Holy cow, I expected to come back to see that a reciprocated diatribe had started up about all of this...I'm disappointed at you guys!
Of course, you all do understand that the whole thing was couched by a marketing guy, so of course it sounds like a good idea.
After todays 400+ point drop in the dow, I feel a little bit prophetic about dumping most of my equities 3 days ago. Last time I jumped ship was in early 2000...so....uh oh...
Paying cash for the house. I'm thinking of maybe financing a small hunk of it in one of those penfed 5.99% 20 year fixed HELOC's, if the market takes a big dump and doesnt recover by the time I'm taking ownership. Its on the table...IF the numbers make sense!
We looked at 3 more homes in the same price range, nothing came close to this one. Went to the nearby newly constructed super euro walking mall with a brazillion little hideously expensive stores and had a nice little lunch and talked it over. Then I dug at the house with a screwdriver for three hours, found nothing obviously out of place, and we made a lowball offer. Lets see what happens...seller is out of state, probably a lot of faxing and overnighting of stuff will take place. We're all wiped out!
Gabe rode his tricycle all over the empty downstairs for about an hour, then came upstairs and claimed his room. I asked him which one he liked and he pointed to the corner bedroom. Its his...
I'm not terribly sure about the appreciation, but I'm buying the same exactly house/floorplan that sold about 8 houses down on the same street for 70k more six months ago, so at least I didnt buy at the apex. Recent comps put the property in its current condition (which isnt bad, just needs updating and a roof) at about 8-9% more than we're gonna pay. I dont feel like I'm robbing someone or making out like a bandit, but I dont feel too badly screwed about it.
Property tax wise, we'll pay 1% of the homes sale price which is fixed by prop 13 to just small annual increases. Unfortunately its twice what we're paying now, which is a big piece of that extra 8-10k a year.
No mega corp job for me, although if push came to shove, I could probably do a consulting job with them for a month or two. I'd really rather not. Ick. Work!
Annuity? I dont frickin think so...
As far as less time spent here...i'm sure some are sad and some are rejoicing. The rest will have to wonder why its taking half the time to 'read the forum' as it used to
As I go through all this, I'm sure I'll have a few minutes to drop by one of the many internet enabled coffee shops in the area of the new home to catch up. If I tried that where I live now, I'd be shot and my laptop stolen
