House
As many of you know, in early April, I decided to buy a house (link). During the weeks that followed, Olivia's mom took me to see a pretty wide variety of places - townhouses, single family homes, brand new, 20 years old, from Elk Grove Village to Des Plaines to Arlington Heights to Palatine to Schaumburg.
As I mentioned in previous entries, there were some places that I liked, but each one had its drawback. Some were too far, some too close to the highway, some had terrible layout, etc. One was absolutely perfect, except it only had a one car garage. And then a lot of them were just too freaking expensive for me.
Finally, I narrowed down my choices to 2 places. One was a brand new townhouse right off the Rand exit on 53, a pretty good location. The only things I didn't like were that the master bedroom was weak, and the taxes were probably going to be really high. The other was a townhouse in Schaumburg. Good location (5 mins from Woodfield and highways), slightly lower price and lower taxes. Only thing is that it was older (17 years), although the owners did replace a lot of things and it was still in pretty good condition.
I brought my family to go look at the two places with me one last time, and for the most part they liked both. I guess secretly I was hoping they would make the decision for me, but no such luck.
It's kind of interesting when I think about the major decisions in my life so far, I haven't really had to make them. When I was applying to colleges, U of I accepted me before I even finished applying to anywhere else. Since I couldn't really see myself going to another place for way more money to study engineering, I pretty much stopped applying anywhere else. Then when it came time to find a job, the market was so bad. My first offer came from NG and at that point there really was not much to think about. I guess in both cases things worked out okay.
Anyways, what was trying to say is that in this case, there was no easy decision as far as choosing which house to offer. At one point I contemplated flipping a coin so if it turned out to be a bad decision, I could blame the coin and not myself. But eventually, after giving it a lot more thought, prayer, discussion with those around me, and spreadsheet analysis (yes I am serious), I think the right choice finally came to me. I settled on the Schaumburg one.
The offer went in Sunday night, followed by a couple days of back and forth negotiation on the final price and other contract details. Negotiation is not my thing to say the least, and I think it was especially frustrating in this case. I mean, when you're talking about something that's in the hundreds of thousands, a few thousand dollars of difference might not seem like a lot. You definitely start to lose track of what these numbers mean, as far as the amount of debt I would be in and what I would be paying every month for the next 5, 10, 15, 30 or whatever years it ends up being. All I knew is that I liked the place and it would suck if the whole deal fell through because you can't agree on a matter of 1% of the total price.
Thankfully, after a day or two, an agreement was finally reached. Both sides signed a contract, and I wrote out a check for the "earnest fee". As I was signing all these documents, it almost felt like I was signing my life away. I know that the real transaction and much bigger deal will be at closing, but still. I've probably signed my name thousands of times, ranging from credit card transactions and personal checks, to high school yearbooks or the sign-in sheet at IMPE when I forgot my student ID. This was a new feeling. It's like "wow, this time my signature actually means something."
The next steps were the home inspection, having a lawyer go through the contract, and deciding on a mortgage. First two were pretty straightforward. Not saying they were easy, but I didn't really have to do much, just pay other people to do them for me.
Finding a mortgage was where things got complicated again. I'm glad I didn't have to deal with random brokers who I knew nothing about, but mostly with friends or family friends who I could reasonably trust. Thanks especially to Rich for patiently answering my questions and providing very helpful knowledge to a mortgage newbie like myself.
Nevertheless, going through all the estimates I got from lenders and trying to figure out which was the best deal made my head spin. And I'm pretty good at math, so I can only imagine how confused some other people would be. I thought I would just find the lowest rate and that would be that. But then there's "points" and "closing costs" to factor in. Then closing costs is broken down into subcategories, that some lenders cover and others don't.
After crunching some numbers, most of the estimates seemed to add up to be pretty close with each other. Basically it really just came down to making my best guess as to how long I would be staying at this house. And I still honestly don't know. I hope it's at least 5 years, but by then who knows what will happen.
At any rate (har har), I think by now the major decisions I need to make have all been made. Still have to actually get approved for the mortgage, and there's also more negotiating between the lawyers and the realtors of both sides on some of the details of the contract, but I'm starting to see the end of this tunnel that is the closing date (currently set for the 2nd week of July).
Overall, this whole process has been pretty hectic so far but also a good experience. I mean, I wish there didn't have to be so many people and so much paperwork involved, but I guess that's how things work in our system. I do understand the need for realtors, lawyers, etc. and the roles they play in the process. Still, I wonder whether there was ever a time when people just bought houses directly from each other, with a simple "handing over of money" and "giving of keys". That would have been so much easier, and take like 5 mins to do.
On the other hand, going through all these hoops has forced me to learn more about things like mortgages, taxes, home maintenance, and be more aware of what's going on in general. And that's definitely a good thing.
For example, did any of you guys know that there was a "7% Assessment Cap" enacted in Cook County recently to limit the amount that property taxes could increase per year? I'm guessing that unless you own a house in Cook County, you are like the pre-yesterday-Me and had no knowledge of such a thing. In case any of you are interested see here for explanation.
And before last month, I had no idea what the heck an "amortization table" was, or much of a clue what the latest interest rates were. Whenever economic figures used to come out in the news, I'd read about them, but never really thought of them as affecting my life much. Now, not saying I'm an expert on mortgages or the economy or anything, but at least I tend to pay more attention to that stuff, because I feel like it actually means something to me in a practical sense.
Well, that was way more than I intended to write on the subject. I probably could've summed it up in one sentence: "I think I done bought me a house, fellas". But now you all have an idea of what I have been doing for the past few weeks.
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Oh and let me get this straight - so in that song, R Kelly's girl basically set up the whole thing? Like Cathy/Mary, Rufus, and Chuck introduced her to the cop, and then staged the whole scene in the morning just to mess with him? Or, was it one big coincidence, Chuck and Rufus really were secret lovers, and he just happened to hook up with Cathy/Mary? In either case, how would she know that the cop stopped him on the way back? Something doesn't add up...
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I've been working with one of the summer interns here for the past week or so, and noticed today that in his emails he started signing them like me, with name followed by phone extension. Made me feel kind of like a big shot, now that I have college kids looking to me for an example here at work. I remember the days when I was new here and had to copy that kind of stuff from the older engineers at the time. Haha... I'm awesome.
