Hola, amigos. I know it's been a while since I rapped at ya, but things have been crazy at the G&G household. (Do you recognize this opening template? It's from one of my favorite bygone columns in The Onion.)
We both bought and sold a house within the past three weeks. If you live in most of America this might seem very fast; if you live in one of a handful of major cities (DC, NY, SF, Seattle, etc.) you are likely familiar with the whirlwind pace at which the housing market moves. We put an offer on our new house two days after it was listed, before the seller even held an open house, and we sold our house within a week after it was listed, one day after we held an open house weekend. In both cases, I feel like we hit the very edge of what's "fair." I don't feel like we got a great deal on our new house, and I don't feel like we made a killing on our old house. We basically sold our house for the exact amount needed to cover the down payment and most the ancillary expenses of our new house. We broke even. But we upgraded to a house we like better, so in that sense we came out ahead. But then again the mortgage is more expensive, so... who knows?
I've found it quite difficult to figure out how much we made (or lost) off our house. One answer is we just take the sales prices minus the amount we owe, and in that regard we did great. But then we put some money into our house over the years -- we redid the bathroom, extended the kids' room, landscaped the yard, etc. Do we factor that in? Maybe, but we also got to enjoy these things for a while, which is worth something. Also, how should we account for the rent we would have been paying if we didn't buy a house, and, again, the enjoyment that came with owning this particularly house in this particular neighborhood? I don't know how it all works out. What I do know is that as long as we can afford to make mortgage payments on our new place until global warming overtakes us all, we will be fine.
I'm (mostly) joking about the global warming thing, but I have been dreaming up ways in which everything can go wrong. We haven't actually closed on either house, so until then, you never know. The inspections are done, however, so that's good. There's nothing fatally wrong with our house -- it's not built on a sinkhole, and there isn't a colony of endangered bees in our walls. Weirdly, the original offer we agreed to didn't even have an inspection requirement. I'm not sure why it didn't. Maybe the buyers think inspections are a waste of money or maybe they thought the offer would be more attractive to us without it. Whatever the case, it wasn't in the contract.
But one of the buyers (it's a family -- wife, husband, two kids -- just like us) works for DC, and she wanted this special loan for DC employees that requires an inspection, so they came back to us and said they wanted one. We agreed under the condition that they couldn't break the original agreement based on the results of the inspection. They said that was cool (I mean, it was either that or nothing), so we were "covered," but not really, because if there was truly something majorly wrong with the house -- something unfixable or something that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix -- they could just back out and eat the deposit, and then we would be stuck with an albatross house. Likely scenario? Of course not, but remember I'm dreaming up ways in which it can all go wrong.
Ultimately, however, my rational brain (along with S's) made the decision to allow the inspection. There was just no reason to be such hardasses about it. Sometimes you need to be a hardass lest you be taken advantage of, but this didn't seem like one of those cases. It would have been preemptive hardassery, and I don't want to go through life so cynically. And it all worked out, because they had the inspection yesterday, and they said there were only "minor" repairs needed, and as per our agreement, we don't need to do anything about them. The truth of the matter is that we've kept our house in pretty good condition. If I was moving into a house in the condition of our current house, I would be totally happy with it.
Alright, I think that's enough for now. Hopefully be back soon.
Until next time...
We both bought and sold a house within the past three weeks. If you live in most of America this might seem very fast; if you live in one of a handful of major cities (DC, NY, SF, Seattle, etc.) you are likely familiar with the whirlwind pace at which the housing market moves. We put an offer on our new house two days after it was listed, before the seller even held an open house, and we sold our house within a week after it was listed, one day after we held an open house weekend. In both cases, I feel like we hit the very edge of what's "fair." I don't feel like we got a great deal on our new house, and I don't feel like we made a killing on our old house. We basically sold our house for the exact amount needed to cover the down payment and most the ancillary expenses of our new house. We broke even. But we upgraded to a house we like better, so in that sense we came out ahead. But then again the mortgage is more expensive, so... who knows?
I've found it quite difficult to figure out how much we made (or lost) off our house. One answer is we just take the sales prices minus the amount we owe, and in that regard we did great. But then we put some money into our house over the years -- we redid the bathroom, extended the kids' room, landscaped the yard, etc. Do we factor that in? Maybe, but we also got to enjoy these things for a while, which is worth something. Also, how should we account for the rent we would have been paying if we didn't buy a house, and, again, the enjoyment that came with owning this particularly house in this particular neighborhood? I don't know how it all works out. What I do know is that as long as we can afford to make mortgage payments on our new place until global warming overtakes us all, we will be fine.
I'm (mostly) joking about the global warming thing, but I have been dreaming up ways in which everything can go wrong. We haven't actually closed on either house, so until then, you never know. The inspections are done, however, so that's good. There's nothing fatally wrong with our house -- it's not built on a sinkhole, and there isn't a colony of endangered bees in our walls. Weirdly, the original offer we agreed to didn't even have an inspection requirement. I'm not sure why it didn't. Maybe the buyers think inspections are a waste of money or maybe they thought the offer would be more attractive to us without it. Whatever the case, it wasn't in the contract.
But one of the buyers (it's a family -- wife, husband, two kids -- just like us) works for DC, and she wanted this special loan for DC employees that requires an inspection, so they came back to us and said they wanted one. We agreed under the condition that they couldn't break the original agreement based on the results of the inspection. They said that was cool (I mean, it was either that or nothing), so we were "covered," but not really, because if there was truly something majorly wrong with the house -- something unfixable or something that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix -- they could just back out and eat the deposit, and then we would be stuck with an albatross house. Likely scenario? Of course not, but remember I'm dreaming up ways in which it can all go wrong.
Ultimately, however, my rational brain (along with S's) made the decision to allow the inspection. There was just no reason to be such hardasses about it. Sometimes you need to be a hardass lest you be taken advantage of, but this didn't seem like one of those cases. It would have been preemptive hardassery, and I don't want to go through life so cynically. And it all worked out, because they had the inspection yesterday, and they said there were only "minor" repairs needed, and as per our agreement, we don't need to do anything about them. The truth of the matter is that we've kept our house in pretty good condition. If I was moving into a house in the condition of our current house, I would be totally happy with it.
Alright, I think that's enough for now. Hopefully be back soon.
Until next time...
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