Tuesday, August 01, 2006

My life has a house (buyer)

For anyone who cares, here's where we are with buying our house.

On the technical side - the stuff that actually matters from the stand point of, "if it doesn't get done, the deal falls through," - we've got 3 things actively going on.

1) Loan Application Documentation - We have just about everything that was requested of us. I have to reprint our bank statement from the previous period because the on-line print out I did doesn't show the numbers for each entry. They got cut off. Unfortunately, we have to use an on-line statement because Bank of America has California customers and the Rest of the US customers. If you leave California, you either need to close your California account and open a new ROUS account. Obviously, that's a problem for auto-pay bills and is a giant hassle in general. Except the banks in ROUS can't do anything but deposits and withdrawals for CA customers. Also, I'm waiting for 1 more 401K statement and we have to get Jennifer's. The loan guy says the 401K stuff probably won't enter into it.

2) Insurance - This one we have some time on. I thought we had had a HUGE development yesterday when we got a quote that was about $1000 less than what we were expecting. However, after receiving the written quote, I'm afraid that it might not cover any damage as a result of a hurricane. And while I hate to be accused of thinking negatively, there are just some risks I'm not willing to take. I'm in the process of trying to get other quotes, but it hasn't been easy. So many insurance companies won't do business in Florida that it's difficult to find even a broker than can help with coverage.

3) Home Owner's Association - We were given a 3 page application from the seller's broker for the home owner's association. It turns out the application is actually 16 pages. And we can't schedule a HOA approval interview until the application is done. This is the most annoying of the 3 because it just seems a tad silly. But, obviously it's an important step. And I suppose it's a good sign that the HOA actually takes some interest in who they let in. I've been assured by the realtor that once we jump through their hoops, we'll have no problems.

On the non-technical side, Jenn and I went furniture shopping this past weekend. We went to 5 places. 3 had nothing that really grabbed our attention. 1 had an awesome barstool and matching table set. And the other had multiple selections we really liked of everything else that we needed. Unfortunately, they also happened to offer the worst financing terms. we both believe, however, that we've done a relatively exhaustive search. Since we've found stuff we like, we're just going to go with that.

Now, we're in the process of picking paint colors. We have a general idea of the direction we want to go. The accent color in the main living room will be decided this weekend after we go curtain shopping, but we know what we're looking for. We have the primary color all but picked. We're pretty sure of what we're going to do with the spare bed room. We still have to figure out a master br color scheme and the accent for the spare. The bathrooms, although in dire need of help, we've put on hold for the time being. We'll get them painted this year, but maybe not this month. They need remodeling work and it may be worth while to do it all in one shot, which would mean delaying painting. Those are my thoughts not entirely confirmed by Jenn, but I think she might be on the same page.

That's where we're at right now. We continue to get way ahead of ourselves. And I know that everyone wants a football posting, but believe it or not, the home buying process has actually dwarfed the opening of training camps. But I have my 2nd fantasy draft in a week. That will help get me back in the swing of things!

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