Ryan's Journal

"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?" — David Mitchell

Month: February 2012

The End of Rent

Posted from Culver City, California at 7:48 pm, February 29th, 2012

A Leap Day 2012 status update:

  • The heavy items all got moved on Friday with the help of a U-Haul and two lovely gentlemen who happened to be hanging out in the Home Depot parking lot looking for work. They did the vast majority of the lifting, and two twenty-foot truckloads later nearly everything had magically transported four miles across town.
  • After a late night of cleaning, the old place was emptied and ready for inspection by the landlady; tomorrow will be the first day in my adult life where I am not paying rent. In a precursor to what could be future drama the landlady answered “I can’t tell you that” when asked if we would be getting our full security deposit back, so we may be exchanging letters that cite California renter law in the not-too-distant future.
  • In a poorly-conceived plan we had the asbestos removed prior to moving in, but haven’t yet been able to schedule the heating folks to put in replacement ducts. God noticed this oversight and thought it would be fun to send LA a week of temperatures in the forties, so the hats and scarves were some of the first items we unpacked.
  • In non-house news, due to tax law changes Holliday IT Services will soon become Holliday IT Services, Inc. Company president Holliday is looking forward to his reign of corporate terror.

Raintree

Posted from Boise, Idaho at 10:11 pm, February 20th, 2012

Just over six years ago Audrey and I moved to the West Side of LA to live in a townhome next to a pond full of ducks, surrounded by trees full of squirrels, and with a neighborhood full of ill-behaved dogs that bark incessantly; two out of three ain’t bad.

Today, the move to our new casa is ongoing. There has been some drama as the old owner needed extra time to move out, but at this point his stuff is nearly gone, we’ve done some initial work (changing locks, removing asbestos), have scrubbed until our hands went numb, and have moved about a dozen carloads of stuff, including some of Audrey’s giant rolling shelves that were transported on the roof of the Subaru Beverly Hillbillies-style. The dust plume resulting from all of this activity has reduced us both to walking sinus colds, but breathing is clearly overrated.

In the midst of all of this moving I somehow managed to end up out of town in Boise for three days. Luckily I’ll be back on Thursday night in time to complete a mad scramble culminating in a U-Haul rental and the end of Great Move of 2012, followed by the beginning of the Neosho era.

Red-shouldered hawk

One of the neighbors that we will sadly be leaving behind.

Mallard Ducklings

The annual “running of the ducklings” is another event that will be greatly missed in our new home.

Real Estate for Dummies

Posted from Culver City, California at 9:08 am, February 12th, 2012

Things I think I’ve learned while buying my first house:

  • Spend time looking. It took several months for us to get an understanding of what neighborhoods we liked and what prices were fair. Being able to know where to look, and knowing what kind of house you can get for a specific price in each neighborhood is a huge advantage.
  • Use the internet. We got on Redfin early on, but during the first few months would also occasionally just follow signs to open houses. The latter approach isn’t productive – filter the houses before you go out.
  • Know the budget. We set a range, and only considered houses that were at the top of the range when we were really excited about them. This approach helped us categorize our interest – we automatically eliminated anything too expensive, and had to justify pricier homes by asking what feature of the house made it worth the extra price.
  • Be ready to move fast. We put an offer on our new house the day after the open house, and even moving that quickly we were competing with two other offers. Get pre-qualified, and if you find something you like jump on it.
  • Follow up. Audrey did a lot of follow-up with the agents, the escrow company, and others once we’d put down an offer, and it made a big difference – with different companies involved and a million things to do there are going to be issues that get missed, and it’s far easier to fix a problem earlier than doing so after it becomes a crisis.
  • Expect problems. With many documents we’ve had to send them, and then re-send them, and then send them again. Apparently with so many files to keep track of things get lost, don’t go to the right person, or need clarification, so expect to do a lot of things twice.
  • Title insurance is a scam. Just sayin’. Any insurance that pays out just 4.3% in claims of what it takes in as premiums is bogus, but the mortgage company won’t let you buy a house without it.