Category: October 2017

Our housing situation is really starting to get stressful. We moved here over a year ago, and we are not settled yet. In fact, if anything, it seems like we are going from bad to worse. Our stuff is boxed and scattered everywhere. We have stuff in our rental in Placitas, in the garage in John’s house in Placitas, in my rental in Santa Fe, in a storage unit in Bernalillo, and now I have a new storage unit in Santa Fe. I don’t know where anything is. We are paying rent on 2 houses and 2 storage units, an amount which exceeds the enormous mortgage we used to have on our fancy house in California. And we’re trying to buy a townhouse in Santa Fe and that’s not going well.

On a box I was packing this morning I started to write, “dishes –  Santa Fe townhome.” But we don’t know yet whether we’re going to get that townhome, so I crossed out the beginning of “townhome” and wrote “casita” instead, but then I realized there wasn’t room in the casita, so I crossed that out and wrote, “storage.” And then I was just sad.

Last night John dreamed that all our furniture was piled in the driveway and overflowing into the street, forcing the passing cars to weave around it. And it was starting to rain and he didn’t know which furniture to try to save or where to put it. And the black couch was missing (John – hello! We gave the black couch to Darren! Because the dogs ruined the black loveseat and I didn’t want them to ruin the couch too!) It’s weird when dreams get too realistic.

And then I dreamed last night that we were moving into a new rental that was full of projecting nails, and floors that wouldn’t hold your weight, and water under the floors, and exterior walls that were missing.

And then in another dream last night (it was truly a hard night), I dreamed that I was trying to box up my stuff, but the boxes were in shreds because we had used them so many times. John went to get me new boxes, but on the way out of the driveway he backed into something, and I laughed at him. He got frustrated and to prove that he really can back a vehicle like a pro, he decided to back all the way out the driveway instead of turning around (and in my dream the driveway was steep uphill gravel). So as he spun out while backing up the driveway and he backed into the neighbor’s house. Then he got so mad that he just floored it, and deliberately backed all the way through the neighbor’s wall and completely into their house! (Remember this was just a dream). We had a good laugh about that one this morning. But that’s the stress of it.

I think the fires in California are making it harder. Logically, I should be grateful that it’s not us. Our house hasn’t burnt down, and we still have all our stuff – it’s just boxed and temporarily lost and very disorganized. We haven’t suffered the losses that those people have, and our situation is temporary and will eventually sort out just fine. But I don’t think that trying to be grateful that we aren’t impacted by those fires is actually very psychologically soothing. Because in reality, we have friends, family, coworkers and clients who are being impacted. And the photos of the burned houses, and the stories from our friends and family are not helping us psychologically through our own little housing transition issue. Their reality, combined with our own lack of current housing stability, is subconsciously stressful.

Also because we’re splitting our stuff between two houses, in essentially a “his vs. hers” configuration, this is triggering traumatic memories of my past divorces. Luckily, I think our relationship is better than it’s ever been. John has been GREAT with all of this, and I am enormously grateful for that. I think we are actually kind of enjoying our weekdays apart, even though we may not quite want to admit that 🙂

I actually had a loyal fan email me today, wanting to know how the townhouse was faring. Seriously? You are not yet sick of hearing me write about my attempts to purchase houses?

For the past week we’ve been waiting because our lender was going to review and reconsider the low-ball appraisal. And we had decided not to ask the sellers for a reduction until we knew the results of the lender’s review. Every day they told us they would have the review done by the end of the day.

Finally, after a week of waiting, the lender got back to us yesterday and said, nope, they are not going to increase the value of the appraisal. Meanwhile, I’ve been running spreadsheets like a crazy woman and I think I pretty much know as well as anyone what that house is worth. I think it’s worth about exactly half-way between the appraised amount and my original offer. In addition, the most recent, and most similar comparison sale (which the appraiser somehow overlooked) sold for just a few thousand less than the half-way point. So I feel pretty confident about what that house is worth on the current market.

This morning we wrote an amendment to the offer, offering the half-way point, which is what I think the house is worth. I expect them to counter-offer. In which case, we’ll need to decide whether to pay over the probable market price or not.

Meanwhile, I am also looking into getting a new lender, in hopes to get a more realistic appraisal. The higher the appraisal we get, the more we can borrow on a low-interest, 30-year mortgage, and the less we have to come up with cash (or borrow at a high-interest, faster payoff). The question is, is it worth going through the hassle of getting a new lender? The paperwork is ridiculous nowadays. And it will slow us down.

The first lender I contacted advertised good interest rates, but they told me it would take 60 days, because they didn’t have those particular HOA documents on file, and they have some sort of onerous review process for the HOA docs. That’s bogus. My sellers aren’t going to wait for another two months!

So my agent recommended a different lender and I spoke to them yesterday. They’ll need 30 days minimum, and we’re currently 2 weeks from our initial closing date. So it will set us back 2-3 weeks past the initial closing date. And the sellers would need to agree to that.

My agent presented the new, reduced offer to the sellers this morning. I’ll let you know when I hear something!

You may be wondering how the remodel is going. Oh that! Yes, the happy answer is, “I don’t have any idea!” John’s dealing with it. Yay! That was probably my main motivation for getting a new job.

Last I heard, they were still installing brick. I’m curious to see it after it has been oiled (it will be darker and less orange).

John decided to take out the old kitchen cabinets, and is having trouble finding new ones that he likes. Since there is often a few-week delivery time on cabinets, I doubt the kitchen will be usable anytime soon.

I think he plans to move in anyway, without a kitchen, because (presumably) I’ll have a house in Santa Fe with a working kitchen. The townhome (if we buy that one) has a really tiny kitchen, so most of our kitchen items will have to be boxed and stored for awhile.

I’ve also been pushing John to buy the solar panels and batteries asap. That is the main part of this project I’m actually excited about. It’s an ideal house to go off-grid, because it’s already on well water, it’s all-electric (also has a wood stove), and there’s plenty of space for solar panels and no trees blocking them. Also we need to update the aging heating system anyway, so we can go with an efficient heat pump. And it already has evaporative cooling, which is way more efficient than central air.

I’m anxious to get the equipment purchased because of rumors that our current administration is going to limit the import of solar panels from China, and they are pretty much all made in China. I just want to be sure to have them, even if we have to store them for awhile. So John made an appointment with a solar guy. Yay! Buy those babies! And plenty of them!

I doubt I’d even try to go off-grid in Santa Fe, at least not with that particular townhome. There’s not enough space, too many neighboring trees, there’s an existing in-floor radiant hot water system that’s probably not all that efficient, and is on gas anyway. I’ll just head out to Placitas if there’s an apocalypse 😉

Here’s the latest on the possible purchase of the townhome. On Friday I talked with another lender and showed them the appraisal to get their opinion. They thought the appraisal was maybe a little low, but they also felt we had offered too much on the house. So that helped confirm it for me.

Also on Friday I had a discouraging conversation with my agent. She was still trying to insist that our offer was fine and the appraisal was way too low, which I no longer believed. But even if it was, there didn’t seem to be a lot we can do about it because we were told that our lender’s policy is to not accept a second appraisal or just go with the lowest one. I also thought my agent said that the sellers would not negotiate, which was more disappointing news.

So John and I went camping and tried not to think too much about it. He was mostly of the opinion that we should just come up with the extra cash and buy it anyway. But his main concern was that if we buy it – that I be happy with it.  And I feel like there is too much difference between the appraisal price and the contract price to just pay the difference. I don’t want to pay way over market price for a house, even one I like.

Then last night I talked with my agent again, and she indicated that we would go back to the seller and ask for a reduction. She suggested we split the difference between the appraisal and the contract price. She didn’t know if the seller would accept, but we could at least try.

Meanwhile it turns out that our lender is willing to review the appraisal. So my agent decided we should wait until we hear back from the lender. We are supposed to hear today, but haven’t yet. Maybe we’ll hear tomorrow. Then we’ll submit the reduction request to the sellers. Then we wait another day or two for them to get back to us. They will likely counter offer (or simply not accept the reduction), in which case we’ll be back to having to decide whether to accept or cancel the purchase. But we do have more hope today than we did over the weekend.

It seems like with every real estate transaction there’s something new that comes up.