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November 27, 2007

Home, Sweet Home

As of today, Elaine and I are homeowners: we bought a condo in the University District.

(Say it with me: whoa.)

The ink on the paperwork is still wet; the transaction closed just a few hours ago. I'm still reeling at how crazy-fast this whole thing has come together.

To understand just how fast, let's set the Wayback Machine for one ... month ... ago ...

It's the morning of Saturday, October 27, and Elaine and I are gettin' ready to head out to Vancouver, BC to see the family for a post-honeymoon wedding dinner. (Regular blog readers may recall that this is the trip where I got my transit freak on with a jaunt on SkyTrain.)

So it's about 8 AM and Elaine's in the shower. I'm sipping coffee and going through the mail when I spot a letter from The Best Property Manager On The Planet (ours). He's thorough, professional, polite; in fact, the guy is so thorough/professional/polite that he invoices us for rent. Every month. And includes a self-addressed, stamped envelope to boot.

So I'm looking at the obviously-from-him envelope, glance at the calendar, see that we're four days from the end of the month, and think: must be rent.

Slit open the envelope, slide out the paperwork, unfold the letter, read.

Thought #1: Huh. This isn't rent.

Thought #2: Oh, crap.

Long story short: when we moved back in April, we went on a month-to-month lease. With the wedding coming up that August and my job not yet landed, month-to-month was a great solution, an easy way of keeping things flexible until life settled down. What made it a no-brainer was that our landlords - the nice couple that owns the house we're renting - were off to Foreign Lands for school. They were planning to be gone two years.

Except now it's not yet six months later, and they're unexpectedly back. So they're home, and they'd kinda-sorta like their house back. Please.

Oh, crap.

Elaine emerges from the shower (a sight that qualifies as the Eighth Wonder Of The World, as far as I'm concerned), and I explain the situation.

Her response: "Oh, crap!"

Now we're strategizing. We talk all the way to Canada, get on my brother-in-law's WiFi, and start crawling Craigslist for properties. We find a few interesting ones, send some mail, try to set up appointments for when we're back on Sunday.

And then Phase Two of the discussion begins, kicked off by an innocuous question from the lips of my beautiful wife:

"What about buying something?"

And, just like that, we were in the housing market.

There were two prongs to our plan: first, find a rental we're good with. Since we have to be out ASAFP, we need a place to live. Second, make a parallel effort to see what kinds of property is on the market right now. If we see something we like, great; if not, no worries.

So I phoned my friend, Realtor, and adoptive den mother, Laura, and explained the situation.

"We're not really sure if we're buying right now," I said, "But we'd kick ourselves if we didn't look. Are you interested in working with a flakey couple who doesn't have any real idea of what the hell they want?"

Laura assured me that we fit her client profile perfectly ("I'm part Realtor, part therapist"), asked me a few questions about what we might like, and promised to send over some stuff.

Two hours later, Elaine and I were drowning in MLS listings. My jaw actually dropped when I saw how much stuff there was to sift through.

Wine was poured, laptops were opened, and we parked ourselves on the couch for an evening of online house-hunting. We're hitting PAGE DOWN over and over, seeing some absolutely terrible places with astronomical price tags. When we find a place that looks promising, we fire up Google Maps and see where it's located. Inevitably, the thing is located in West Ballard or Interbay or something - transit dead zones. No go. I'm hoping to find something that's easily served by The Connector (Microsoft's amazing new employee bus service); Elaine wants easy access to downtown.

So we PAGE DOWN and PAGE DOWN, and finally build a list of seven places that look vaguely promising. We send the list to Laura, who books us for visits and viewings on the following weekend.

During the week, we find a rental that we really like. So Plan A worked out, and now we're covered. If we don't find something to buy, no problem.

Saturday rolls around. Lane and I pile in to Laura's car with our friend Juli, and the four of us go on tour of Seattle's Finest. We see great places in crummy locations; crummy places that are clearly trying to benefit from their neighbors' property improvements, and (what feels like) zillions of bland-as-hell townhouses.

It was this last that wore me down. Townhouses can be wonderful, airy, fantastic things ... and they can also be bland, also-ran, uninspired boxes that are built on someone's former backyard. It's late in the afternoon, and we walked in to a place that I just hated. Five seconds in the front door, and I just knew. Um .... no.

So we break for coffee, and Juli mentions that there's a new condo project nearby she'd like to check out. And - sure. What the hell? At this point, what's one more?

We get coffee, get to the project, meet the nice man in the show office, and are let in to the model to walk around.

And, for both of us, it's love at first sight.

It's wonderful. Modern, clean, spacious, perfect. Fixtures we love. Enough space for the two of us, plus guests. It's got a deck. Great natural light. Hardwood. Yadda.

So we take the information sheets from the counter, stare hard at the price, gulp, and decided to go to dinner.

I think it was at dinner that we decided to go for it.

At home, I break out the MBA Excel King Fu and build some models of what we're signing up for - Home Price X with Interest Rate Y and Down Payment Z will result in the following cash requirements; since I make A and Elaine B, and we want to save C and put D away for Paris vacations, we will have .... $3.82 every two weeks to spend on fun stuff.

Hm. Better rework the model.

We eventually figured it out, plunging headlong into the world of staggering debt, mortgage-interest deductions, lower tax brackets, and the ins-and-outs of what the condo association will cover for insurance and services. That was quickly followed with a crash course in escrow, picking lenders, getting pre-qualified, dealing with title insurance, and the rest.

And here we are, one month (to the day!) of opening the letter, and we're homeowners. Everything that could have gone right, went right; all the stuff that could have gone wrong just stayed home. I'm more than amazed - I'm shocked.

The next two weeks are all about moving. We're doing trips to Goodwill, putting stuff on Craigslist, becoming best friends with eBay. A lot of our plates and glasses and things were going anyway, what with all the loot from the wedding, but now we've got to get everything in to 1100 square feet. I'm kind of digging it.

But mostly - mostly - I'm thrilled to have a place that's our place, that we can really settle in to over the next few years, that we can keep for as long as we want. It's emotional, sure, but it's a warm-happy emotional.

2008 is looking better all the time.

Posted by Gavin Shearer at November 27, 2007 8:07 PM. Posted to Cool.

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Posted by: Richard Barrett at November 28, 2007 2:45 PM

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