New Homeowners Adventures - Six months in.

This feels like home now. Still love it. Love the space. Love the privacy (kind of)... Love the views, at least till they build the houses in front. Which should not be that long. Our dishwasher continues to give us trouble. Two leaks and a lot of floorboards later, Lennar has agreed to replace the unit. Hopefully, that will be the end if it. 

The drive to work is not half bad. It takes 20 mins or so in off-peak hours. But on most days I take the bus. In the near future, I am hoping that I will start going to TKD, and that will involve more driving. Utility bills are indeed higher , but in all , I am still quite happy that we took the leap. 

The one big disappointment was my inability to re-finance. Two factors made this particularly hard.

1. I have a HELOC and I am not anywhere close to 80% equity
2. Interest rates are climbing in anticipation of rate hikes.

My far-fetched and ambitious goal was to refinance within six-months to a combination of lower rates and removal of HELOC. But from the looks of it, the HELOC is here to stay.  The combining of the two loans would have de-risked me significantly, while also easing my cash flows. 

So I guess, I am most likely going to stick to plan B. Which is pay down my HELOC as fast as I can. 

So far, I have paid down about 30%. But the rate of repayment should slow down now.

The New Home Owner Adventure - 3 months in

Feeling a bit settled in.  Life is still good. But the bills... One of the not so nice parts about being a home owner is the relentless onslaught of bills.  Two HOAs, water, garbage, electricity, special assessments, taxes, the list goes on and on.

Also, now I am beginning to look forward to when they finish the construction for the lots in front of the house, the dust and the construction crews get a bit annoying to say the least. also my front porch is covered with dust, and I cannot quite enjoy the idea of sitting outdoors and drink me whiskey.


Tina and A will be heading home for about 6 weeks. I wonder if I should try and accomplish at least one mini project in that time.  The most likely thing to do is to install shower doors for the 3rd floor shared bathroom.

More ambitious would be to try and wallpaper either the bedroom or one of the bathrooms. I am not feeling too inclined to do that.

Be a little strange to be living in such a big house all by myself. But should use the time to re-charge.

The New Home Owner Adventure - 2.5 months in.

Things are settling in. I love almost everything about the house. Its big enough for Andrew to run around. There is room enough for us to have our own space if we need it. I have a xbox one setup at the main TV and the old PS3 at the old TV. I am loving the flexibility that setup gives me. Andrew monopolizes the Tv in the living room . He and I are sharing our office/play room. I don't mind.

The commute is pretty nice. 5-6 minute car ride and then onto the bus, Where I can work and relax.

We did our first photo shoot for the place.

The Home Owner Adventures - Second week.

We are now two weeks living in our new home. Loving the sun in the morning. Not loving the lack of privacy. I now realize how far south we are. Fortunately, the drives time is not too bad on 85. Tina and Baby came for dinner to Apple yesterday, and it took us about 18 mins to get from Cupertino to our home.

The lack of a second car or bike is indeed a larger problem. I am kinda stuck at the VTA stop till tina comes to pick me up and the VTA + walk option takes too long.

So I now have to make a call between buying a hybrid bike of lease a car. I will need a second car no matter what.

Norm and I put up the wall hung TV.  Not being a 4K display , its not as nice as Norm's TV, but I like it so far. I also installed an occupancy sensor in my bath, but need to adjust the time on it. I still need to figure out the garage storage and the wallpaper. Hopefully will make some headway this weekend.

The Home Owner Adventures - 1

On Jan 30 , 2015, We got the keys to our brand new home. It was a nail biter to the end, with two loans funding , one the day before and one the morning of closing. I must have check my email every 5-10 mins . I finally lost patience around 2 and called the title company. My call was not answered. I wondered if that was a good sign or not. But I still felt positive.

Then at 2:38 PM, Kim Garner from North American Title called me and gave me the news. We were home owners!!

I had already loaded up the car with some boxes with fragile stuff and important documents and set out to our new home. I got a nice welcome kit and used my new garage opener to park the car . But then I got a little surprise, none of the 4 keys I was given would open the garage door. I tried the front door as well, same problem. Somehow the keys had been mixed up. Lots of running about, and then, finally, someone helped me program a new code for our electronic dead bolt, and I was in. The washer dryer were still missing, but still I was very glad that we were able to close on time.

Norm and Shobita have been very kind and have invited us to sleep over on the days to help us with our move, because this is the state of our house. It is very surprising we have so many things.

Close or not to close.

It was a flurry of different things from the time we went into contract till now. Things have been far from smooth. Since I have to clear two loans from two lenders, things have progressed slowly. There was a lot of ambiguity around the closing dates, which finally got resolved to 30th of Jan. Today is the 27th and I am still not approved for my loan. TCF is holding out for some reason I cannot fathom. But I don't see the point in freaking out, as it is completely beyond my control. I have been riding my lender agent to keep pushing for this thing to get done. If it does not get approved today, I guess we won't be able to close as scheduled.

The other big issue was at the walkthrough. Our appliances and blinds were missing in the apartment. There was plenty of signs of a hurried job around the house. Deep gouges on some of the woodwork, nicks and spots of paint. But I didn't expect any different. They were pretty ok with fixing anything I pointed.

One other hiccup we encountered was that we ordered our furniture too early, and it got delivered to us. So we will need to cart everything to the new house. On the upside , the price quoted by the mover was well below my budget.

Been getting rid of all things in the house on craigslist at throw-away prices. Only three things remain - TV console, Dining Table, Area Rug.

Buying any house , I would have run the risk of discovering issues. Especially if it was not an old construction. So I should just be glad that I am at least covered by a 1 year warranty.

In any case, I have my fingers crossed, if all goes well, then in the next two days, we will become owners of our first home in the US.

A home at last!

The week of Dec14-21st was very disappointing. With redfin as our realtor, we had seen several houses each day of the week, and had come away disappointed and defeated. But in that week I learnt a few things.

1. A SFH was out of the question in our price point, at least one that was anywhere near decent.
2. We really wanted a modern turn-key home.
3. Andrew was not going to school for another 4 years. (Grade 1)

We dropped the school as a criterion, taking on the risk of potentially having to pay for private school till we sold this home. We also learnt that new communities require you to show up with your agent on day 1. Armed with this knowledge we started to look at another set of homes. And on the first day we came across what will hopefully, ( at the time of this writing, we are in escrow ) become our home on Feb 6th, 2015.

The overall trade off is nice home and community at the expense of commute and schools for Andrew. The second tradeoff was totally unexpected and we hope to make it right if the markets permit it in 4-5 years. As of today, the area around the community is fairly industrial, but a large tract of it is being developed into a residential and retail hub. There are some dense condos coming up around the back of our lot, which could affect the pricing of the area. The village oak mall will have a big impact on the desirability of the area. In our best case scenario, in a few years

• The condos end up housing professionals and not end up being really cheap rentals
• The Village oak complex gets some upscale tenants. 
• Some green belt is developed.
• And our community gets built as planned and continues to sell. 

The last is the one I am most worried about, the value of our house will depend strongly on continued demand for at least 2-3 years. 

The credit from Redfin and Lennar were unexpected when I first started planning all this and I would consider that a windfall. I am hoping to convince myself that I should use that to buy a car I want. I will make a call in March 2015 after things settle down a bit. 

Sending A to pre-school is priority.  Furnishing the house is also a priority. I want to start a 5-6 year span with new things. 

On the flip side, I don't want to be sitting on my HELOC and I project paying off all of it by mid 2017. This will then set me in a good position to start hacking away at the principal on my first lien. I may retain the first and build equity in other ways, because I will consider the primary at a tax adjusted rate of ~ 2.2%. Instead, I should build diversified equity, and if my ARM resets high, I should plan to put a dent in the  principal at that time. 

I plan to start tracking interest rates after I close, something in the ballpark of 3.125 / 3.25 would work for me, but I am not counting on this. If it does happen, It will make the short term better. 

A big chunk of my cash flow management this year will depend on my ability to adjust my W4 pretty aggressively.

==UPDATE==
We are still on track for the Feb 6th . We are hoping to set  the move out date to Feb9th. I am hoping there are no hiccups along the way.  We bought the first pieces of furniture. And I should start planning the packing and movers in a few weeks.