house hunting
Yeah, the Orlando house definitely closed. So now I've been looking to buy a condo out here. It's been a really tough time. I've probably put in a whole work week worth of time into it in the last few days, and not much has happened. The goal is to close by the end of the year, since ING Direct gives us zero closing costs if we close by then.
We're looking at a tiny little place in an absurdly nice location in downtown Los Altos. It's 990 square feet with 2 bedrooms, which we earlier thought was livable, but then it started to seem really small when we realized that we have more stuff than just couches and beds. We thought it was OK since it's big enough to put the computer in the bedroom, and then Uma could take the other bedroom. (Uma is the name of our hypothetical future child, who, by the way, would never actually be named something that sounded so silly when paired with our last name.) A major problem with this plan is that if Uma has a sibling of a different sex, it's not really appropriate to put the two of them in the same bedroom for very long. And besides, we're in a tiny little apartment right now, and we're absolutely hating it. Also, while we were writing up an offer yesterday we were looking through the HOA meeting minutes, and it appears that they have a bit of a spending problem, to the tune of $9000 a year for miscellaneous crap over and above the deceptively low monthly dues.
We also looked at a ridiculously nice townhouse in a nicer section of Sunnyvale. Our realtor has an appointment to present the offer to the seller's realtor at 3:00 today. The problem, as we found out, is that the place is infested with termites. This is possibly OK, since the contract says that the seller has to fix it. But it's unlikely to get it, because the realtor already has at least 8 other offers lined up, and the place's actual market value seems to be well over what we're offering. But the whole process on the place seems extremely shady. An identical place (but significantly closer to a major road) sold over the weekend for more than $50,000 more than the asking price on this place. There was an open house on Saturday and Sunday. We were there, and it was so busy it was hard to move around in there with all the people. By the end of the day on Sunday there was a pile of several dozen realtors' business cards. The buyer stipulated that offers had to be placed on Monday between 2:00 and 5:00, by appointment only, but the disclosures were only available Monday morning -- after the open house, and in time for it to be inconvenient for people to review the disclosures with their realtors before writing offers. So the whole thing was really shady. And it looks like the termites might be part of the reason they wanted to structure it that way.
And we're also looking at a bunch of other places, since that offer will be turned down, and because we probably won't go after the tiny one. The hard part about all this is that everyone says that location trumps all other considerations, but I have no idea how much living space niceness I'm willing to sacrifice so as to be in accordance with conventional wisdom.
We're looking at a tiny little place in an absurdly nice location in downtown Los Altos. It's 990 square feet with 2 bedrooms, which we earlier thought was livable, but then it started to seem really small when we realized that we have more stuff than just couches and beds. We thought it was OK since it's big enough to put the computer in the bedroom, and then Uma could take the other bedroom. (Uma is the name of our hypothetical future child, who, by the way, would never actually be named something that sounded so silly when paired with our last name.) A major problem with this plan is that if Uma has a sibling of a different sex, it's not really appropriate to put the two of them in the same bedroom for very long. And besides, we're in a tiny little apartment right now, and we're absolutely hating it. Also, while we were writing up an offer yesterday we were looking through the HOA meeting minutes, and it appears that they have a bit of a spending problem, to the tune of $9000 a year for miscellaneous crap over and above the deceptively low monthly dues.
We also looked at a ridiculously nice townhouse in a nicer section of Sunnyvale. Our realtor has an appointment to present the offer to the seller's realtor at 3:00 today. The problem, as we found out, is that the place is infested with termites. This is possibly OK, since the contract says that the seller has to fix it. But it's unlikely to get it, because the realtor already has at least 8 other offers lined up, and the place's actual market value seems to be well over what we're offering. But the whole process on the place seems extremely shady. An identical place (but significantly closer to a major road) sold over the weekend for more than $50,000 more than the asking price on this place. There was an open house on Saturday and Sunday. We were there, and it was so busy it was hard to move around in there with all the people. By the end of the day on Sunday there was a pile of several dozen realtors' business cards. The buyer stipulated that offers had to be placed on Monday between 2:00 and 5:00, by appointment only, but the disclosures were only available Monday morning -- after the open house, and in time for it to be inconvenient for people to review the disclosures with their realtors before writing offers. So the whole thing was really shady. And it looks like the termites might be part of the reason they wanted to structure it that way.
And we're also looking at a bunch of other places, since that offer will be turned down, and because we probably won't go after the tiny one. The hard part about all this is that everyone says that location trumps all other considerations, but I have no idea how much living space niceness I'm willing to sacrifice so as to be in accordance with conventional wisdom.