The house we're working to closing on.

Buying a home is a long process we’ve found over the last few months. Armed with our first accepted offer, we are now plowing through the piles of paper work necessary to get the loan process going. At the same time I’m lining up inspectors, a lawyer, and hopefully contractors next week to help with the rehab work, especially in the kitchen and bathroom of the 2nd floor unit.

The house (3528 W McLean Ave, Chicago, IL 60647) is a 2 unit home with a unit on each floor and a short 6 ft. basement. In the backyard on the alley is a 2-car garage.

Inside the 1st floor unit is mostly just studs, electrical, and insulation. It needs drywall and a floor. Plus a new bathroom and kitchen since those are just pipes sticking out of the frame walls and floor right now.

Inside the 2nd floor unit is are mostly plastered walls with some drywalling necessary. The kitchen is not there in this unit either, but the bathroom is partially put back together.

The basement has been flooded, so everything needs to be pulled out (gutted) so that we can get rid of the mold and junk that is everywhere.

We’ll need two new water heaters, 1 new HVAC system, and a bit of roofing repair on the garage.

We’re currently at $85,000 without doing any repairs, so we’ve got some room to include repairs in our mortgage. We’ll be getting a FHA 403k loan which allows us to roll some of the repair costs into the mortgage in order to hire contractors instead of doing it all on our own.

This Saturday we have our home inspector coming out to check out the house. I’m especially concerned with the structural integrity of the house since it was built in 1890. The one benefit of a house this old is that we don’t have to worry as much about whether someone accidentally built the house over the edge of our property. After 20 years being uncontested, it basically becomes grandfathered in, so we don’t have to worry about that part at least.

There is a lot of work to go on the paperwork side of getting to a close on the house, not to mention getting all of the quotes on the repairs and such. A fun month ahead that will turn into several years of repairs! Yippee!