A Running Tally of Metaphysical Phenomena

Pop Quiz!!
Which of these houses are we about to move into?

Is it the slowly-exposed, attractively lit, tastefully columnar villa A?

Is it the ridiculous, Jetsonesque, will-look-dated-by-later-today B (click for more)?

Or is it the stately, understated, modest elegance of C?

Of course, if you’ve been paying any attention at all to pretty much anything ever, you know that it’s none of these. It’s our comfy, happy little this guy:

We’re getting a lot closer now, so I think it’s getting to be more appropriate and timely now to spill some of the house-related beans we’ve been holding onto. Not so much out of secrecy, it should be noted, but mainly because we sort of didn’t believe we were actually going to get a house, especially not on the sort of time frame this thing has run on. But we’re closing on Friday, most likely (more on the possibility of delays in a moment), so I guess it’s time for a little more of the story and then an update.

First, I mentioned that the time frame of this was kind of unexpected. I have all of the e-mails and everything, so I can sort of reconstruct the way it all went. It was something like this:

March: I got a new job, with a bit of a raise (yay!), and a couple of people said, “hey, maybe you guys could start thinking about getting a house now that your family is growing and you could maybe actually pull it off now if lots and lots of celestial bodies align just right, etc.” To which we initially responded with “eh, yeah, maybe in a couple of years or something.”

April: “Boy, it sure would be nice to not just dump money into a hole in the form of paying rent every month.” and “Hey, look, our herbs are growing well in the window sill. Wouldn’t it be nice to have an actual garden some time?”

May: “Sometimes I think about how great it would be to have a little space for my artwork that wasn’t also our dinner table.” and “Hey, it’s only not quite midnight. Let’s go online and look at the oldest cities in the world, the progress of the Virgin Galactic project, trailers for movies we probably won’t get the chance to go see, funny cat videos, and real estate listings.”

June: “Wow, real estate around here has really dropped in price!” and “Did you know it’s an actual credit on your tax return and not just one of those inscrutable deduction things?” and “Have you seen how easy it is to map and filter stuff on Redfin? That’s pretty cool.”

First part of July: Got a pre-qualification estimate just for fun and looked quickly at two places that we ruled out just about as quickly. Sat out of the game for a bit and then considered actually finding a real estate agent to have a stab at things. Who knows? If we can get in something by the end of November, we can do that tax credit thing. Otherwise, we’ll just wait another year or two, and hopefully things will stay low.

July 20/21 (Monday/Tuesday): Met with two realtors, picked the second one, went home, looked online again, and sent three listings—two reasonable possibilities and one much more remote possibility—to the guy we decided to work with. Set an appointment for the two on Thursday.

July 24 (Wednesday): “Oh, look, that other one was just reduced in price by sixteen thousand dollars!”

July 23 (Thursday): Went to the first house, called the realtor to ask him to skip it and meet at the second one. Took ten minutes to look at the second one and got ready to go home. But it turned out the one that was just reduced was right around the corner from where our realtor lives, so we were able to take a few minutes to go have a look. Short version of the story: “We’ll take it!” ([Much] Longer version: lots of paperwork and running around and concern over whether we’d be able to, etc. Because obviously, “we’ll take it!” is to home purchasing what “I declare bankruptcy!” is to actual chapter 11 filing.)

August 5: After some strange events, we had an accepted offer.

Between then and the beginning of this week: Probably the closest I’ve come, in terms of pure volume, to hand writing and publishing a book. The fax machine in my building greets me by name now. Also, in the process of everything, the seller (a bank; it was foreclosed) opted to pay for the roof replacement rather than reducing the purchase price, which made the roof completion a prerequisite for closing the deal.

This week: Suspense! Will the roof be done on time? Will the delays become too much to handle? Will Kent have to go smack the roofer (figuratively speaking)? Will the appraiser be able to come out and verify that it’s been done in time to close on the planned date? Watch this space!!

Once we actually get the place, we have a ton of work to do*, which is actually going to be a lot of fun. We were able to afford the place mainly because of the work it needs to have done, and we got this nice streamlined purchase/rehab loan (it’s called a 203(k) loan for anyone interested) to let us do it all up front over a few months rather than a piece at a time over several years or something. I’ll put pictures up from time to time. The first steps are to take out the carpet (and, simultaneously, the cat smell) upstairs and seal the floor downstairs (it’s slate), and then patch some drywall, paint, and put floors back down upstairs. We’re hoping to get that done by next weekend, when we move. If closing happens Friday, we might just pull that off. I’ll keep you all posted.

Tags: house

This was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 9:55 am.