Brainscrubber

They call it a bridge loan.

See, banks want your money. If you don’t have the money to give them, then they invent ways to give you the money so you can give it back to them. For example, take my house (seriously, you can buy it for $550,000). We have a tremendous amount of equity in it, which is a good thing. To the bank, though, this is a wasteful situation – money sitting fallow when it could be earning interest on their behalf. We find a house in Oregon that we want to buy. They bank says, based on your credit record, we’ll pre-approve you for $X. Unfortunately, the house is worth $Y…how can we meet that shortfall? With a downpayment, of course. Well, we won’t have the cash for a downpayment until we sell the house in California.

“No worries, my friend,” the banker tells us as he brushes aside sales brochures for bridges and beachfront property. “We have an answer for this. It’s called speculation.”

I become a little ill at ease. “Isn’t speculation illegal?”

“No, no, no,” he assures me. “That’s an old wive’s tale. Here’s what we’ll do…we’ll take the equity in your house, borrow against it (with a one-year time limit), pay your downpayment, then you can pay back the loan – with interest, or course – once you sell the house.”

“So, let me get this right. You will loan us money on profit that is strictly potential, not yet realized, for an amount that we HOPE we sell the house for?”

“More or less.”

“This is going to end up costing me money.”

“Well, you could lose house that you want to buy to another buyer. You must act, now.”

So, they make me and my wife into the latest suckers for their shell game of moving money from one column to another. Say, didn’t Enron get into trouble for that?

Anyhow, we went and hocked the San Diego house today for the purpose of paying the downpayment on the Cottage Grove house. We sign the big stack on Tuesday, up in Cottage Grove. The current owner will be out on the 11th, and we are moving our first load in during the weekend of the 15th. This is get very, very real.

Copyright 2005 by Greg Hubbard

So, we hired a real estate broker last night. Our San Diego house goes on the Multiple Listings System (Site?) (MLS) on July 14th. We’d hoped to get it on the market earlier, but it ain’t gonna happen. Just too many little details left to accomplish.

That weekend – July 15th-17th – is a perfect time, though. Cristina will be moving the dog, cat, and herself to Cottage Grove permanently, and I will be driving a truckload of our stuff (everything but the furniture) up to our new place, then flying back to San Diego on the 17th. The broker will use that weekend to host at least one, if not two open houses. The broker’s attack method is to get as many people in as he can, in as short a period of time as he can, and shoot multiple simultaneous offers. He’s got a very good track record of this so far.

I did quite a bit of research on the agents I chose to interview. The big thing for me was whether or not they new the area and would provide Cristina and me with a realistic range in which to price our house – not some sunshiney greaseball willing to pump sunshine and allow us to list at a price too aggressive for the current market. Nothing will kill a home sale quicker than pricing the property too high.

I had scheduled three interviews, but we only conducted one. The guy we hired was already the frontrunner. A friend of ours (a very difficult to please friend) recommended that we take a look at this guy. He’s been selling houses in Mira Mesa for 35 years, and he enjoys a good reputation for success. Since she recommended him, I put him on the list. The first thing he did was to send me a market comparison report on the house. The other two firms sent me a marketing package. An agent can whip up a market comparison report in about fifteen minutes…so, it’s not huge effort. However, the fact that he sent me data to analyze right off (along with some marketing stuff), while the others just sent me a repackaged version of their web pages, put him at the top of the list. Then, in the interview, he answered some very, very tough questions put to him. I wasn’t mean, but I let him know that we expected some real support from him. He equipped himself very well, outlining some important things that he does right off. And, after I made it clear we were looking at other agents, he gave us a very nice price on his services.

Now, I have to call and cancel the other interviews. I hate that part, though I am sure they are used to it (part of the biz). So, July 14th is the magical date for the listing. Until then, there are a lot of little niggling details that we’ve got to fix. I’m beginning to wonder if that part will ever end.
Pregnancy ends, so I am sure that selling a house ends, too.

Copyright 2005, by Greg Hubbard

How ugly is your old shower or bathtub?

If it’s anything like ours were, then, they’re pretty unappealing. The thought of a potential buyer looking at these 30-year-old pieces of worn-out fiberglass just dropped the selling price by $30K in my mind. Turns out, though, if there’s a homecare need, there’s a contractor to take care of it.

Enter Carlos. Breathing apparatus and goggles in place, he labored for about five hours yesterday spraying on a new finish in both the front and master bathrooms. The result is phenomenol. For a bout 1/2 the price it would take to replace all the fixtures for one bathtub or shower, we now have two abosolutely stunning bathing areas. I cannot overstate the difference. Really. Truly. It was like walking into the bathroom of a model home yesterday afternoon. Hard to believe that one could get so excited about bathroom fixtures.

We’ve made some key changes to the place in hopes of making the sale quicker and more lucrative. In order, I would rank them, in importance, as follows. A realtor might rank them a bit different.

1. New fence – The fence looks great, and it changes the feel for the place.
2. New carpeting and flooring – Four dogs, one cat, three kids (and friends)…our carpet and flooring looked like utter crap. Major change.
3. New countertop and refaced cabinets in kitchen – Makes the whole kitchen seem like a welcoming and warm place.
4. New paint on the house, both internal and external – Makes the house look very fresh.
5. New backdoor – There is no excuse for not having taken care of this one previously.
6. New surfaces on bathroom bathing fixtures – Just as I stated above…an AMAZING difference!!
7. New screens on the windows – Just looks nice.

Now, having highlight all of those, I have to rave about Cristina’s landscaping work. The woman could’ve been a Master Gardener, and I keep hoping she’ll someday go for that recognition of her skills. Not everyone can look at a piece of dirt and see it as a garden. I can’t…not really. She can. The gardens look beautiful: full of color and excitement. Curb appeal, curb appeal, curb appeal!

Copyright 2005, by Greg Hubbard

The Weekend From Hell

No kidding. This was the weekend from hell. Not only was the work tough, but Cristina and I were nastier with each other than we’ve been in several years.

Except for Thursday, when Cristina and I went to see Batman Begins, Cristina and I worked pretty late each night last week. Starting on Friday (17th), we entered a whole new realm. Everything had to be out of the house on Monday (20th) so that Sid’s Carpet Barn could install our newly purchased carpet, as well as the vinyl we’d picked out for the kitchen. This meant that we had to empty the garage of crap, unload the POD we loaded the previous two weekends for the painter (18+ hour days, if you’ll remember), and then reload both the POD and the garage with furniture.

Some of the stuff for the painters we could either shift around from room to room, or we could shove to the center of the room and let them cover it. Not for carpet and flooring installation. We couldn’t have anything on the floor at all. Yeah, we could’ve had the installers move stuff, but that cost a significant chunk of change, and they’d still be installing next week. So, we bit the bullet.

I took a load to the dump on Friday, and Cristina did an excellent job of cleaning out space in the garage. To be truthful, she had most of the garage space available late Thursday, but she continued to work in there on Friday. By Friday night, I had most of the POD empty, save for a couple of rows of books, which I moved the next day. Though, we swore to “go through some boxes” that evening, Cristina and I settled in, put our feet up, and watched four episodes from the first season of Farscape (Father’s Day gift). We both fell asleep almost instantly.

Then, came Saturday. By around one, both Cristina and I were frazzled and tired. So much stuff was going through our minds – not the least of which being that we had SO MUCH STUFF!!!! She and I had been quibbling for months over the stuff in the center of the garage, and Saturday it turned into a full-fledged fire fight, complete with stuff dredged up from past eons and fights long finished. Whoever it was that said that the stress of a move is on the par, or greater than, a divorce, must have moved once or twice.

Please don’t be shocked that I should be so open about our quarrels. I know there are a lot of couples that say they don’t fight (and I don’t mean physically), but on the whole I question the veracity of their claims or the depths at which they’ve buried some festering potential for disaster. Studies actually show that fights, or quarrels if you prefer, as long as they remain focused on the problem at hand, are indicative of a pretty healthy relationship. Cristina and I have a pretty healthy relationship.

After about thirty minutes of going back and forth, she and I managed to come to a place of commonality, and we proceeded to take care of the middle section of the garage. Amazing what the two of us accomplish when we work together. Later that afternoon, our son, James, showed up with his girlfriend, and they helped us move some of the smaller big items (e.g., futons) out into the garage. We were still working, with a short break for dinner, when we finally decided to call it a night. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Sunday…back to the salt mines. Only this time we had to move all of the big pieces. The big pieces were easy. We moved them very quickly. Then, it was all of the little tiny crapola tucked behind this pair of boots in that closet. Auuuggghhhh!!!!! Round about midnight, we quit and decided we’d gotten to a point that we could finish up on Monday morning.

Monday…Monday sucked. We got everything moved, but not without a huge quarrel at the beginning of the day and an even larger one that night. We both have different ways of doing things and place different priorities on required tasks. Didn’t help that the job took over ten hours for the installers to complete…us stuck like homeless people in the backyard, trying to hang on to every little snippet of shade we could. Damn that Southern California sunshine!! Both of us felt filthy and grungy, wanted to be doing something else, and needed a few margaritas. I swear no shower has felt better in a long time than the one I took at 11:30pm Monday night.

There are still a few traces of this past weekend hanging on, but on the whole, things are much improved. We’re both still exhausted, but a small amount of the stress has been relieved…the last really big home improvement job is done. Now, we have to turn our attention to the smaller, (often) more time consuming details required to finish things up. That, and the actual move date is looming closer and closer. Saying goodbye to a place that has been home for a period of time spanning three decades, six decades for Cristina, is not without its own kind of stress. But, still, we trudge on…there’s a forest waiting…and deer…and fresh mountain air…and…

Copyright 2005 by Greg Hubbard

The house smells of oil-based paint. Is that what fuels the elaborate dreaming I’ve known over the last few days? Even scented candles cannot cover up that smell. But, the house is painted, now – both inside and out. The colors are so innocuous that it’s difficult to imagine how they might cause any potential new owner any grief. Best of all, for Cristina, the painter won’t be arriving at 7am every morning.

New closet doors hang from the closet door jambs. Literally. I’ve never seen anything like them before, but Cristina says that they’re what were there before they were removed. The wooden door hangs from the top, dangling toward the floor, and moves side to side on an overhead rail. Very strange engineering to my eye…looks only half-finished. But, if that’s how it’s supposed to work…okay.

Carpet and flooring people come next week. Innocuous and unexciting carpet for every room in the house except the kitchen and the two bathrooms. The bathrooms have already been tiled. Linoleum will be layed in kitchen. Once it’s completed, we’ll be laying plastic throughout the house and asking our guests to remove their shoes while in the house. Beatrice and Cea (Chay` uh), our cat and dog, will have to depart for Oregon pretty soon after. Just too much work to have to follow them around as they go through their own day. I just realized we should get some of those booties that workmen use in houses. I’m glad that idea popped into my head.

The final house stuff will occur in the bathrooms. There are services that come in an restore existing showers and bathtubs to their original appearance (or close to it) for a fraction of the cost of replacing those items. We’re having that work done in both bathrooms. Five to six hundred dollars is one hell of a lot better than $2000-$5000 for a simple bathroom makeover. I am no handyman (although I have become a plumber), and I don’t pretend to be. So, having professionals do the work, while a little more expensive, is well worth the cash.

New shower doors will follow the refurbishing of the master bathroom. I will cover the seams just because I think it looks better.

Oh, wait, I have to take the toilet out of the front bathroom and reinstall it. For some reason, the seat needs to be reworked.

Then…we begin dealing with real estate agents. That will be another story. I hope it’s a good story – not a tragedy.

Copyright 2005 by Greg Hubbard

Whoa, Nellie!!! Take a break!!!!

You ever look at someone who has been working hard, incredibly hard, and see it in their face that they can’t possibly go any further?

When I got home last night from work, I made that read in Cristina’s face. She’d pushed herself way too far, and she needed to slow down. While there’s certainly no way I could ever force her to do anything, I did manage to influence her actions enough that we only did a minimum amount of necessary work last evening. We both (especially her) needed some downtime. So, we took stuff off of the wall, wrapped it, and stored it. Then, we watched The Station Agent on Starz…and caught the last 45 minutes of 13 Going On 30. The first is a brilliant little Indie film, and the second is a not so brilliant studio piece that is somewhat funny and enjoyable despite its hokey formula.

Downtime is important in any endeavor. Sure, it’s important to work hard…too much Protestant work ethic in America for that not to be intrinsic in our very souls…but, pushing oneself to the breaking point is more damaging that taking a little time off to re-juice. While I am not advocating procrastination, most tasks can be completed later, rather than right now, with very little loss. Of course, if you keep putting it off…

Copyright 2005 by Greg Hubbard