Beginning the house hunting process

[Zombie13]

congratulations shipo!

[justbroke]

Congratulations shipo on the new home and closing. It's always exciting to get the new keys.

Also, congratulations on the massive starting limit on the NFCU More Rewards card. It helps reinforce the notion that filing bankruptcy is not a death sentence.

[shipo]

First post from the new home!

We closed Friday, pretty painless process, errr, except for looking at the bank balances. :p

On the advice of the many credit sages I've been reading advice from over the last few years, I waited until after closing to pull the trigger on the NFCU More Rewards credit card they've been pestering me to apply for, and when I did last night I was stunned at the starting limit, a whopping $30,000! It also seems like I'm about to need to put my Road Warrior hat on again in the next few months, so I applied for a United Explorer card and got approved with a paltry $8,000 starting limit. Yeah, I know, "First world problems".

[shipo]

Thanks Carmella!

[Carmella]

shipo Congrats!

[justbroke]

Reminds me of when I first moved from New England to Florida. Movers drove a 25-ft city truck (liftgate) and we drove an full-sized SUV via the auto train from Lorton, VA to Sanford, FL. The SUV had my "important" things in inside.

[shipo]

We have more like a two month overlap; the internet will be enabled in the new place next Friday, we won't shut it down here until late June or early July. Unfortunately for us, the new place is almost exactly 500 miles away and requires driving through or around Boston, Hartford, New Haven, New York City, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, and Washington DC. I've made the trip eight times in the last year, the shortest was a few minutes under 8-hours, the longest was just over 13-hours. I figure at least two of the southbound trips will be pulling a 6x12 U-Haul trailer with certain items we don't want the movers touching for various reasons.

Last weekend we started clearing out things we know we will no longer need and moving other things to storage for later this year; my new vehicle tows well.

[justbroke]

Fun times. When I bought this house in 2020 I had a 10-day overlap for services between my two places. As luck would have it, the stupid internet provider did show up on Saturday and added service to the new address, but turned off service at the old address. I was still living at the old address. The entire purpose of the overlap was to take my time. This was during COVID lockdown (April 2020). I was lucky to have movers. In any event, we rented a UHaul van and moved as much "needed" things to the new house piece by piece (12 miles each way).

The "main" move was still 10 days later. I laid into the internet provider. Guess what they did? When the service was supposed to turn off at the other place, a guy shows up at the new place to install service. I told him it was already done. He said okay so I went back in the new house and my internet was no longer working! I ran outside and caught him in his van. I asked what's going on and he said nothing. Luckily he was real nice and already assigned 4 hours to my install and he looked it up and it was yet another install order which messed up all the IP addresses. But it was all situated within 1 hour.

I hate moving.

[shipo]

Today begins our 7-day countdown to closing...

Being nimble enough to close 18-days from from a signed contract is proving to be a double edged sword; on the positive side that very nimbleness was what won the deal for us, but wow, all of the stuff what needs doin' has been quite the distraction from everyday life. As of today the (almost) final closing disclosure for the mortgage came through about an hour ago, I have the internet and water services scheduled to start, however, the electric and natural gas are both proving to be a bit thorny as the electric company claims our condo is in a different building with a different address, and the gas company which allegedly services our building claims they have no idea any such building exists. I mean, seriously?

[shipo]

Oh geez, it has been quite the roller-coaster ride around here over the last few hours; I made an offer late this afternoon which featured automatic escalations of $5,000 over the next highest bid, with a cap at $75,000 over ask; the winning bid was going to be announced at 7:00 this evening. At seven our real estate agent called us and said there were so many offers they had to push the final decision back two hours. At 8:45 she called and said, "Well, you were the second highest bidder, however, you were out-bid by a whopping $65,000." I said, "Not going there, let them have it." She agreed.

A little after nine she called again and said, "You're nimble enough to close in three weeks, the high bidder wants to close in July; the seller has agreed to sell it to you if you bump up your offer another $10,000 and provide $40,000 in earnest money tomorrow. It hurt a bit, but I agreed; two hours later and lots of e-mail traffic back and forth, the contract is signed and our closing date is 10-May.

Funny thing, because of the rules on what constitutes a "First Time Home Buyer", it looks like I'm about to become one for the fourth time in my life.

[shipo]

My wife and I were both Gypsys before we met; we'd lived in a combined nine states and fourteen metro areas by that time, and in the 30 years since then we've only lived in three states and four metro areas.

[justbroke]

Like I said... I didn't get out much. LOL. I think I stayed in the Inner Harbor once. I went into DC once via Union Station. I'm not too adventurous.

[shipo]

Very cool. I spent a long time in and around Columbia (Howard County). I didn't live there, but I worked in the area for over 10 years. I have never been that far west into Maryland.

LOL, "that far west into Maryland", Kentland is only 21 miles northwest of the center of Washington DC.

[justbroke]

Very cool. I spent a long time in and around Columbia (Howard County). I didn't live there, but I worked in the area for over 10 years. I have never been that far west into Maryland.

[shipo]

Into the Kentlands community of Gaithersburg.