Kevin's Weblog

I closed on the house a week ago, and I just got my first re-fi offer in the mail.

42) Buy a House

I closed on the house yesterday. Wow! I’m excited and nervous and overwhelmed. I’ve got 2 weeks to move everything in before I go off on vacation, but that shouldn’t be too bad. I started moving some boxes already; the big day of furniture moving will probably be put off until next weekend. And some point soon I’ll actually post some pictures.

Right. I keep meaning to update and failing. I’m closing on the house on Thursday. I’m in a sort of very low level, continuous freak-out at this point. I’m sure it’ll go fine; but the reality of moving and setting up a home, again, is sinking in. Oh, and have I mentioned that I’m leaving on a two week vacation two weeks after closing day? Some recollections of the past month:

The inspection itself was quite educational. I followed the inspector around and got quite a few pointers about maintenance and such. The big issue that came up is that the roof is close to finished. We had a tense day of negotiations, but did get the seller to agree to cover the cost of a new roof.

Settling on the mortgage was a little stressful, but only because I didn’t just trust my instincts. My feeling going in was that I wanted to use my credit union, who I have a life-long relationship with. Over the years, plenty of people have looked at me funny for continuing to do all my banking with a bank on the other side of the country, but they have never made me unhappy as a customer, which is a pretty amazing thing to say about a bank. So, I got my preapproval through them, but then I let my agent talk me into getting some mortgage quotes from a broker that she often uses. That ended up taking most of a week, due to some phone tag, and in the end the broker couldn’t beat my credit union’s rates (or their fees, or their guarantee not to resell my loan). Unfortunately, at that point when I called my credit union to finalize the application, the first person I talked to wasn’t sure they could do it, because they usually want 30 days to do an out-of-state mortgage (which would have been no problem had I not wasted a week getting quotes from other people). Then I talked to another person and said “Look, I really want to do this with you, but if you can’t hit May 1st I have to go elsewhere”, and he said he could make that happen.

Getting insurance was straightforward, although part of me really wants to know why they ask some of the questions they do and how it affects your risk (and premium). I don’t want to game them or anything, I’m genuinely curious why drywall vs. sheetrock matters to them.

Tomorrow I need to call the utility companies and take care of all that.

Okay, better post this now, or it’ll never happen before the purchase actually happens.

42) Buy a House

On Sunday I had an offer accepted on a house! It’s a cute Victorian bungalow, just a block down the street from where I am now. Although there’s lots of small houses in this neighborhood, most of the houses on the market have been bigger than I need, and pushing what I can afford, leading to questions of whether I’d be happy renting out a room to someone, or buying a duplex and living in half of it. This house is just about perfectly sized for me, and comfortably priced.

We’re in the inspection period currently, but the house seems to have been well cared-for, so I’m hopeful that we won’t discover anything problematic. Beyond that, things still move pretty slowly at this point in the process. Stay tuned for updates (and pictures) later.

(Aside: please don’t feel that you need to comment on this post with your speculations about the future of the housing market or mortgage market. Suffice it to say that I’ve been paying attention too, particularly to the local market here, and given my needs and plans (and my ability to still qualify for a mortgage on excellent terms) I am comfortable with this purchase.)

We’ve apparently starting shopping for a house. I started an entry about that a week ago then didn’t get to finish it. And, today we actually put an offer on a house... and didn’t get it.

The house was cute, but small, and on a really nice lot up in a Canyon in Altadena. It would have been a compromise in some ways, as the rooms were a bit small, but on the other hand the property was great, the neighborhood was quiet, and it seems to be districted to one of the better elementary schools in the city.

When we went by the open house late this afternoon (we saw it once before on Thursday), they had 4 offers. We put in an offer at $5K over asking, and were willing to go $20K over. However, by the end of the day, they had 15 offers, and were countering at $35K over asking, with no loan contingency and a 3 day inspection contingency. All I can say is that someone out there really likes this house. So, we bowed out of the competition.

I think it was a good experience, though. We’ve now gone through all the offer paperwork, so the next time it’ll be a lot easier. And, we’ve thought through a lot of the issues we need to look at when evaluating a house. So, we keep looking.