Home Sweet One Bedroom Condo

We are finally settled into our new place and EVERYTHING has been put away!  Here's a picture of the living room.  It's a small, one bedroom, one bath place but it is the perfect size for us.  In fact, we have decided to buy a two bedroom house instead of a three or four bedroom house as we had planned (actually that was our initial plan when we sold our last house--downsize and minimize so that we would save money on not only heating a cooling but also on decorating and furniture). 
Like many times before, when we were making offers on houses here in Las Vegas we kind of got carried away with the "if two bedrooms are good than three or four would be better" thing so I am glad we put our home buying on hold for a few months so we could have a bit of time to realize that we want to spend a lot less money and time on a house so that we will have a lot more money and time to do the things we want to do like travel. 
Anyway, I am really happy with this little place (except for the part about sharing a bathroom and closet with the hubby--definitely need two bathrooms and two separate closets in the new place!), the price is super reasonable, and it will be "home" for a few months for us!  Also, I have been cooking up a storm for the first time in nearly a year.  So far I have made pizza, banana bread, chocolate chip cookies, granola, yogurt, and curried shrimp with rice.
The only thing that is missing is a Christmas tree but real trees are SO expensive here!!!  So we will hang up some Christmas cards and call it good for this year.  Now I need to get my Christmas shopping done!!!

Gah! Back to Square One

So our lender called yesterday and our condo is a no go. 
(If you are a new reader, I'll give you the Reader's Digest version on our condo story: currently we are homeless.  We sold our house and nearly everything in it at the beginning of the year and have been traveling and staying with friends and family along the way.  When we ended up in Las Vegas a couple of months ago, a cousin said 'you HAVE to buy here now because prices are SO low'.  And they are.  We decided to make Las Vegas our home base and within a couple of days of arriving we found the perfect condo and promptly made an offer.  Since it is a bank-owned property, we weren't too distressed that the process to buy the condo was stretching out for months; as we are currently in Seattle and will be heading to Asia next week, it isn't like we need to move in any time soon.)
So fast forward to yesterday.  After signing a massive amount of documents over the past couple of months, getting the financing in line, and having the inspection done, the very nice lender lady called and told us that the selling agent was an idiot (not in so many words but I know that's what she meant).  The selling agent had put down that the condo was FHA and VA approved (meaning the buyer--us--can get one of these standard loans for the condo--some condos are not FHA or VA approved because they have a too high vacancy rate or too many of the units are renter instead of owner occupied).  Everyone--our realtor, our lender, and us--went on the selling agent's assumption and proceeded to move forward with the sale.
Turns out this development is not FHA/VA approved so the lender said that if we want the condo, we will need to make a cash offer (being the nice lender that she is, she also warned us that if we do buy with cash, we would have a difficult time in the future selling the unit because, again, the new buyer would not be able to get a loan for it).
I don't happen to have $64,000 in cash laying around and while I am super tempted to borrow the cash from a couple of people that I am sure would loan it to us, no questions asked, it goes against my number one rule of never borrowing or loaning money to family or friends as this is the surest way to end up with people hating you (ie: if you get sick or lose your job and can't pay the loan, the banks have a built in cushion whereas friends or family who do such a thing don't so you have not only sunk your own self financially but someone else as well. Not a good idea).
So the personal loan idea is out the window and we are back at square one.  Since hubby really, really wants to live in Las Vegas, our new plan is to come back from Asia, get a rental truck, drive our meager belongings down there and put them in a storage unit (currently they are in a storage unit in the Seattle area), find another place to make an offer on, then head to the east coast for a couple of months until the home closes then fly back to Vegas and move in. Whew. If only it is that easy!

And This is a Picture of My New Condo...

Well it isn't actually ours yet but yesterday after seeing about a dozen houses and condos for sale in Las Vegas, we made an offer on this two bedroom, two bathroom, 1000 square foot condo which is in a gated community only 15 minutes from The Strip!  We had kind of planned to buy a place eventually but this deal fell in our laps and the timing was actually pretty good too because being permanent house guests is getting old.  We always thought we would find a small house or condo in Seattle, but, as it turned out, we were having a great time in Las Vegas and hubby's cousins (four of them) had bought condos in this development for rentals and one of them mentioned that the condo next to hers was for sale for only $60,000 (sadly they all bought condos here when the price of the exact same units were going for $191,000(!). I took one look at it, thought it was perfect, quickly calculated that the price of the mortgage plus fees would run about $500 PER MONTH and we quickly made an offer.  Hopefully we will hear later this week whether the offer was accepted. 
It's kind of a surprising turn of events but I think this will make the perfect "home base" for us for a variety of reasons... the monthly cost is super low (lower than anything we could have found in Seattle), relatives live near by so when we are traveling, they can always check in on it for us, it is much smaller than our old house which is exactly what we wanted, and if we decide to live permanently somewhere else, I think it will be a great investment property since our price is $500 per month but it could be rented out monthly for $750+, or weekly to tourists for even more.  Plus, there is always so much going on in Vegas, there are numerous airlines flying to and from the city, often at very low rates, and the cost of living there is pretty low (the cousins were showing me all of their tips of finding discounts and getting the best deals at many places around the city so I figure when we move there I will have plenty to blog about!). 
I'll let you know what happens.  Now we are back in Seattle staying with another set of cousins until we figure out what to do next (either go to Japan first or wait until the condo closes, move the stuff out of our storage unit to Las Vegas, then go to Japan),  Just thinking about all of that makes me tired!
And of course, Happy 4th of July to you all!!