Water Bill Drama December 10, 2008

Before moving into our new condo, I called the city to set up our water billing.  They responded that our condo association went through a private vendor for water, and I would have to set up billing through them.

So, I called my community manager, and asked her how I would set up water, and she assured me that the condo association would just bill me, and it would be no problem.  Especially since I had already filled out paper work with my move-in date for the association fees.

Imagine my surprise when I got a water bill on Monday for $393.39!!!  I panicked, then realized it was for 2 months — October 6 through December 12.  Ok, so it’s still a huge bill, but it’s 2 months worth.  THEN I realized that we had closed on our house on 10/30, so we were being billed for the previous owners’ water usage! I immediately called the condo association.

First, the woman I talked to tried to tell me it was my problem, and that I’d have to work it out with the previous owners. 

 I said, “excuse me?”  YOU do the billing, not me. Also, I notified you of my closing date, and my association fee bill was correct. ”

 She responded with “Oh, well we don’t do the billing for the water, that’s a separate company.”

I responded with, “Your company’s contact info is on my bill, was I supposed to notify the meter-reading company of my move-in date?” 

“Oh, no, we do that for you,” she said.

I replied, “So then it sounds like you were supposed to notify the meter company, not me.”

She said she’d call me back on Tuesday. She didn’t.  I called today, and got the same run-around, although this time I was prepared. I explained that I had talked to the community manager about the water bill, and she had informed me it would start on my closing date.  The guy said he’d talk to the community manager, and get back to me.

What I don’t understand is why this is so complicated.  Can’t they just print up a new bill for the previous owners, and one for me, and we each pay what is needed? I understand that a separate company reads the meter, but can’t they just talk to them about how to best divide up the fees?  The bills are printed by the condo association. ARRRRGGGG!!

I’ll let you know how it all turns out.  Also — this seems ridiculously high even for 2 months of usage.

I love it! November 2, 2008

I absolutely love our new house.  Closing went very smoothly — it took less than an hour!  The people who owned the house before us were very nice and cleaned it very thoroughly before moving out.  They took care of all of the repairs we requested from the inspection, and I am just THRILLED with the house.  On Friday we got our express shipment, so we were able to move out of the hotel and into the house.  (We are sleeping on an air mattress until monday when our bed arrives). 

The express shipment arrived mostly intact.  The ancient tv we shipped didn’t fare very well — the buttons get stuck when you push them in, but it still works via remote.  Since we were planning on recycling this tv by the end of the year (it’s so old Goodwill won’t even take it), we probably won’t file a claim for damage — I doubt they’d consider it worth much anyway.  Otherwise everything else looks good.

Also, we decided not to try to paint immediately.  It turns out that without the former owners’ dark furniture, the paint looks much better than I had thought.  It’s still not a great color for our furniture, so we’d like to eventually repaint, but since it doesn’t look terrible, we’ll probably wait a year until we recover a bit financially from all the furniture purchases.  I am also relieved that we are not painting, since we are so busy getting the express shipment unpacked and getting as settled as possible before the main move on Monday.

Our new living room furniture arrived on Saturday.  That went well, except one of the tiles in the top of the coffee table was broken, so they have to send us a replacement table next week.  We found family room furniture last night, a couch and chair, and are having that delivered on Wednesday.  (Monday is the movers, Tuesday the cable guy comes and we need to go vote, so Weds was most practical).

In the mean time I’m really pleased that we got the house we did.  It was definitely worth the longer wait for closing. Also, just as a heads up, my posts are probably going to be a little less frequent until we get the internet hooked up next week.

Today is the BIG Day! October 30, 2008

Today we close on our new house! I’m excited and terrified at the same time!

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes . . .

An Update on Things October 14, 2008

Sorry, this transition period has taken a definite toll on my blogging abilities. Here is a much needed update:

Buying a Home:  We are patiently waiting for closing at the end of the month. We have now provided all necessary info to the lender, arranged for a lawyer to represent us at the closing, and begun transferring funds around so that we will have a cashier’s check ready to go for the closing costs.

Furniture: Purchased a sofa, chair, ottoman, rug, end tables and coffee table for new living room.  Got a great deal — total of $1400 includes delivery and damage/stain protection plan (the sofa and chair are white).  The store also gave us a $100 gift card, which we used to buy my husband a much-needed new pair of running shoes.  Furniture to be delivered the Saturday after closing.  Now we just need family room furniture and a dining set, but we will wait until we’ve moved in to tackle that.

Home Decor: Once we picked the furniture, we were able to start looking at paint colors.  The living room and dining room are currently painted this horribly depressing grayish-purple color that looks really out of place in the most formal rooms in the house.  We have decided to bite the bullet and pay for professionals to paint.  We’ve never painted anything before, and time is of the essence, as we want the rooms painted before we have our movers bring the furniture. Also, since these are the first rooms you see when you walk in the door, and they have the fancy pergo flooring, they are probably not the best rooms in which to start a first-time painting experiment.  (We want to make the home MORE appealing to future buyers not LESS!)  Do you have any suggestions for how to find professional painters?  I am new at this and welcome your advice.

Job search: I have now applied for 4 positions.  One has already been canceled due to lack of funding. I typically work in the public sector, and when the economy is tight, state budgets are tight, so there aren’t as many job openings.  I will keep searching and in the mean time, I have also contacted a bunch of my old friends and acquaintances in the area, letting them know I’m back in town and spreading the word that I am looking for career opportunities.  This has already yielded a couple of potential leads — I’ll keep you posted. I’m also planning to start working for a temp agency once we have moved into our new house.  I did this last time we moved to the area and it really helped supplement our income while I looked for a job.

Weight-loss: I’m doing my best to maintain my current weight, though with all the eating out it’s been tricky to control myself.  Also, without consistent access to a scale, it’s been difficult to track. I rejoined my local YMCA, and have been trying to make the most of my unemployed lifestyle by working out as much as possible. I tried a Zumba class for the first time last week and really enjoyed it.  Also, as a money and calorie saving tactic, we have stocked our hotel fridge with high-fiber cereal, low fat milk, bread, lunch meat, fruit, yogurt and snacks.  This way we can eat 2 of 3 meals “at home” and only have to eat out once a day, or less if there are leftovers from a previous meal.

Financial: Currently we are waiting to close on the house before making any major financial moves.  We do have plans to use part of my husband’s bonus to pay down part of our debt, to buy some new furniture, and to set up a new emergency savings account.  We are also going to set aside some of it to assist us with monthly bills until I start bringing in an income again.  Though I’ve been unemployed for the past month and a half, I have been snowflaking my student loans by participating in on-line surveys and Upromise, as well as by selling a few things on Amazon (I’ll have more to sell once my movers deliver my stuff).  My husband and I also need to add about $800 to our Roth IRAs by the end of the year to max our contributions – we have the money set aside, we just have to deposit it.  Also, I need to roll my retirement from my previous job into my IRA.  I am actually excited to do it right now because the markets are low, which equals more shares being purchased, which should equal good earnings when the market comes back over the next few years.

We bought our first house! September 8, 2008

The sellers counter-offered at $261,000 which was better than we thought we’d do, so we accepted the deal and signed the papers on Saturday.  The only bummer is that we don’t close on the house until Oct. 30, which means we are living in a hotel a month longer than we thought.  At the same time, it’s good because you pay fewer closing costs at the end of the month.  My sister has volunteered to let us stay at her cabin for part of the time, which is good, although it’s about 5 hours away, so we’ll have to see if we can work that out.

Next steps: applying for the loan, scheduling the inspection of the property

Making the offer September 5, 2008

After looking at several more houses, we ultimately decided to make an offer on a detached condo.  It was listed at $274,600, however, given the way the market is and that there were several condos for sale in the same complex, we decided to offer $250,000.  After consulting with friends and family we were advised that in the current market, you can usually bid about 10% below the asking price, and settle around 5% below.  We are hoping to end up paying less than $265,000.

I really hope it works out — I love this condo! It has a HUGE master suite with a jetted tub, dual vanity and walk-in closet. It also has a really nice layout and fabulous tile in the main entry. Cross your fingers for me!

House Hunting with a Realtor Day 2 September 3, 2008

Yesterday we looked at a second set of condos.  Though they were the same price and square footage, they were not nearly as nice as the ones we had viewed on Monday. They only had a living room, rather than both a living and family room, and they only had one-car garages. Because of the way they were laid out, they just seemed smaller than the other condos.  We also drove around and looked at some neighborhoods — we had checked out some houses online and wanted to see them from the outside before making an appointment to tour the inside.  I really like 2 of them, 1 is ok, but it’s cheaper and in a slightly more convenient location.

I’m noticing a trend there, the more convenient the location, the less nice the houses become. We will look at those 3 single family homes this afternoon. I’m hoping we can decide between them and the condo today, and make an offer on Thursday.  (Our goal is to be done house hunting before Sunday, because C has to go to California for a week for work, and we don’t want to put things on hold another week).  Also, hopefully the sooner we buy a house, the sooner we can close and move in.

In other good news, one of our cars arrived yesterday!  It was 3 days early, which was awesome because that’s 3 fewer days of renting a car. Though we don’t have a place to live yet, it’s nice to drive our own car.  We shipped our other car a month after this one, so we will be sharing a vehicle until October, but since I don’t have a job yet, that should be pretty easy (and much more economical).

House-hunting with a Realtor Day 1 September 2, 2008

Today we met our realtor face-to-face for the first time.  We had sent her a list of houses, and she made appointments for us to view them.  We looked at 2 detached condos and 2 single family homes.  We really liked both of the condos, mostly liked one of the homes, and really didn’t like the fourth home. 

Though we’d rather have a home than a condo, the condos had wonderful layouts, 2-car garages, lots of space, and great amenities (laminate flooring, jetted tub, huge master suite). The house we liked was good, except it only had a 1-car garage, and the bathrooms were very small and had virtually no counter space. It did have a huge yard (the condos only had patios) but a yard isn’t high on our priority list. The carpet also really needed replacing, although we can probably get that reflected in the price.

We have another set of condos to look at tomorrow (mainly for the sake of comparison, we don’t like them quite as much), and we may take a second look at today’s condos.  We are strong considering putting in an offer on one of them.  We also went on-line and pulled up another list of single family homes.  Though we may have found the condo of our dreams, we want to make sure we cover all our bases.

We made it to the new state! September 1, 2008

We left Hawaii around 2:45 p.m. Hawaii time on Friday and, 3 flights later, arrived in Virginia at 10:30 a.m. Eastern.  Flying overnight in combination with a 6 hour time change and 2 layovers is exhausting.  We spent most of Saturday afternoon and this morning asleep.

However, this afternoon/evening we were house-hunting maniacs.  We meet with our realtor tomorrow for our first “official” house hunting trip, but we spent last night and today driving around looking at locations/neighborhoods.  It was a little shocking. Houses that look nice on the web usually look nice in person, but their neighborhoods don’t always match.  A number of “nice” houses in our price range were on a “nice” street, surrounded by a number of really sketchy neighborhoods. That helped us narrow down our search quite a bit.

We did find one house I absolutely LOVE, but it’s $20,000 above our price range, and judging by what other houses in the neighborhood are going for, I think they’ve already come wayyy down in price. However, we’ll see how things go.  If they are in that much of hurry to sell it, we might just score a deal.

We’re pre-approved! August 11, 2008

On Friday C and I filled out all of the on-line forms with our bank to get pre-approved for a mortgage loan.  We ended up getting exactly what we wanted — we are pre-approved for a $300,000 30 year VA loan.  We are hoping to find a house more in the $250,000 range, but $300,000 is the max we are willing to spend, so we want to be sure we have that option.

Pre-approval does not mean that we are guaranteed a mortgage loan in that amount, it’s more of an indicator of what we can most likely afford.  Basically, it allows us to demonstrate to the seller that we are ready and able to purchase the home, possibly giving us an edge in the buying process.