13.1 miles of magic...

I've written before about my desire to run.  I want to be a runner.  I mean, I AM a runner, but I want to be a  REAL runner.  Signing up for my first half-marathon, I thought, well this is just what I need to get me into training mode.  WRONG.  Just a little word of advice, don't change jobs, buy a house, renovate, move into an unfinished house, etc. before a race.  Life got in the way. 

Training, what training?!  Still, I felt with some determination that I could finish...and that was my only goal after all.  So on January 5, 2012, Chad and I headed to the most magical place on earth to partake in the Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend.  We ran the 5k fun run and 1/2 marathon.  We were registered to complete the 5k on Friday morning and the half on Saturday morning.  The full marathon was held on Sunday.

The 5k fun run was themed with Los Tres Caballeros (or The Three Caballeros).  Los Tres Caballeros is one of my favorite Disney cartoons.  Don't ask me why, it just is.  Earning my fifth Disney medal was awesome.  The vibe of the race was a bit more competitive though.  I chalked this up to it being the Marathon weekend.  A lot of serious runners were there and ran the 5k as an easy run.  They were a bit more rude and not as into the fun of it all, but I didn't let that bring my spirits down.

The weather that weekend was pretty cold, well for Florida.  I didn't remove my gloves or jacket once during the entire 5k.  But the weather was great for running.  I'd rather be a little too cold than too hot any day.

WARNING: I don't recommend doing a half-marathon with little training.  It is really stupid to do so.  I think people don't realize how long 13.1 miles actually is.  I've sat at home on countless occasions watching the contestants on The Biggest Loser complete half and full marathons.  So logically one thinks, if they can do it, I CAN DEFINITELY do it!  Yes, you can...but train!  I highly recommend Jeff Galloway's run-walk-run method.  We did our own variation of this throughout the 5k and Half races and it worked really well for us.  We used landmarks instead of time for our intervals, but it worked great for us.

Saturday morning, the weather was a tad warmer, but not by much.  Despite the cold, I was determined to finish this race.  I learned a lot about myself that day.  I learned that with some dedication and mind over matter will power, I could complete something that I never would have dreamt to be possible.  And it felt amazing.  Crossing the finish line with my husband was indescribable.  Sure, we had our struggles along the way, but somehow we overcame them.  Instead of worrying about finishing the race, I set mini-goals for each mile marker.  I envisioned myself passing each mile marker and then the next, etc.  Getting to Cinderella's Castle in Magic Kingdom was pretty awesome!  We had to stop for a pic, albeit a heinous one.  It was a big feat.

I'll never get tired of running through Cinderella's Castle. And it's even better when you can do it with someone you love, like The Hubs.

Before I knew it, we were on mile 11.  Mile 11 is where I had to quit during my first half-marathon attempt because of an injury.  But once we got there, I knew we could make it.  Despite the ridiculously steep ramp at Mile 11, I kept going even though I wanted to die!  (I can't look at an interstate ramp in quite the same way anymore.)  And sure enough, during mile 12, I got an amazing rush of adrenaline and ran most of that last mile.  We could hear the cheers and finally we saw the finish line!  Since we weren't worried about time, just finishing and getting that sweet medal, we stopped to snap a pic with Donald and Mickey.

After finishing the WDW 1/2, I couldn't wait to train for the Princess 1/2 at the end of February.  I felt a little sore the day after, but overall I felt surprisingly great.  I was so excited that I decided that Chad, Mom, and I would dress up.  At the Disney races, a lot of people come in costume.  Sometimes they just don't tutus, but some go all out.  I ordered pageant sashes and tutus for Mom and myself.  But life again got in the way.  Bronchitis and house renovations, anything not to train and then the race was upon us.

It's dumb to not train for one half-marathon and even dumber not to train for two.  I was worried, but had better hopes because I knew what I could do.  It was equally as fun.  We completed the Tangled 5K which was a great easy run and a nice way to start a Saturday and the weekend.  The Tangled 5k medal is my seventh RunDisney medal. :)

Oh how I love a step and repeat!





The Princess Half was a lot of fun.  I did sprain an ankle thanks to an unpleasant runner who nudged me out of the way.  Seriously.  I even have the bruise to show it.

Despite all that, the race is over...no photo finishes though...bad weather.  And it's shown me again that I can do anything I set my mind to do.  I am going to train...and write about all the training here, to keep me honest...and next time, I will shave time off.  We'll set goals that are realistic and move on from there.  But for now, I'll enjoy being a Princess and the eight race medals that I earned from RunDisney this year.

HUD House Hunters

A little more than a year ago, I discovered the joy that is HGTV.  My favorite HGTV show is House Hunters.  It seems kind of crazy to think that one could learn so much just by watching TV, but I really became knowledgeable in all things houses AND the house hunting process, thanks to shows like HH. 

I loved watching all of these people purchase their homes.  The best part is seeing what they'd done with their new homes and how they made it "theirs". But owning a home seemed like a distant dream for The Hubs and me.  A couple of years ago I started working on cleaning up my credit and paying off my bills.  A couple of times The Hubs and I flirted with the idea of applying for a mortgage loan pre-approval, but vetoed the idea due to a lack of savings, credit scores, tighter qualifications, etc.  And so it was decided that we would continue to be renters.  We wished to move out of our cramped apartment and into a rental home. 

We checked the newspaper, craigslist, Rent.com, Trulia.com, and drove around town looking for "For Rent" signs. One afternoon, as we drove around looking for rentals in our dream neighborhood, we spotted our diamond in the rough. My husband noticed a sign in the front yard that said HUD. We did a loop around and came back to the house to further investigate the sign.  And sure enough, the home was a HUD-owned property.

The discovery of this house gave us hope.  We visited www.hudhomestore.com to verse ourselves in everything HUD.  Now prior to discovering this home, if you were to ask what I knew about HUD home buying programs and houses? I would have said that they were in poor, typically "bad" neighborhoods, and that the houses needed A LOT of work.  But after researching HUD properties, I discovered that  my beliefs just weren't true.  The Hubs and I contacted a realtor with HUD experience to view the property.  Unfortunately, there were only four realtors in our area with HUD experience and we were unable to get in touch with any of them.  If you decide to go the HUD route, make sure that your realtor has dealt with HUD, it'll save you a ton of headaches.   We were matched up with a realtor who specialized in short-sales and who assured us that she would be able to work closely with the HUD-experienced realtor.

Inside, not surprisingly, the house needed a lot of work.  We had seen the pictures posted online but the amount of work needed didn't seem daunting.  Immediately I could envision The Hubs and I living there.  I could see what the home could be.  Sure, it desperately needed new carpet.  I don't think the carpet had been changed since the home was built in 1998, but it wasn't a deal-breaker.  The home had never been updated, but it wasn't your typical bank-owned/HUD property.  No giant holes in the walls, no foul odors.  With a little paint and new flooring, it definitely had potential.

The property was insurable and eligible for the FHA 203K Renovation Loan (more about this in another blog).  We hoped to get it for a steal, but didn't want to get our hopes up without going through a mortgage pre-approval.  We made an appointment with a broker and, to our surprise, we were approved! We didn't qualify for much, but after discussion and seeing one other non-HUD home, we decided to throw all caution to the wind and bid on "our" home.  If we could get this home at an amazing deal, then we'd be able to do the necessary renos and still have considerable equity in the home.  It would be our chance to financially secure future.

But how low could we go? You hear all the time about people getting amazing deals in the post-bubble market, but would it happen to us? The home was originally listed at $166,000, which was also the "as-is" value of the home.  After one price reduction, it was listed at $149,900.  Even at the "as-is" price the house was an amazing deal.  Comprable homes in the neighborhood start around $200,000.  Unfortunately, at that list price, the home was out of our range considering the amount of renovations that were needed.  Faling back on my English teacher ways, I researched bidding strategies for HUD owned homes and found out that the bidding process was quite different from that of traditional sales, short sales, and foreclosures.

To begin, HUD does not negotiate price.  Your bid must be made through www.hudhomestore.com by a realtor. When a home is initially listed, it must go through a ten-day window. During this time, bids can be made, but none are opened until the window expires.  If none of the bids are deemed acceptable, than the sale is extended and bids are opened daily. If you submit a bid that HUD deems too low, your bid will automatically be rejected.  HUD sets a "secret" minimum acceptable bid  and any bids below that number are rejected automatically. It's up to the buyer to guesstimate what the acceptable minimum price is.  But, there are also other factors involved with getting accepted. Owner-occupiers have top priorty over second home buyers and/or investors.  After digging around the internet, we found that others had been accepted with bids ranging from 50% of asking price to bidding over asking.  83% of the asking price seemed to be the magic number.  Discouragingly for us, 83% of the list price would still be too much after factoring in renovations.

Ultimately we decided to submit a lowball bid.  We offered $105,000.  For the next 24 hours, or what seemed like an eternity, we crossed our fingers, held our breaths, and barely slept a wink.  Finally our realtor called and informed us that our bid had been rejected.  Disappointed but not out, we decided to try again and increased our bid to $115,000.  That was our best offer, we couldn't go one penny over $115,000 though because we needed to budget for the renovations.  Again it was rejected.  Feeling defeated and disappointed, we took a break from the process, went on with our summer vacation plans, but kept an eye on the listing  For the next few weeks that house stayed on the market listed at $149,900 with no changes.  Each day I would wake up fearing to see the house missing from the website (which means that a bid has been accepted).  Yet each day I was relieved when I found that our little house still listed on the website.

The night we returned from our summer vacation, we discovered that the list price had decreased to $134,400!  Without giving it a second thought, we decided that we had to take another shot.  We debated the number.  We went back and forth, and in the end we settled at $105,000.  We wanted to get a deal, but we didn't want to lose it to someone else because we had put in an offer that was too low.  24 hours later, we found out that our bid was accepted!  We were beyond ecstatic.  They  accepted our the price of our original bid and we couldn't have been happier.  If we only knew the trouble that lay ahead for us, we wouldn't have been so quick to celebrate.

If you think that buying a HUD property will be easy, think again.  Unless you are a cash buyer, it is a difficult process.  Throw in another government backed program like the FHA 203k Rehab loan and you have a nightmare.  Our bid was accepted on August 4, 2011 and we didn't close until December 2, 2011.  Yes, you read that correctly---we were in limbo for four months on a bank-owned vacant property.  I have friends who bid on short sales, closed, and moved in before we even knew our closing date.

My advice:  unless you have a lot of patience, pass on the HUD/203K loan combo, it is a nightmare.  The entire process of buying a home is stressful enough without compounding it with HUD, 203k Rehab loans, not to mention being first-time home buyers.  But...if you have the patience and are getting the deal of a lifetime (like we did), you have to go for it and keep the end result in mind.  If it weren't for the instant equity that we had in our home, we would've walked away at least ten times during the process.  Now that we are here, things have yet to settle, but that story I must save for another blog.

New Year...and my resolutions are...

Dear 2012, I resolve to write in this blog!  I have so much to share since I last wrote.  I've been a bad, bad blogger but I am going to be better.  Perhaps if I am held accountable to myself and my blog, even if it lacks readers, than I will keep it up and that will be my motivator in other areas of life too.  :)

I have so much to share, but that'll have to wait because it's awfully late and I have to work tomorrow. 

What's to come in my 2011 recap posts: new house, new job, laziness...stay tuned!

Deuces!