Waiting for Godot

I've been in limbo for the last 2 weeks with the closing on this house. It was supposed to close last Thursday. I cleared my schedule at work, moved appointments around, got all dressed up in my Thursday best and waited to be summoned out to Walnut Creek to sign a million documents. My beloved troops anxiously awaited with a bottle of bubbly on the home front, to no avail... turned out my genius loan officer still hadn't submitted half of the renovation loan paperwork to Underwriting, (this is where I imagine some pasty paper-pusher siting in a sterile, brightly lit room making sure that anything that remotely resembles English be changed to convoluted legal jargon at a 6pt print).

So then we thought, ok Friday? ... nooooooo.
Monday? nooooooooooo.
Definitely and finally Tuesday! YES! okay. So I clear my schedule, put on my best Tuesday dress, and in a moment of lavish grandeur, I even put on my fake antique diamond ring that my mum gave me. Brad also kept his work schedule noncommittal with all his clients, gently preparing them for the separation anxiety they get when he leaves their sides to join me as my #1 cheerleader for the big moment...
He's on call. I'm on call. its almost noon and still no word. I call my escrow officer, and she is still waiting for the docs from my favorite lending officer who is of course, MIA.

2pm: I finally get a call from escrow saying she got the docs from my resurrected lender! hoorray!
ohh but wait - genius dated them all for tomorrow!
Fan.tas.tic.
I'm all dressed up with my faux diamond ring and no where to go :(

Now I am rearranging everything again to meet with the notary to sign tomorrow. Naturally it is 5pm and I am still not clear on the when and where yet.
One really cool thing, that I had no idea of, is that the notary who delivers the papers to sign can come meet me anywhere! So I don't have to go to Walnut Creek after all. She is going to bring my papers for me to sign directly to me at work, or at home.(TBD) ... On the down side, I also didn't know that they charge $150 in notary fees and for this glamorous front door service - but seeing how the title company's official office is somewhere in Egypt, I don't have much of a choice, do i? It's all good. Patience is one thing I am occasionally good at. The only real problem I have though is that I am out of fancy dresses, and all the champagne is warm.

YOU CAN'T PUSH THE RIVER

YELLOW?
I don't think I have ever encountered so many highly paid professionals with such incompetence and flawed logic abiding by even more absurdly flawed systems than this banking and housing industry.
(Except of course for Andy, my Realtor ... poor thing ... everyone involved (from the Title company, sellers, and lenders) has been so lazy and misinformed, he has had to do everyone's job for them!)

There is a LOT of leg work to get through the house buying process. I say I am doing this on my own, and it feels very scary and lonely taking this kind of project face on as a "single" woman. Mainly because I always dreamed of doing this with my partner. But I remind myself often:
1.) This isn't my forever-home, this is a really smart and interesting investment opportunity, as well as an elaborate sculpture project! Of course I can handle it alone! I will still make a real home with my lifepartner in the near future, probably somewhere else, off the grid, on a farm.
2.) I am not alone. By any means. I couldn't have done it at all without Andy's professional assistance. But I also couldn't have gotten though it without the patience, support, home cooked meals, advil, attentive ears, cheer-leading, laughter and love from Brad, my dear friends, and My Mom!!!

YOU CAN'T PUSH THE RIVER
This is my baby brother's favorite proverb. And it is one of the wisest.
This house has been a great lesson in allowing for the ebb and flow of life to do its thing. I certainly can't control it. I don't mean to side with destiny by any means. I am a firm believer in free will, self-manifestation... with a dash or two of complete randomness for spice . I think there is a way to navigate within all of these.

There is a fine line between hunting down the thing you really want, and mastering a stillness that even a skittish, feral bird would approach.
Sometimes letting go of my attachment to a very specific goal actually brings me closer to it. For the last few weeks, I have been pretty much holding my breath because of some pretty substantial obstacles that arose.

The bank pulled the plug on my loan.
I had to arrive at a place where, if we couldn't find a way to fix it within limits that I felt comfortable with, I would be fine walking away from it with a smile still on my face (despite 3grand lost on my part). Had I been too fixated on "getting the house", I might have tried to stretch my comfort level to a dangerous reach. I needed to recognize my limits and be willing to walk away from non-ideal terms. I had to be able to let go of it - without giving up. I was still fighting for it, but without attaching my sense of self or sense of happiness to either outcome.

Like a river wearing on a stone - time and patience (and an awesome Realtor on my side), has worn the selling price on this little house into a smooth, rounded and manageable 56K less than they were initially asking for!
I am back in the game! And the result of not pushing the river, but preparing for the bends have all been to my benefit. This is actually the 2nd time I literally LOST the house. Both times resulted in me getting back in for even CHEAPER!

Put your ear up to the wind next Friday, you might hear the sound of jinggling keys !!!
Brad has promised to chef some killer BBQ at the first opportunity for a housewarming party!

Sacré bleu !!!

so my mom came to town this weekend and Andy was able to show her/us the place. When he asked her what she thought, she said exactly what I predicted she would:
"welllllllllllll.....uhmmmm, it's...... what it is... hahaha...". awkward pause.
- a mixture of appalling fright from the wall2wall graffiti of bigger than life genitalia, (currently omitted from these particularly pics) and down right mystified by the amount of work that will be needed. For starters. She is warming up to it all though :)

Personally I find the drawings incredibly charming, and even fuzzy and familiar in that angsty art school kind of way. I thought this little one was particularly wonderful, it says: "welcome moms!" So naturally, I got a cute pic of my mom with it. If this escrow fiasco goes through, and at this point it is still pretty harry, well, I plan on asking Brad to take some really nice photos -maybe with his old Hasselblad, of some of the art before I paint over it. In honor of the kids who came before me, I'll frame them and hang them on my walls. I really actually love some of it.
I have this sneaking suspicion that I will somehow eventually meet one of them. The writing on the wall is clear that when the house foreclosed these kids were bummed to leave it. Hopefully it will mean something to them to know the house has gone to someone who both appreciates their message and their sense of wall decor :)

PREqualify, POSTreveries

where to start?
Before getting your heart all tightly wrinkled up and squealing with excitement over houses you can't afford, start with getting pre-qualified. It's mostly a waste of time for everyone to go looking at places you "think" you can afford - aka - yeah right.
Those untouchables do eventually become helpful landmarks and parameters in recognizing a good deal. It might look as if my standards dropped. I am currently in escrow on a house located on a street I initially refused to even look at. How snooty of me! But, I think more than anything, I just really started to understand what was possible, what was clearly not within my budget, and then I started to see my options in metrics of potential.

So, I dont mean to say you shouldn't look outside your price range at all. I just mean that if you do, you better really be into the masochism of 24hour lightening love affairs and tsunami breakups - because every time you walk into the lusty, seductive, potential of an empty living room - try as you may - like siren songs - you will find yourself mentally moved-in and organizing the kitchenware...
- "and the sewing room will go there, and the 50's diner booth will go here, and I'll tear down these walls and build an addition out of shipping containers and vintage windows".

- Then you do the math, jolt out of your plush daydream - heartbroken and drowning in kleenex puffs. So, like I said: Get Pre-Qualified. Understand REALLY WELL what you can actually afford.

How do you get a Pre-Qual?
Well, you can walk into any bank and ask to get qualified by a lender. I kept thinking that I would then be married to working with whatever random suit I landed on, so I hesitated for a good while with getting qualified. Mistake. I understand now that you can just get qualified to get an idea of your financials. Then, as you move along in your search, you can look into different assistance programs, and each program will sort of push you to use particular lenders that are trained in their program deal. SO ... at that point you can switch to a lender that fits with the house or the program you are interested in.
For example, if you are looking in Oakland then you should check out this awesome city program:

City of Oaklands First time home buyers MAP Mortgage Assistance Program (www.oaklandnet.com/homebuyers.html or 510 238.6201)
It's a 2 day workshop to get certified. I went with Mele and it was actually very helpful for me in the early stages of grasping all the lingo.
If you qualify (ie: you make less than a certain $ - which I do) they give piggyback Deffered-Payment loans up to 20% or 75K. No payments until you sell, or rent, or after 30 years. fixed at 3%. Its an amazing program. It took me a while to actually translate all that bank-speak into english in my head, but i get it now, and so will you after a few.

I am actually not using the MAP program afterall - because the particular house I ended up bidding on was already tied to a Fanny Mae program that better suited my needs : extra loan money to cover the renovations.
http://www.fanniemae.com/homepath/incentive/index.jhtml
http://www.fanniemae.com/homepath/financing/index.jhtml

Anyway- my Rockin' Realtor, Andy Pitarre, held my hand through all of this...and pointed out many available deals and stuff, also helped connect me to the lenders I needed for my particular situation. So Yes! do your research! but also trust your Realtor!
If you don't trust your Realtor, you should call up mine!! he rules!

escrow my asscrow

Just a little indication of how I feel about the convoluted and disjointed process called escrow.

People keep asking me about this home buying process. I defintly didn't know the first thing about it until I jumped in.
If you are interested in witnessing the step by step madness of buying a (fixer) house on a shoe string budget...read on. Well, I wish I had started this blog at the very beginning of it all, but I will back track a bit to fill you in on the delightfully awkward first steps - and carry on into the present day as I deal will the daily joys of Escrow, Closing, and Contractors.

Finally my overall goal is to put on that rockin' pink tool-belt of mine and get deep into DIY guerrilla style greening systems. And if I know my people right, my friends and loves will help me along the way, from research to digging through salvage yards... Should be fun.