Another housing update

3 Comments

The sellers were supposed to get back to us by noon yesterday. At 12:10 I couldn't stand the suspense any longer and called my agent.

He said that the sellers were okay with my offered price, but concerned about the deposit I'd offered (lower than usual due to lack of immediate cash-on-hand, because I hadn't been expecting to make any offers for a few more months yet) and the waiting time before the loan would be approved (longer than usual due to everyone in the world wanting to refinance at the moment to take advantage of low interest rates) (I first wrote "low interest rats").

So I'm rustling up some short-term cash (thanks largely to a couple of generous offers from a couple of individuals, who I'll pay back as soon as the checks that are currently in the mail to me from closing a couple of investment accounts arrive), and this morning we'll tell them that we'll pay the usual 3% deposit, but that we can't make the waiting time for loan approval any shorter. We'll see what they say.

At some point soon, if this all works out, I'll need to sell some stock in my company to cover the rest of the down payment. Selling stock is yet another thing I've never done before; there's all sorts of complicated stuff about what happens to taxes depending on exactly which stocks you sell (when you bought 'em and how much they cost). I suppose it's good for me to learn about all this stuff.

Anyway, the short version is that things are still a little up in the air, and that I don't know whether we'll have a decision before Monday. We'll see.

3 Responses to “Another housing update”

  1. Mel Melcer

    Jed,

    That’s so exciting! Hope it all works out! I love changing houses–the new possibilities the change offers. Over the last 15 years I’ve moved 13 times, so, I got some practice. We bought a house last year that was supposed to be “it” but we’re already thinking about moving–and changing the country altogether. Nomadic spirit, I guess.

    Good luck!

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  2. Celia

    On the other hand, first time home owners get tax breaks in a lot of places, which with any luck should at least balance out any sort of tax penalties for cashing in stocks.

    My roommate bought a condo that we lived in DC. Made financial sense, oddly enough–no cheaper than rent on a monthly basis, but seeing as it’s gone up ~50K since she bought it in 2000, it should be a deal overall. While she was in spain, I was handling paying the mortage and all. So at one point around the end of the year I get the little notice of what was paid and what it was applied to. 12 months rent, and about a thousand bucks towards the principle. “Good news,” I said in my email to her. “Just another 152 years, and you’ll be all paid off.”

    Oddly enough, she wasn’t as amused by it as I was. Some people have no sense of humor, I tell you.

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  3. Shannon

    Back when the economy was better (and I wasn’t trying to keep my own company going) I got in the habit of paying a bit more than I needed to each month towards my mortgage – the net effect being that I made about 2 extra payments each year. Not a bit stretch, but it cuts the repayment time down considerably, especially since any extra payments have the double effect of going directly to principle (and thus reducing the principle remaining for later interest calculation).

    If you can, I highly recommend it – an extra $100/mth or so adds up really fast.

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