Closing Day Tomorrow

After 5 months of ups and downs in this process, we finally take possession of our new house back home tomorrow! I got the "clear to close" from my bank, set a time at the title agency, and got the HUD form showing how much I need to pay...i.e. this is for real!

Before & After - First House

With my house being under contract, I thought this would be a good time to reflect on the improvements and changes we made during our three years of ownership. I only have a few pictures of the "before", but will describe changes in words and pictures.

Competing Offers

My current house was put on the market last Thursday (Oct. 18) and had about ten showings over the weekend. The Realtor open house was Tuesday and got positive feedback on the quality of the house and the price level - 8/18 Realtors said it was $5k too high, not a big issue! Today I was informed by my Realtor that I'd gotten TWO offers today! We sorted through them, informed each that there was another offer on the table, and settled with one of the buyers for $1k OVER ASKING! Apparently, we priced the house right (maybe too low?) and are glad to be moving on with our lives. We close at the end of the month and hopefully will have our house back home next week.

Door Jam(b)

Expecting to close this week on my new house back home, I was given bad news. The bank's appraiser submitted his report. The value was actually above what I'm paying - HOORAY! The issue is that his quality/liveability rating was a C5, second to worst and 1 notch below what FNMA accepts - meaning the bank could not give me a loan because they couldn't sell it. The report highlighted the fact that there are no kitchen appliances and significant deferred maintenance. I knew about all of these and didn't think of them as a hindrance. His biggest reason to grant the C5 rating vs. a C4 (which would have made my loan approved) was that the front door doesn't lock because it was kicked in. I knew it didn't lock and asked my realtor to get it fixed right after making my offer in June! After a bit of glue and screws, the door is lockable and we should be on for a closing next week.

Punched in the Face

Last night I got a punch in the face reminder of why I'm so committed to moving back home. Traffic was bad, which delayed my bus to the train station. Ever resourceful, I walked to the subway station. After waiting for 15 minutes for a train (they are supposed to run in 6-8 min intervals), I realized that my chance of making the train home was 0% with the next train leaving 90 minutes later and getting me home just before 9pm. Luckily my brother is living in the city until May, so I just crashed with him for the night. If my brother didn't live in the city (which he won't very soon), I would have had a terrible night. Eliminating my 90 minute (if things go well) one-way commute is paramount to my happiness. I'm amazed I haven't gone crazy yet!

Watch List-October

My job gives me a Bloomberg terminal - complete with a whole monitor dedicated to watching each and every tick during the stock market trading day. While I can't buy any stocks our funds would buy, there is still a lot of the world available to me. Lately I've been eyeing INTC, RRGB, and MSFT.