In a heartbeat, I would prefer the one on the creek over this one. But then they told us they dropped their price. They really wanted to get rid of it. They lowered it to $395k! LOL! I thought it was a joke. So...a couple months ago I looked at it again online and found they lowered theirs again to $350k. I figured, that's a pretty decent price...though I'm holdin' out for the other one. About 2 weeks ago, I looked it up again to get the address so I could look at the property line and found out that they lowered it again!! It is now listed for $314,500! I was shocked. I looked up the assessed value and found out it's assessed at about $310k. Not bad, not bad. If we were to move into that house, I would totally want some major remodeling done. To include taking out a drive through area, that goes under a roof that is two stories high, I would make it more living space, I'd want a bigger master suite...I don't think it has a walk in closet. It has 4 bedrooms, but one is a micro room. The garage is large enough, I think we could encroach on some of it to make better us of the space on the first floor. So anyway...we'll see what the summer brings.

On our homefront, we just had our first evaluation for the Alaska Home Energy Rebate done. We should be getting our complete evaluation results next week some time. They did tell us that they will put in that our windows need replacing, which is awesome because for the last 2 or 3 years we've talked about putting in vinyl windows and just didn't get to it. So that's awesome. I'm not sure if they're going to put that we need a new front door or not, but that would be cool too. Two years ago we replaced our porch door with something much more air tight, so that is updated. They also said, since our downstairs ( the older part of the house is only 2x4 construction, they would request that we add 2" of insulation to bring it to code/standard, and would match the thickness of the upstairs walls. So...we're going to do the entire house, and have vinyl siding added...something else we've talked about for 2 years or so and just didn't get to. We have these things for sure that we'll be updating, which will not only increase the efficiency of our house, but update the look of it too with new windows and siding. I'm excited!

The really cool thing about this program is that they not only reimburse you for the materials expense, but they will also reimburse for the labor of a licensed & bonded company. How awesome is that? It would probably take us a long time to get all that stuff done, but hiring someone will go much, much quicker. Another bonus for the state reimbursing labor costs is that they allow you 18 months from the first evaluation to get the updates taken care of, to increase the point rating on the house. After that, they redo the evaluation and see how much you improved.

So that's that. I'm also excited that we're going to start work on our upstairs bathrooms soon. We are going to be combining 2 bathrooms into a master bathroom, and making Sarah's room only have 2 doors instead of a third into the 2nd bathroom upstairs.

Our home refinancing went through so we were able to pay off my larger sum, student loan since the house apr was .7 % lower than my loan rate was.

Anywho...blessings to you all, thank you for reading my posts. I have my first prenatal appointment on March 26th, so I'm sure I'll blog again after that. Oh! The sun is shining beautifully today...it almost has that springy feeling to it...it's awesome! It was still a little light around 8 last night, which is totally weird. I love it though. It's exciting to know that spring is coming. Praise God! He is so good!