Category: 2017

Tuesday morning

I had Monday off, which was great (more about that here). So now I’m having a classic “Monday morning” except it’s worse because it’s Tuesday (somehow that’s making it worse).

I spilled my coffee in my work bag. I have a migraine (day 3 of the migraine). I can’t get logged into my primary software I need to do my work. My password is wrong? Did I forget it in 3 days? So I decided to register for my health benefits while I wait for someone to help me with my login issue, but the benefits website is down. And my office is freezing! We suddenly got a cold snap, on top of the heat being off over the 3-day weekend. Although for some reason, even though all my neighbors were out scraping a thick frost off their windshields this morning, mine was clear. I’ll take it.

I noticed that my boss’s “out of office” message lists me as her contact. “If you need immediate assistance, please contact Kristina…” Um, yeah. What would I do? I don’t know anything yet. I really don’t know what we’re going to do when she leaves in less than a month!

And then, all the fires in California! I have so many friends and family there.

The suspense continues

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.

Fall color

Our townhome purchase isn’t sorted yet, but there was nothing we could do about it over the holiday weekend, so we went camping! We took the dogs and the van and went to see the fall color in the Pecos Mountains. It was gorgeous!

Doesn’t John look happy. Awww, he loves his dog!

The first area we went to on Saturday was really beautiful, but it turns out there were a lot of summer homes in the area, so nowhere really to camp. So we drove to another section that was more remote, and there was lots of good places to park a van for the night.

On Sunday we went on a really long hike. It was steep, and high elevation, and I had a bit of a migraine, so it was a challenge. It was beautiful though, and I’m glad we did it.

We made it to the overlook. Whew!

The townhome didn’t appraise

Bad news – The appraisal for the townhome came in significantly lower than the price we offered.

There’s three main reasons that could happen. I could have offered too much for the house. The appraisal could be wrong. Or, sometimes houses don’t appraise well in a rapidly rising market, where there aren’t historical prices to justify the current ones.

If I offered too much, there should be better homes for better prices available. Except there’s not. (Believe me, I’d know if there was.)

Is the appraisal wrong? I went back and spent a lot of time looking at the comps. I looked at the low comps on the appraisal, and the high comps that the seller’s agent “helpfully” provided (LOL). And I found even better comps on Zillow (which has a “recently sold” feature by the way, very useful).

I made a spreadsheet and sorted all the amenities, and looked at all the photos, and mapped them all. Based on my research, I think the appraisal is a little low, but not a lot. The appraisal did miss the most similar comp – a recently sold neighboring townhome a block away and right on the trail, same floorplan, similar amenities, etc. (Why was that missed? Come guys, you’re the professionals here.) Even though the appraisal was badly done, when I look at the comps, I can’t justify the price we offered for the townhome.

Except, it seems to me like there’s no better deal on the market right now in that price range. So has the market been going up? Is that why there’s no comps as high as my offer? The market in Santa Fe has not been going up recently. However inventory has been going down, and things are selling faster. Usually that happens right before prices start going up. So I may be caught in the cusp of a new rising market. Or there may just be a temporary shortage of houses on the market right now, and it will correct soon.

The bank uses the appraised amount to determine the amount of the loan. So to proceed, we would need to make up the difference ourselves by increasing our down payment. If the appraised value was only slightly lower than the agreed-upon purchase price, we wouldn’t worry about it and just increase our down payment. But in this case, it’s a huge gap.

We can try to negotiate the price down somewhat, but there’s no way the sellers are going to come down that far. Since it didn’t appraise, we are free to get out of the contract. But we would still actually like to buy that townhome. So it’s been discouraging. Now there’s a long holiday weekend. We won’t know anything more until next week sometime.

Pictures of my office

Here’s the entrance to our suite where my cubicle is located.

Here’s the entrance to my cubicle. Note the sliding door – I’ve never seen that before. I usually leave it open, but it’s nice to have if you’re having trouble concentrating. This office is also a lot quieter than at Sandia because people don’t have to be on the phones as much. Most of our work is just on the computer.

My UV “happy light” and my orchid from Trader Joe’s.

All my paperwork is on the other side.

This is an indoor open space with clearstory windows that’s really nice.

Bucking stereotypes

In Santa Fe, even the big trucks are liberal. In case this picture isn’t good enough, the left bumper sticker says, “Comrade Trump – making Russia great again” and the right bumper sticker says, “Do you keep hearing crazy voices? Turn off Fox News.”

Note the vegan Thai restaurant in the background 😋

 

 

Defensive Driver Training

Wednesday I spent the entire day doing defensive driver training, which is mandatory before we can drive state vehicles for site visits and inspections. It’s an interactive on-line course with lots of graphic photos and videos. It’s designed to scare the shit out of young, careless and aggressive drivers.

I am the last person who needs the shit scared out of me about the dangers of the road. I admit to sometimes speeding, and let’s say…I can be unhesitating when maneuvers are necessary. But I am already ridiculously, needlessly, hyper-vigilant, and I am not a relaxed passenger. I ALWAYS know where all the other vehicles are, and I am constantly anticipating that AT ANY MOMENT they will do something completely random and unexpected, like brake hard or swerve into my lane. I’m already jumpy enough in a vehicle.

John is going to have to blindfold me like a racehorse, just to get me to our camping spot this weekend.

It didn’t help that when I was returning from lunch there had been a car accident near my office, and a van was literally flipped on it’s side in middle of a major intersection. I was horrified.

Aside from the scare tactics, it was a pretty good course. We could input information about situations we’d likely encounter ourselves, like snow and ice in the winter, and it would customize the material. I clicked that I drove a commercial van (since they weren’t so specific as to have a camper van option 😜), and I got to see the section about driving big vans.

One cool thing about the on-line course: I know this guy! I took a one-week “Human Factors” course from him in Michigan. It’s so weird to suddenly see someone you know in some unexpected setting. He’s one of those “experts” on TV! He’s famous! (Sort of, LOL)

 

Tuesday – tears!

My new boss, Carina, is leaving the agency for a new job! Now she’ll be working in Albuquerque! This is definitely a good move for her. She’s been commuting all the way from the south side of Albuquerque, and she has a new baby. I felt bad for her when I first heard how far her commute was. I’m glad she doesn’t have to do that commute anymore.

Luckily it was just the two of us in her office when she told me she was leaving, because I literally burst into tears.😢 😢 😢 I should have been smiling and congratulating her. And I tried to congratulate her – through the tears. I truly am happy for her – I’m just so scared about not knowing who my boss is going to be.

She must have been surprised I was so upset about her leaving, because I hardly know her. But she’s the sort of person that everyone likes. She’s a big reason why I’ve felt so confident about having accepted this job.

So now, who knows what’s going to happen. It could turn out fine. But it has not always been fine for me, and I’m all too aware of how miserable it can get. I had a couple of horrible experiences with really bigoted male bosses when I was quite young.

And then when John and I first moved to California in 2012, my main goal for the first several months was, “Don’t cry at work.” It wasn’t just the boss thing. Moral is poor in some sections of Sandia, and particularly poor at Sandia in California, and particularly poor among “support staff” – like I was, as an internal regulator. (It’s never fun to have to implement internal regulatory compliance – it’s a very thankless job.)

Another big problem at Sandia in California was the huge resentment and bitterness toward headquarters in Albuquerque. It’s because the smaller site in California often gets the short end of the stick. But there were no constraints on the Albuquerque-bashing, which was frequent, daily, could get quite nasty, and was considered perfectly acceptable. I found it very upsetting because I really missed everyone in Albuquerque.

Anyway for months I couldn’t sleep, and I cried everyday on the way to work, and I cried everyday on the way home. After a few months, I finally got somewhat used to it and quit crying everyday. But then 4 years later, I just quit. I just couldn’t do it anymore. And that whole time, that boss was not part of the solution. He had no idea how to utilize my talents, did not support my repeated efforts to improve my usefulness to the company, and basically wasted my time.

It didn’t help that he never chose me – I just got stuck in his group when we moved, because they wanted John and they had to put me somewhere. But Carina hired me, and not only that, she told me that there were other managers in the department who also wanted to hire me, but she beat them to it! (I had applied to more than one position in that department, and she made the first offer.) She said, “Yay, I got her first!” I can tell you, my previous boss would never have said anything like that.

Carina’s leaving in a month. Then we’ll have an acting manager for awhile. It’ll be some time before I know who my next boss will be. I guess the hope is, if there are other managers who wanted to hire me too, then I could probably eventually do a lateral transfer in the same department if her replacement turns out to be terrible.

Monday

Don’t worry, I’m not really going to write a day-by-day account of every single work week! Just until I run out of things to say. Pretty soon my weeks will be, DAY 1: “Reviewed reports, compiled findings into memo.” DAY 2: “Reviewed reports, compiled findings into memo.” DAY 3: “Reviewed reports, compiled findings into memo, went to meeting.”

However, I’m still in the “everything’s new” stage. Good news for today: My boss approved my work schedule. I’m going to start work half-hour early so I can take an hour and a half lunch.

I’m really happy to have a long lunch, because I want to go jogging. And in the winter it is dark before and after work, and not safe to jog alone. So this way I can jog at lunchtime on the trail that’s right next to the townhome!

Also I plan to use one lunchtime per week to go grocery shopping, because I don’t have time for that kind of thing after work because of my clients. And if I grocery shop on the weekends, I’d have to haul it all up from Placitas. And the stores are a lot closer in Santa Fe than Placitas.

Meanwhile I just had a potential client on the east coast contact me. Most of my clients are in California. I do have one in Central time. The further east, the harder it is to make it work with my evening coaching schedule. I wasn’t planning on coaching at lunchtime, because if something comes up at work, it would have priority over my lunch break. But it seems like it’s not the sort of job that has lunch-hour emergencies 🙂