Sheep Guarding Llama

Liesl was incredibly restless last night and since Dominica, Liesl, Oreo and I have to share a bed she keeps us from getting any sleep as well.  We could not sleep in this morning as I have a full day of work ahead of me at the office.  It’s Saturday but we have to make up for the last few days and no time to relax at all.

Dominica was up before Liesl and I and was out shopping with Francesca when we got up.  I went straight to work as soon as I awoke.  Lots to do today.  More than an average day at the office, in fact.

We got a call from our real estate agent this morning.  The seller and the broker had called her to apologize for getting emotional and arguing about the value of the house yesterday.  They claimed that they were prepared to negotiate but failed to provide a counter-offer so we aren’t inclined to even discuss the situation with them yet, if ever.

The real mistake on the seller’s part here is that he gave us the chance to step back, not be impulsive and think carefully about whether or not this house was really the best option for us.  Perhaps more importantly he stopped us from thinking about the house as being “ours” and made it into “the house we didn’t get” which is a major no-no in the world of sales.  One of the strongest selling points for any consumer product is getting the buyer thinking of the house, car or whatever as being “theirs” which invokes the “lost” reaction if they choose not to purchase.  Humans prefer what they already have over what they could have almost always.  People hate to give things up – even imaginary things.  We are just wired that way.  As a seller, he broke that connection and made it vastly easier for us to assess the house objectively.

And the decision was… that the house, while very nice, does not suit our needs very well.  It is sixty percent above the other house that we are considering and only marginally more functional.  And instead of being the least expensive house on the block it is the most.  Not a good investment.  And the smaller house is far better suited to being able to rent out in the future.  Just smarter all around even not taking the massive cost difference into consideration.

What we are thinking is that we want to add a small storage shed into the yard of the smaller house that we will be able to use in the long term alternative to having to rent storage units like we have been doing for the past year.  That isn’t all that expensive but it does add up over time.  When we were in Peekskill it was costing us $215 per month.  We have managed to use a smaller unit in Texas and are only paying $90 per month here but that is still quite expensive.  That is over one thousand dollars a year in the best case scenario.  If we could eliminate that not just in the short term but for many years to come that would practically pay for the house!  Well, not quite, but a good percentage at least.

I had a ton of work that needed my attention today.  Not a weekend day for me at all.  A full work day.  A full work day without even getting a chance to break for lunch,  in fact.  The last three days have been a blur of work.

Everyone went over to Joe and Britt’s new house while I was still working.  Emily’s birthday part is today, and why we are down in Texas, so they are doing a pool party over there.  It is very hot in Houston today.  Not like it has been in Dallas.  It is closing in on triple digits here whereas Dallas has been in the eighties for a while.  Very different.

It was pretty late in the day when I finally managed to head over to the party.  Most everyone was already pretty tired when I arrived.  Today is the first time that either Dominica or I have seen Joe and Britt’s new house.

I hung out for a while but then the girls really wanted someone to play with them in the pool so Emily talked me into getting into the pool and hanging out for several hours.  So I got some sun and exercise today.  It was probably best that I got into the pool because it was too warm to not be in the pool.

There has been a stomach bug going around down here in Houston.  We were hopeful that no one was going to get it thinking that it was possible that it might have run its course with Garrett, Clara and Francesca having already been sick some days ago.  But Madeline was the first to feel the impact at the party.  The bug comes on very quickly with very little warning.  Madeline had the bug by late afternoon.  By early evening Bennie was the next soldier down having to leave the party to go home sick.

It was pretty late when we broke up the pool party and headed back to the Grices’.  We got there and everyone watched Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam before everyone went to bed.

Dominica went out shopping today and bought an air mattress for Liesl to use when we are at the Grices’.  Liesl is used to sleeping in her own bed now and does not put up with sharing a bed with Dominica and I anymore.  She is getting so much older now!

I considered going into the office at one thirty this morning as there was just so much to be done and no time during the day to do it.  Since I was wide awake and unable to get back to sleep it almost made sense.  But eventually I managed to fall back asleep so it was probably best that I did not go into the office that early.  We have to drive to Houston tonight so getting up crazy early would not be the best.

Today was, as expected, completely crazy at work.  I was just running from one thing to another as fast as I could.  It was just as bad as yesterday.  It wore me out quickly.

For lunch today, Dominica sent me to McDonald’s to deliver food to her and Liesl.  It was a fast lunch for me.  Just dropped it off, ate and ran back to the office.  What a week it has been.

We finally heard back from the house seller’s broker today.  They pretty much told us that they “deserved” the asking price for the house and that its condition or market value were not factors.  They came back with an insulting counter offer of just $100 off of the stated price that we got when they showed us the house the first time.

Our agent let them have it, which we thought was very entertaining.  She explained to them that the floors weren’t even and sloped all over the place (which is very true, we were discussing ways to use furniture and wall hangings to pull focus away from the floors falling away at the sides of the house while we were there) and that there were design issues, crooked pillars, etc. and other issues that, while the house is very nice, keeps it from demanding a completely premium price like they are asking.  Maybe our offer was a little low, but you bargain, that’s how it works.

So we decided that we aren’t even going to make another offer on the house.  They aren’t interested in working with us so that is that.  We knew that this was the sellers first house as well as his first flip so he is likely emotionally invested n the house and doesn’t think of it as an investment but is thinking of it as his time and craftsmanship.  But a house is an investment vehicle and we aren’t willing to lose money or take on extra risk just because he feels that he did an amazing job updating the house or overextended himself.

He has already had two buyers fall through due to an inability to secure financing.  We are very secure with our financing and the bank told the agent to let us bid anything we wanted – no issues there.  So this guy just walked away from basically a sure sale.  Very foolish in our book.  But whatever.  You can’t get emotional about a house.  That was actually a risk for us with this house because it was much nicer than the others that we were considering and that is dangerous for us because we move so often.

I managed to escape work actually at a pretty good time.  At six I ran home, dropped off the Mazda, picked up the family and we drove down to look at one of the houses again so that we would have it fresh in our minds to discuss on the drive down to Houston.

We went through the small house, the one directly next door to the one that we stopped bidding on today, that is also next door to our realtor.  We went through it very thoroughly considering how we could use it, what it would cost and we could set it up, etc.  We also found out that very likely the seller would be willing to push off the closing quite some time as long as the deal was in hand so that she could pursue another house.  That makes a big difference to us.  A difference of maybe two or three thousand dollars.  And that is thousands of dollars today… not someday down the road.  Our closing could likely be in December rather than October.  That is a big, big deal for us as we cannot get our of our lease until the first of March.

After looking at the house as thoroughly as we could and discussing as many options and needs as possible, we hit the road down to Houston.  I stopped at Jack in the Box and got myself dinner as Dominica had had herself a snack just before we left.  The traffic was really heavy this evening.  It took longer than normal to make the drive.  The entire highway was busy; it never lightened up for the whole drive.

We stopped at Buc-ee’s to use the restroom and to grab some snacks.  Then went on down to Houston.

It was almost exactly midnight when we arrived at the Grices’.  Straight off to bed for us.  We are all very tired – except for Liesl who napped all afternoon and then rested in the car on the way.  She was ready to party as soon as we got out of the car.

Today we are waiting to see what happens with the offer that we put in on the house yesterday.  So far, no news.

Work was insanely busy today.  It was that busy that is really, really awful.  I like being busy, as most of my readers know, but I like it when there is something big that is needed and I can focus on it and overcome a major challenge.  My busy today is a thousand little conflicting tasks coming in at such a pace that I can’t even keep up with the email.  I have people give me a single task that takes an hour, then a person from their team ask for a completely different task from me a few minutes later and then check back with me in forty minutes to see if the second task was completed yet while the first task from that team is still underway.  Had they talked to each other they would have known that I should not even have acknowledged the second issue yet let alone started it and definitely not completed it.

Setting expectations is hard.  People forget when they send you work remotely that you might already be working.  They always seem to feel that you are completely idle just waiting for work from them and for some reason do not realize that obvious our processing is serial and that it only takes a task from one single person to keep me completely occupied and unable to handle their request too.

So my entire day was a mix of being overworked and context switching as quickly as possible.  Very stressful because even though I was working to capacity and doing a ton of work everyone feels like I am doing nothing because my queue is so long.  By the end of the day there was tons of stuff that had to be pushed off until tomorrow.  So tomorrow is looking like it is going to be a crazy day as well.

After work today, Dominica and I went down to the new neighbourhood where we are hoping to be living very soon to meet our real estate agent for dinner.  We went to a new TexMex Cantina right around the corner from where we hope to be living.  We ate and signed the paperwork for our offer to officially go in.

The offer went in around nine this evening.  Like Dominica said yesterday… the speed of Texas.  We were thinking that we would hear something back from the seller tonight.  If this was New York, there would be some haggling going on tonight but as this is Texas, we are wondering if that will be the case.

After dinner we went home and I went straight to bed at nine thirty.  Very early but I was totally exhausted.  I got very little sleep last night and today was just awful.  I needed as much sleep as I could get.

I add to my busy day, I got paged out at midnight for an issue that was not even mine and when the support team in India was actively available so I have no idea why they felt the need to call me.  Even if it was my issue and no one was currently on the support desk it is one of those pointless alerts that there is nothing that we can do about anyway so heaven only knows why they call anyone.

After that call I could not go back to sleep and was up for a few hours.  So much for getting a good night’s sleep.

After talking last night, Dominica and I decided that we wanted to look at the house again, the last one that we saw yesterday, again today.  This time the owner would not be present as we knew that he was going to be out of town.  Then we would get a chance to look for the problems in the house rather than to get the dazzling tour.  The house is extra challenging to evaluate because it is staged very well and very sparsely.  So there is a tone of open space as if it was a house twice the size but none of the key furniture is there.

Work was pretty busy this morning.  I came home late and spent the afternoon watching Liesl while Dominica went to a doctor’s appointment.  It would have been nice to have gotten some time with Liesl but I was very busy with work and she was exhausted and really just needed to go down for a nap.  So there wasn’t really any quality time there.

I spoke to our bank today.  That didn’t go well.  They are a New York bank and don’t have the option of lending in Texas.  So we have to look elsewhere to find financing.  They also cannot help us with refinancing our house in Peekskill because that is now a rental and therefore investment property and they are not licensed for that either.  Argh.

I did get through to a lender that we found through our agent.  He managed to pre-qualify us right away and we have our credit information (amazingly, no one has stolen our credit yet!) and our pre-qualification in hand now.  The bank is happy to loan us the money and we are in great shape to make an offer if we so choose.

Dominica brought home a very late lunch from McDonald’s and we ate that.  She was late enough that I had decided to just work from home this afternoon before we went back out at five to look at that house again but there was a disaster at the office so I ran back in for a little while to deal with that in person.

We were running a little late, but not too bad, getting out to look at the house.  It was probably five thirty when we got out there.

Going through the house without the owner was much better.  Our first question was answered right way – the master bedroom truly does not have any windows whatsoever!  We are not too keen on that.  We would have to have a skylight put in immediately – adding to the cost of the house from the onset.  I checked the electrical and there is no allowance for any type of data cabling whatsoever, not even cable or phone let alone modern data cabling.  That is an issue.  And the media room has no electrical outlets on the media center side of the room – a puzzling oversight.

The biggest issues that we noticed were that some of the rooms had significant slopes to them.  We knew that there had been foundation issues that were repaired and had lifetime warranties that would transfer to us but rooms that are wonky are rooms that will always be wonky and we would always have to work to hide the fact that the main living area falls away by a few inches in one corner.  There are places in the house, like in the front office room, where standing in the doorway put you an inch or two over a person standing by the window in the same room!

Overall we still really like the house although we now have a better grasp of it and have our concerns laid out carefully.  We spent a bit of time going all over the house figuring out exactly what would need work and what would not.

When we were done we decided that we would put in an offer and see where it got us.  If this was New York we would have had the offer in in minutes and the bargaining would all be done in an hour.  We were told that the offer would go in “by Friday” at the latest.  Wow.  Everything really does move on “Texas time” down here.  This is our third house and our fourth or fifth time through pricing negotiations but we’ve never heard of time frames like this before.  Weird.

We had been planning on all going to La Cima for Pasta Night tonight but Liesl wasn’t in the best mood after having spent so long at the house and she needed to go home and start working towards going to bed.  So I took the girls home, dropped them off, changed and drove over to the club.

It ended up being quite a party at La Cima tonight.  I was expecting to meet up with Brian and Donnie tonight but Mike, whom I haven’t seen in many months, was there as well.  We did happy hour then moved into the dining room.  We did our usual wine flights and pasta and dessert.  Roasted garlic cream sauce tonight.

Today we are back to house hunting again.  We looked at five houses on Sunday and we are going to look at five more today.

Work was pretty busy today.  This week is feeling pretty hectic.  This weekend we are traveling down to Houston as well.  Leaving Dallas on Friday night.  The Wests are moving down to Austin this weekend!  Very weird that they will be living in Texas now.  We have gotten used to them being very far away.  This will be the closest that Andy and I have lived to each other since Dominica and I moved to New Jersey in 2006.  Half the distance that we used to be from each other back in New York.

Nothing exciting to report during the day.  I left work early to pick up Dominica and Liesl at two thirty and from there we picked up our real estate agent and spent about two hours going around looking at houses.

Dominica had done some planning and the five houses that we were interested in were all pretty close to each other and she had mapped them all out so that we could hit them all very quickly one right after another.  It worked really well.

When we got to our real estate agent’s house and were waiting for her we noticed a house just one away from hers (one house in between – one of the two that we are considering from Sunday’s list, actually) had its for-sale sign go up in the yard while we were sitting there.  So we noted that that might be worth investigating as well although the house is a flip and we are very wary of flipped homes.

The list of houses for today was pretty weak.  The first house had a failed foundation and the house was literally falling apart.  We didn’t even look through the house.  Dominica was dizzy just stepping in the front door.  Absolutely not a house for us.

Pretty much each house that we saw had a show stopping issue.  Whether it was that it was falling down, that it required way too much updating or had way too many large, potentially dangerous dogs trying to get into its back yard – not an issue for us but with a little, blind, ten year old Boston Terrier who needs to have the freedom to go around the backyard in peace even loudly barking dogs right next door would be a significant issue.  He would never be able to relax and might wander within reach of them not knowing what he was doing even if they never did anything.

It was a good learning day, learning areas, neighbourhoods and what we would get for different price ranges.  We are getting more savvy even if we did not see anything today that sparked our interest.

When we got done, it was still pretty early.  So our agent called to see if we could get into to see the house up the street from her.  The flipper was just a few minutes away so he drove back to let us in himself and to show us around.  Of course, having the owner there is never good.  He directs you away from things that he doesn’t want you to see and focuses your attention on nice features that might not even matter to you.

The house was really nice.  Great 1960s build and look on the outside and completely modern and new on the inside.  Very nicely done.  It is really our style and plenty of space too.  It is a full three bedrooms, although only two baths, with a full office in addition and lots of open living space.

We definitely liked the house that we saw last the best of any houses that we have seen thus far.  Dominica really, really likes it.  I like it a lot but am concerned that it is above the price range that we had even wanted to consider.  Not by a lot, but a little.  But a little over the cap that we wanted to consider, but a little over what we wanted to spend.  We are trying to be very conservative with this house.  This is not our attempt to get the greatest house for us ever – it is an attempt to mitigate the financial loss of renting and the problems associated with being on the third floor and not having a yard.  We are attempting to be practical, not to get our ultimate house – which this is far from being anyway.

So we learned a great deal tonight and are hopeful that we will get to make a good decision soon.  At this point we don’t even know when our  current lease is up nor if we have any options for getting out of it.  We have not spoken to a bank yet either.  So there is a lot of unknown going on for us at the moment in addition to the house itself.

After we were done looking at houses I needed to get over to La Cima for the new members meet and greet cocktail hour that was going on there tonight.  I am not really a “new” member but this was really for members who have joined since the last one of these events which was something like April or so.  So this is the first one for me.  Funny to be welcomed to the club by people who, many of whom, have been members for years but have probably not used the club to the extent that I have already.

Brian ended up joining me this evening.  He has been a member for about a year but had met very few people at the party and just sort of crashed the party.  It was free drinks and food all evening too!

After La Cima I ran over to Jersey Mike’s and picked up dinner and brought it back home for Dominica and Liesl.

We talked a lot about the houses tonight.  We are very interested in the last house that we saw.  We think that it might work for us even being as expensive as it is.  We talked about the pros and cons and what price we might be able to get for it.  The lack of a third bathroom is big and there are a lot of little things around the house that we would need done like electrical that should have been done in the remodel rather than afterwards.  While we were talking we realized that we could not figure out, at all, where the window in the master was located.  We decided that it must not have one.  But it must, right?

We are planning on talking to the bank tomorrow and getting the full story on the house so that we know what our options are.