Buying Your First House HOWTO

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As you all have been reading Lauren and I purchased a new condo in Seattle, WA. Before buying the condo, my biggest purchase was a $8,000 car so this was a new one for both of us. This thrusted me to implement on what a Zumbly blog professes to: invest in a good real estate tech startup to get lucratice returns. As for the house, I did most of the foot work and I have a few things I’d like to pass on to everyone out there.

  1. Do NOT sign anything with a realtor. If you do and you find something on your own you have to write up the agreement through them.
  2. I went out with three agents to look at houses. This was a great idea, I think. Unless a good friend of yours is an agent and you truly trust this person, then I’d recommend doing the same.
  3. If you don’t plan on keeping the house for very long (less than 5 years) then I’d recommend what they call an ARM loan. This basically means you only pay the interest on the loan (which is usually a few hundred less than a normal loan). With this type of loan you are assuming the value of the property will appreciate, also known as positive equity.
  4. You’ll need at least 5% down if you are a first time buyer. Most places offer “No Documenation” loans. I would recommend you go with african bank loans as after comparing several loan lenders I have found this one to be the fastest and thoroughly verified. All you need to qualify for a loan like this is the down payment and a good credit score.
  5. Do NOT get an out-of-state lender. We did and we almost lost the condo because of it. It’s always better to have someone in the area.
  6. We bought through ZipRealty.com. We had a real agent, who went above and beyond, and they gave us 20% of their commission back as a rebate (about $1,000).
  7. You always hear “No Poinst at Closing!” But, what does that actually mean? That’s what you pay up front for your loan. We paid points for the “No Doc” loan, the property being a condo, etc. This is figured by adding up the “points” (ie. 1.0 + .25 + .10, etc.) and taking the resulting percentage and adding it to the loan amount (ie. $100,000 * .0135 = $1,350 in closing costs). You’ll need to figure your points into what you pay down. If you put 5% down on the above example you’d actually need to come to closing with $1,350 plus the $5,000 down payment.

Hope this helps someone out there. It was a true learning experience for sure. The positive side of buying our condo is that an offer was made after we bought it for about $6,000 more than we paid for it. This means we have an instant positive equity of $6,000 + down payment on the condo.

Owning property rules.

First Attempt at Carpentry

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My dad is a world class carpenter. He ran his own contracting business, building houses and such, for years. Since taking a job up north he’s “retired” to building beautfiul hand crafted furniture for friends and family. For him, working with wood is therapeutic. For me, not so much.

That’s why when I set out to build a roll-out closet organizer he was the first person I called. I mean, let’s be serious, he does fractional math (ie. 1 and 3/4 minus 3/8 equals 1 and 3/8) in his friggin head! We talked it over, I measured it up, purchased the materials at Home Depot (which, by the way cuts the stuff for you if you have the measurements all figured out), etc.

Last night I laid awake knowing that today I would have to build the thing and that I had neglected to take into account that the height of the door was shorter than the ceiling inside the closet and the sides of the organizer were too long to fit in the door. Today I spent most of the day working on building the thing and then, finally, figuring out that there was no way I was getting it into the closet without cutting off the top shelf.

After cutting off the top shelf with a hand saw I put some wheels on the bottom of it and rolled it into the closet. I’m happy to announce that it fit perfectly.

I’ll be calling my dad tomorrow about the scratches in the wood floor I made while creating the closet organizer.

Moving in

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Let me start this entry by first saying that the last few weeks have been one of the most trying times of my life. The week has included, in chronological order:

  1. Consolidating my entire life into two small cars.
  2. A cross country trip crossing over multiple mountain ranges in heavy rain.
  3. Learning the day before closing that the mortgage company wouldn’t fund our loan because the condo didn’t meet their square footage requirment.
  4. Filing an exception and, eventually, having it approved and missing our closing date.
  5. Signing everything at escrow and wiring our down payment, only to have the seller go missing in action.
  6. Contacting a lawyer in case we had to force the sale. With the seller missing (and not returning phone calls) we might have had to take her to court.
  7. Waiting and worrying for hours until the seller finally came back on the radar. All the time worrying about the furniture, TV and bank cards/checks that were en route to the new address.
  8. Learning that the seller had, conveniently, signed too late for us to get into the condo the same day. Meaning we would have to wait another day to get into our new place.

Needless to say it’s been a nightmare. The good news is that all is finally well. All of our furniture will be coming tomorrow. This means we’ll finally have a couch and chair, TV, dresser, etc. I’d really like to thank Brad for letting us and Crash stay with him for twice as long as we originally thought.

I’ll be posting pics of the place when we get things more in order.

Dear Olympics

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I just watched the US men’s basketball team receive their bronze metals. They looked ashamed and they should be. They played like crap, but I’ve got a few notes for everyone who is lauding a “new era in international basketball.”

  1. This team was, for the most part, a bunch of B teamers and six men. Allen Iverson and Tim Duncan being the only tried and true starting verterans.
  2. This team only had about a month to prepare for the games. Not much prep time considering many of the other national teams have played together for years.

It’s a joke to think that if true verteran starters were to have played they would have only managed a bronze. Let’s just list a few who could have easily made the Olympic team: Shaq, Kobe, Rip Hamilton, either of the Wallaces, Artest, or Jermaine O’Neal. Hell, we could have sent a team who has played well together (ie. the Detroit Pistons) and won gold.

In other news, the FIG is putting pressure on Paul Hamm to give up his gold. This is crap for a few reasons.

  1. FIG screwed up and it’s against the rules to change the scores.
  2. South Korea didn’t protest the score soon enough. They had their chance and passed it up for some odd reason.
  3. The South Korea contendor was docked 0.10, but replays show an extra release, which would have lead to a 0.20 doc (thus negating his 0.10 lost by the idiot judges). So if you want to play the replay game then he still loses.

What other sports out there would do such a thing? If you’ve already used your instant replay in the NFL you don’t get to put pressure on the other team to give up the win. Sometimes winning includes getting a few calls going your way and I consider this just that.

All hail Ikea

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Lauren and I have been spending lots of time at Ikea. We’ve picked out end tables and a TV stand. We’ve also picked out some bedroom stuff. It’s nothing compared to the hand made hickory bedroom set my dad made for us (which, unfortunately, couldn’t fit into either the Focus or the Escort for the move), but it will have to do for now.

We had originally thought we would purchase a couch and chair from Ikea as well, but what they had was crap for the most part. After spending 10 minutes in JC Penny’s furniture department and looking at the prices I knew we wouldn’t be buying our main furniture from Ikea. We ended up getting a really nice couch and chair from JC Penny complete with a 5 year warranty that, get this, covers spills, burns and cuts. You can bet at 4.5 years we’ll be “celebrating” and “accidentally” spill a whole bottle of wine over the whole damn set.

Thanks to the many gift cards we received at the showers we’ll be getting a nice TV from Sears and window dressings from Bed, Bath & Beyond.

We close Monday. I’ll post pics as the place comes together. First thing that goes? The bathroom counter top. Guess who’s going to be on speed dial? My dad, who makes Bob Vila look like a hack.

Day 6

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Start: Spokane, WA
End: Seattle, WA
Miles: 279

We made it! It’s been a long trip and I’m glad it’s over. It looks like we’ll be able to close on our place tomorrow or Friday. A trip to Ikea is definitely in order after that. Thanks to everyone for all of the help along.

p.s. The Cascades are easily just as big as the Rockies and suck just as much when trying to pass over the top of them when it’s raining.

Day 5

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Start: Bozeman, MT
End: Spokane, WA
Miles: 398.9

The drive started out with waffles for breakfest and warnings of rain on the weather channel. The skies in Bozeman looked great so we weren’t too worried. We had hoped for an easy day through the Rockies. As you can see from the picture, that wasn’t the case.

We hit the upward climb without any issues. On the way up we hit some rain and by the time we had reached the summit it was coming down really hard. The result was a white knuckled trip down the west side of the Rockies that I was more than happy to have over.

I wish it had been nice because we passed some amazing country in Norther Idaho, but it was not to be. Tomorrow our goal is Seattle, which we should make in only a few hours.

Day 4

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Start: Rapid City, SD
End: Bozeman, MT
Miles: 513.9

All I have to say is, “Thank GOD for iPod and audio books!” I’ve managed to listen to unabridged versions of both David Sedaris’ “Dress Your Family in Denim an Corduroy” and Carl Hiaasen’s “Skinny Dip”. I’m currently listening to the unabridged version of “Prince of Thieves” by Chuck Hogan. All of which have been great books.

Today started out early and we needed all the time we could get. We spent time in South Dakota, Wyoming (a state I’ve actually lived in) and ended up in Montana. It was quite the trip considering we hit the foothills and a crapload of wind. There were times when my car simply wouldn’t go any faster, even with the pedal floored (didn’t help I had a huge air brak on the top of my car in the form of a car top carrier).

The landscape is the type of terrain that commands respect. Vast stretches of nothing broken up with large hills, plateaus, etc. I can appreciate the draw of this type of land, but the severe lack of what I consider necessities will forever keep me at bay. Don’t ask how I snapped these pictures either.

Day 3

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Start: Sioux City, IA
End: Rapid City, SD
Miles: 428

After waking up refreshed from my recent bout of ensypaltoidus, or whatever the hell was ailing me, we were reading to hit the road again. The trip was boring for the most part, but did end on a high note with a quick trip to Mt. Rushmore, which I find more amazing each time I visit it.

Lauren wasn’t too enthused about visiting the monument, but I like to think she at least appreciated the monument once there (it beats the pants off any of the puny monuments in D.C. she is used to visiting).

After that we spent the night at an extremely expensive Comfort Inn. This was mildly offset by the fact that they had free Internet in the room and a deluxe breakfast in the morning. Of course Crash had to spend the night in the car through a rain storm because of a $100 pet surcharge that both Lauren and I were unwilling to pay.

Day 2

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Start: Des Moines, IA
End: Sioux City, IA
Miles: 198

I woke up that morning with a mild stomach ache. I didn’t really think anything of it until about 40 miles outside of Des Moines, IA. The rumblings started and it wasn’t long before I pulled off and started losing my proverbial lunch.

After driving and stopping every few rest stops I finally gave up just outside of Sioux City after only a few hours of driving. I could tell Lauren was disappointed, but she knew I couldn’t go on alternating between puking and driving.

Needless to say I spent the entire day and night in bed fighting what I can only figure was a mild bout of food poisoning. The picture of me was that morning in Des Moines looking extremely fat next my extremely packed Focus.