Things We Overlooked

You'd think that with all the endless hours we spent obsessing over the details of our house, stopping in multiple times a week to check in on everything going in, we would have thought through everything. Yet, inevitably, there are things you never think about until you're actually living in the house.

Overall, there's very little we'd change on our house: we love the cabinetry, flooring, faucets, paint, etc. But there are a few things we overlooked: like the placement of our phone hookups. We barely cared whether we had phone hookups at all - we haven't had a home phone in nearly three years. We did pay close attention to where our cable hookups were, even adding a few, assuming we'd go with cable Internet and TV. Later, we realized the one flaw in our plan: cable service isn't yet available in our development. And while the bedrooms all have phone hookups, the living room - the one place we would have chosen a phone hookup, had we known we'd actually use it - doesn't have one. So our router now awkwardly sits on the kitchen counter.

The lighting is another area where our decisions were hit-or-miss. We added extra recessed lights in the kitchen, but should have added another set on one side of the living room, directly above our couch. There's a set of recessed lights on the other side of the living room, but they illuminate only the fireplace - little help for reading. And while we added light dimmers in our kitchen and master bedroom, we didn't think about puting one on the light fixture above our dining room table...so sitting at the table with the lights on feels a lot like sitting under the lights in a very warm interrogation room. The potential upside: perhaps the interrogation-style lighting will lead our dinner guests to spill some really good information.

"Selfish" Seller

Friday's real estate discussion in the Washington Post included this deliciously ridiculous comment from a poster:

Ashburn, Va.: I'm so mad at my neighbor. I bought my new home here in Ashburn last summer and plan to sell it next year (after holding two years to avoid taxes) to make a nice return on my investment. The problem is my neighbor is trying to sell his house (very similar to mine) right now and he keeps lowering his asking price. Each time he lowers his price, I see my potential profits next year getting squashed. Doesn't he realize he's hurting the comps for all of his neighbors by doing this? I don't think he is acting very "neighborly" by doing this. I want to say something to him and tell him he should stop putting his interests ahead of his neighbors. Its people like him who are ruining the market for the rest of us. If he would just refuse to lower his price, we could maintain our comps and everyone would benefit. What can I do to stop him?"

Ah, the naivete of someone who's clearly never owned a home before (or at least never owned a home in anything approaching a normal real estate market). First, expecting a "nice return" in just two years on a house purchase - given all the costs involved in real estate transactions - is insane. Pay a couple percent in closing costs when you purchase a home; pay six percent to a realtor when you sell, plus another couple percent in taxes, and you lose money if a house "only" appreciates at a slightly higher rate than a typical inflation rate.

Then, the poster goes on to claim that the neighbor lowering his asking price is ruining the neighborhood's comps, ignoring the fact that comps aren't based on asking price; they're based on sales prices. Would the poster prefer the neighbor to keep his asking price high, letting his house continue to languish on the market so the poster has another house as direct competition when he/she puts his/her house on the market next year?

Perhaps most insane is the poster's accusation that the neighbor is "putting his interests ahead of his neighbors". I doubt it's in the neighbor's "best interest" to sell his house for a lower price; he's likely just being realistic. Given that his home hasn't yet sold, it was likely overpriced in the first place. So who's really the selfish one in the equation - the neighbor who's trying to sell the home, or the poster who's concerned about "my potential profits next year getting squashed"?

Christmas Every Day

Just as we'd nearly finished unpacking all our boxes, my parents arrived - with all the boxes we'd been storing at their house for the last year.

Since then, every day feels a little like Christmas. We're unpacking the boxes of stuff we haven't seen in a year, discovering things we'd forgotten we had. And like Christmas, the "presents" can be a little hit-or-miss. Sometimes the surprises are fun - we uncovered the cool clock we got for our wedding, the wineglasses we always liked, extra placemats to complete our set.

Other times, we're less thrilled with what we find inside. We wonder why we even bothered packing this stuff up and dragging it across three states lines. We've uncovered software for computers we no longer own, crystal vases we got for our wedding and never really cared for (frankly, I thought I'd given most of those to Goodwill, but apparently that wasn't the case); clothes we haven't worn in years (and which only serve to remind us of our poor taste and bad judgment). Looks like it may be time to take advantage of the Dumpster across the street... the divers may even be pleased by the added bounty...

Dumpster Divers Make the Rounds

Last night the Dumpster divers were out in full force after the sun went down. We could hear them rattling around outside - first going through the Dumpster across the street, then checking the one on the street behind us. They may have gotten a pretty good haul - on our walk earlier in the evening, we noticed one of the Dumpsters nearly overflowing with cast-off wood. We were tempted to just turn on the outside lights and see if they'd scatter like cockroaches...

Hillbillies with Money

Our new subdivision sits squarely within an area of long-existing homes with enormous yards and a few tracts of farmland. For some residents, this sudden concentration of housing in a previously wide-open area has come as quite a shock. They haven't yet accepted that living next to a now-populous area may require giving up certain long-ingrained transitions - like shooting their guns whenever and wherever they choose.

We've taken to referring to them as "hillbillies with money." In addition to a full arsenal of gun paraphenalia, their garages and yards are filled with elaborate toys - mostly vehicles, some legal to drive paved roads; others that appear dubious. We frequently see them zipping about the fringes of the neighborhood on souped-up golf carts.

Over the Fourth of July week, we were treated to several fireworks shows nearly as elaborate as professional shows, at costs likely approaching that of our mortgage payment. You could just about hear them yelling "Yee-hah!" as they set off another round...

Homeowner Spending Spree

We've launched back into full-fledged homeowner spending mode. After writing the largest check we've ever written in our lives and agreeing to send the lender large sums of money every month for the next 15 years, we took the only logical next step: we went shopping.

We already had the rental truck, we rationalized. Given that we both drive Honda Civics, when would we next have the opportunity to bring home large pieces of furniture, after all? So we bought patio furniture. It made it easy for the employees know where they should bring the furniture out to: "Just look for the 24-foot Budget truck." (One asked, "Did you rent the truck just for this?", as they put the 3 x 5-foot table in the 24 x 7.5 x 7.5 foot truck. Um, no.)

Despite having given back the truck, our shopping sprees have continued. Our recent days have involved any number of trips to Lowe's, Menards, and Wal-Mart, as we discover something else we need, more supplies we've run out of, or a few more things that we've simply forgotten what boxes we've packed them in.

While our goal in buying a new home was to avoid lots of large expenditures (other than buying blinds and landscaping, which we'd anticipated), so far that hasn't been the case. Our neighbors confirmed our fears when they revealed that, in fact, "We've spent more on this new house than we have on any of our others." Well, at least we won't be putting on new siding and windows...

Dumpster Diving

All the new construction around here has fueled the popularity of a particular pasttime: Dumpster diving. Last night I was waiting in the car for Tim when a car pulled up across the street. It was a man in his mid-40s; I didn't recognize him. Since we've met the other neighbors on our street, I thought perhaps he was a subcontractor or was looking at building in the neighborhood. He kept glancing around nervously. With one more glance over in our direction, he took the plunge: he dove into the giant Dumpster of construction cast-offs across the street.

Dumpster diving isn't limited to visitors from outside the neighborhood, however. When we met our neighbor that lives on the street behind ours, he told us, "Man, they must have screwed up so many times on your deck. They kept throwing away these perfectly good pieces of wood - I got some great stuff!"

Last-Minute Snag: A House with No Hot Water

Our realtor walked in just as we were signing the final papers to close on our house. "I was just talking to Chad [the builder's realtor], and we have a bit of a situation..." he said.

The gas company had been out at the house the day before and thought they'd discovered a leak. It turned out that there was no leak, but the employees left without taking the lock off the gas - so we'd have no hot water until the gas company made it back out to turn the gas on.

It was too late to change our plans - we'd rented the truck, boxed everything up, and lined up help. The builder agreed to put us up in a hotel for the weekend, but the ones nearest our house were booked. We suggested a nicer hotel downtown; they said they'd "prefer" we didn't stay there. We booked it anyway (once we got a pretty good discount).

So for the last three days we've been alternating the chaos of moving and unpacking with kicking back at the hotel, enjoying made-to-order omelets and free cocktails - really not such a bad arrangement. Still, we were relieved (and a little shocked, given it was the day before a holiday) the gas company made it out to the house today. Since we were quickly running out of clothes, we're happy to trade in our luxurious living arrangment just for something clean to wear.

Low-Tech Lender Approval

Our lender appears to be perfunctorily verifying a checklist of items before we close. Lou, our mortgage specialist, has been badgering us for antiquated items like paper bank statements and paystubs; we've gotten most of these items electronically for years. I think he's finally given up and decided to accept PDFs instead.

This week, Lou told Tim he needed to confim his employment, but he could "just have a coworker do it." So Tim handed the phone to a coworker, who confirmed "yes, Tim works here." Truly a foolproof process for ensuring that someone is gainfully employed. Apparently Lou didn't bother to confirm my employment (at least he never called me and asked me to hand the phone to a coworker). However, judging from the lender's old-fashioned way of doing business, he may have just figured, "well, of course the little lady doesn't work."

Final Walk-Through

We had our final walk-through yesterday. We uncovered a few minor issues - mostly nicked paint and nail holes that needed to be taken care of. As we were almost finished with the walk-through, thinking that we'd examined nearly everything with the greatest care, our realtor stopped by. He asked, "Did you open all the windows?" We hadn't. Our realtor began opening the casement window nearest to him - and a couple of inches the window abruptly stopped. The edge was caught on the deck railing. We'd had them enlarge the deck from its standard size... and apparently they forgot to take the window into account.

We'll see tomorrow what kind of solution they came up with (and whether our deck railing happens to have a big gash in it). And we'll see what other issues we uncover once we're actually living there. There's bound to be a few more episodes in this comedy of errors.