Month: March 2008

Home, Home On The Brain.

DmentD1 Comment

Since the beginning of the year I’ve been looking to buy a house.  The one in NOLA sold near the end of 2007, and that marked the moment when I seriously considered home ownership again.  My slate was clean, and I now had the finances to put a significant down payment on a new place.  My debt is nil, and my credit is awesome (and nobody was more surprised than I was about that).

Started the search January 7th.  Looking specifically for a single story house, around 1300 sq ft, a two car garage (one side to park in, one side to have as a workshop), three bedrooms and two bathrooms, a reasonable yard, a spacious kitchen, and located in South Austin.

To keep within my calculated comfortable budget, my sacrifices would fall along the lines of proximity (looking further south, and consequently further away from downtown) and attractiveness (finding a place with good bones and lots of potential that had a certain amount of “ick factor” that I could spend my own time renovating bit by bit).  I have a few deal breakers: foundation issues, obviously crappy neighborhoods, low flood elevation, natural drainage issues like a driveway that slopes down toward the house or a yard graded toward the house rather than away from it, location immediately on a busy road, and direct close proximity to train tracks.

In early February I went under contract for a house that had a phenomenal multi-level yard, and was located on a third of an acre.  The house itself was dated, had obvious potential, but was a two story home and had some immediately apparent problems that didn’t seem unsurmountable.  We haggled the price down about $8k — it was at the high end of my comfort zone for price, but certainly worth it considering it’s location.  The lot more than made up for the shortcomings of the house.  That is, until the inspection.

Settling had caused some flexing of the foundation.  No breaks, but there was dramatic difference in elevation from the center of the house, to the corners.  The bulk of the house had vinyl siding on it, and that was becoming another death knell right there as there was a 90% chance that the siding was concealing a deteriorated original exterior, and would invite future expenses to have the whole thing stripped off and redone with proper fascia material (and another deal breaker was added to my list).  The heating and AC systems were “antiquated”, and the ductwork was riddled with holes and in need of immediate replacement.  There was a mystery leak from the roof that had rotted the interior of an outside wall in the utility area of the garage.  There was a buckle under the floor of the second story that ran front to back that was a side effect of the flexing foundation. And many, many more problems… too many to list.

I walked away from that house reluctantly, but happy that I didn’t buy into a lemon.  That foundation problem alone would have been an inherited albatross around my neck, and would have dramatically devalued the house when I went to resell it.  But damn, that yard was awesome.

Continued the search, and found another place I liked.  Started the haggle over the price until the owner put his foot down and wouldn’t go any lower… a meager $3k less than his listing.  The house was about $7k more expensive than the other most expensive house in the neighborhood, and about $10K more than the average neighborhood prices (and as a rule of thumb, you never, ever want the most expensive house in the neighborhood).  Fine.  If you can get that price from another buyer, go for it, but you’re not getting it from me.

About that time the interest rates for mortgages took a jump due to the high rate of foreclosures and underwriter skittishness as a result.  They were in the mid to upper 5% range when I started looking, suddenly they were in the high 6%.  Anything under 7% is a deal, but I’ll be damned if I don’t take advantage of this downturn in the market to get a killer APR.  I put on the brakes to see where they were going.

Meantime, home prices are dropping a bit.  The advantages have been falling to the benefit of buyers with the big home sales slump, and all the foreclosures — and apparently sellers are getting the message.  Home prices have been over inflated (and climbing) for the last decade, and now they’re starting to head back down to normal mortal levels.  Good for buyers who plan to stay in a house for a while.

Resumed the hunt when the interest rates came back below 6% (and they’ve been hovering there for a while).  In the last two weeks I’ve had two houses sniped out from under me before I could even put an offer on them (one of them went under contract an hour before we set foot in it).  Both were on the market less than 3 days, in decent neighborhoods, and reasonably priced from the start.  This was a sign that buyers were paying attention now, and that I couldn’t waste time when putting an offer in on a house that I liked.  It also meant I was getting better at targeting houses that suited my tastes, and were attractive to others as well.

Saturday I looked at four houses.  The last one was a winner.  Got a great vibe off of it, the layout was nice, it was a reasonable size and seemed to be in really good shape.  And Jeebus, the kitchen is huge.  It was on the market for two days.  Left there and went right back to my place where my Realtor an I banged out an offer.  Ours was the first they received.  A few hours later I got the word that they accepted it.  Wow, that was fast.

So, the main inspection happens this Friday, the 4th.  The plumbing inspection is next Monday, the 7th.  We have till midnight on the 8th to get out of this contract scot free for any reason whatsoever.  If all goes well, I close on April 30th.  But, should the general inspections turn up anything nasty and expensive, I’m outta there.

Stay tuned for updates, kids.

Comments And Spam.

DmentD

In an effort to thwart the ever increasing threat of (and in the recent case, actual presence of) spam in the comments, Mensa has instituted a temporary blockade consisting of the need for all comments to be approved by me before they’ll appear at all.  This means that you will not see your comment right away, and that you shouldn’t panic and post it multiple times because you think it didn’t go through.

There is also the capacity for me to blacklist spammers from the site entirely.  Should you find yourself unjustly staring at the blacklist page, just email me from the station you are blacklisted from and I’ll clear that up.

Future refinements to this system are in the works, and your patience is appreciated.  It’ll eventually get to point where I won’t have to approve each and every comment.

Fire Men.

DmentD2 Comments

It’s always mildly disconcerting to be about to lay down for bed and hear the sound of a large vehicle’s air-brakes bringing it to a halt outside your window, then you look through the blinds only to see a firetruck parked there.

Suddenly, the nice men in their turnout gear had my full attention.  If my building was on fire, I’d kinda like to know about it.

They weren’t in a hurry, and they didn’t have their sirens a-blazing, but they were there.  Flashlights in hand they explored the breezeway on my side of building 4, and then went to the other side where it looks as if they were met by a woman and her dog.  They disappeared over there for about five minutes.  They then leisurely walked back to the truck, got in and disembarked.  The guy in the front passenger seat spotted me on my patio watching them, and gave me a half hearted wave.

I have absolutely no clue what the hell that was all about, but needless to say it was strange, and a little surreal.  As I was walking back to the bedroom, I knew in my heart of hearts I had to pause to blog about this.

Fuck.  I need to find a house to buy.  I’m very tired of living with the possibility that the residents of 15 other apartments could possibly burn my home to the ground.  I don’t like those odds, and frankly, I don’t trust that most of these chuckleheads could pour water out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel, much less be completely focused on day-to-day common sense and safety.  All it takes is one asshole to leave a candle burning somewhere, or decide it’s perfectly ok to smoke in bed so long as the windows are open.

If I burn a house of my own to the ground, I have nobody to blame but myself.  I wouldn’t be rolling the dice with a mob of lowest common denominators.

*sigh*

*** ADDENDUM ***

During the next hour a number of Austin Energy (the local power company) trucks came and went through my parking lot.

Curious.

And then around 1AM I was woken from a dead sleep by the sound of chainsaws.  They went on for a number of hours, continually waking me on and off.  This morning there was a tree-service company disposing of lots of large branches.

I can only surmise that a tree was rubbing on a power line to the building and causing some trouble, specifically something that may have caused some sparks; hence the firetruck, power company and tree-service company.

I is tired.

Pratchett-isms, And WTF.

DmentD

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series.  It has evolved and grown beyond just a mere collection of books, and into a realm that commands as rabid — if not more, and politely so — a fan base that the Harry Potter series.  It’s been around longer, requires no particular reading order to enjoy, and boasts such a wide variety of amusing characters that while you may not like all of them, I guarantee you’ll find a quite a number of them that you do (and generally, they character subsets switch around from book to book so you’re not inundated with a bazillion characters at once).  And having just said that you can just pick up at any book and read, it’s nice to start at the beginning and work your way through, as it’s nice to watch the characters evolve and become quite well rounded indeed.

Been re-reading a few of the earlier books, very purposefully, to gain a sense on how far some of the characters come in their growth.  Stumbled across a few quotes (of many) that struck me as worth repeating.  The first is from Granny Weatherwax in Equal Rites, and while short, speaks volumes and mirrors a small splinter of my personal philosophy:

“They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.“

The second is from Reaper Man, and made me giggle for about a minute solid, while riding a recumbent bike in the gym, surrounded by sweaty people who seemed to have left their sense of humor in their lockers.  The context you need to understand this quote is this: it is between two wizards on the staff of Unseen University (a college of sorts for wizards of the stuffy, elitist, six-meal-a-day and do not much else type), and the Librarian is an orangutan who once was a human, was changed by an unfortunate accident, and refuses to be changed back as it suits his particular vocation.  He also communicates (quite clearly somehow) with a vocabulary that mainly consists of the word “oook“.

“Oook.”
“You? We can’t take you,” said the Dean, glaring at the Librarian. “You don’t know a thing about guerrilla warfare.”
“Oook!” said the Librarian, and made a surprisingly comprehensive gesture to indicate that, on the other hand, what he didn’t know about orangutan warfare could be written on the very small pounded up remains of, for example, the Dean.

And, as a final, completely unrelated note, THIS must be destroyed before it can reach the children! Seriously man, it’s freaking me out.