We bought a house-Part Two

In my last post about this I left off with what I knew the evening of the first day.  At our Realtor's suggestion we put a new lock on the gate that day.  After that it got even more exciting, though maybe not all the good kind of exciting!  With an auction you pay a deposit the day of the bidding and then the remainder has to be paid prior to 5PM the next business day.  The office location was downtown Phoenix and since Tony had a job there that day we went with him.  On our way home we went by to see if the keys I remembered seeing in the RV would unlock either the front or back door.

We pull up to the gate and there's a different lock on the gate!  Our lock is gone.  No signs, no notes, nada.  There's a lockbox also.  A call to our Realtor confirms he didn't do it, he gives us a code to try on the lockbox, and tells us that it's our house-if someone has changed the lock they are in the wrong and we have every right to break the lock off.  Off we go to get tools.  Tony hammered open the lockbox which we assumed contained the key to the lock-we were right. 

Can you imagine the thoughts going through our heads during this time?

• Did we just get scammed?  Our we out $30K now?
• Are we dealing with an upset previous homeowner who will make our lives miserable?

As we approach the house we see that all the gates around it that were previously open are now closed.  There's a lockbox on the gate to the front door, and another on the front door.  Once again, a call to our Realtor and he's able to identify who it is by the colored box on the front door.  He calls us back with info from the guy and suggests we call him.  This picture shows how far from the road the house is and why we couldn't tell all this from the gate.  This picture was taken a couple of days later, but Wednesday night when this was taking place, the sun had set before we were able to get in.  What you see here is our driveway and the road is out by the two evergreens.

Tony called the other Realtor who had put the lockboxes on.  He'd been contacted that morning by FreddieMac to secure the property and prepare it for sale.  Needless to say he was a bit put out by the lack of communication between the bank/trustee/FreddieMac.  He asked if we got a good deal.  Tony simply answered yes, and this other guy says, "So you paid what, about $75,000?"  I think he almost creid when Tony told him what we actually paid.  I feel pretty good about the price, knowing a Realtor felt two and a half times what we paid would still be a good deal!

I had the power turned on last Friday and we went over to check a few things, but haven't been back since.  Tony's eager to test the well and the pipes in place to irrigate the pastures.  He took pictures that day and I'll post those soon.

The books we ordered to learn more about meat preserving have arrived and Tony's thinking it's pig butchering time sooner than he thought.  Our goat buck is in the same pen as the does and our cow.  All 3 are pregnant and need extra food, but Boots (the buck) shoos them away, so he needs his own pen-hence the earlier than expected pig butchering time.  She's over 250 though, so she's plenty big enough.