From the category archives:

Buying My House

Closing on Our New Home

May 28, 2008

On April 28, 2008, we closed on our new house!
As you’re reading this, we are likely in the middle of unpacking the new house after our (no-doubt-too-long) cross-country road-trip. Here’s a picture…

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After a stressful bunch of days house-hunting, negotiating, and getting paperwork signed, we were well on our way to buying our first house. Luckily (and surprisingly), the process over the next several weeks went very smoothly:

Property Inspection: While the inspection was a bit more costly than I had expected (nearly $600), I [...]

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Disclosures: Trust But Verify

May 26, 2008

I learned a very good lesson while performing due diligence on the house I put under contract. After arranging the inspection of the house, I got a call from my agent asking if I wanted to include a radon test as well as the standard inspection. Figuring that after spending hundreds of thousands [...]

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What Controls Mortgage Rates?

May 24, 2008

In my last post, I mentioned that all my home purchase paperwork had been completed, and that I was just sitting back waiting for the various other parties (my agent, mortgage broker, inspector, appraiser, etc) to get back to me…
Well, the first person to get back to me was my mortgage broker. My application [...]

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Finding a House (Part 2)

May 23, 2008

After spending two 14-hour days looking at houses and talking to sellers/agents, we had finally put an offer on a house. On Sunday, while waiting for the response from the seller, we visited a couple more open-houses, and revisited “the Mansion.” We spent about an hour examining the house and talking to the [...]

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Finding a House (Part 1)

May 22, 2008

I mentioned previously that my fiancée and I were in a bit of a bind in terms of purchasing a new house in Atlanta. Long story short, we needed to close on a purchase prior to quitting our jobs, or risk not being able to get a mortgage. So, we headed to Atlanta [...]

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Our House Hunting Trip

May 20, 2008

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, we spent a long weekend in Atlanta a few weeks ago looking for a house. In addition to looking at houses, there were a number of other things we were hoping to accomplish on this trip.
We spent all day Thursday meeting with CPAs, hoping to find [...]

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Oh, The Irony of It All

May 19, 2008

As I mentioned in my last post, the fiancee and I headed to Atlanta on a house-hunting trip a few weeks ago…while I would like to say that is was just a stress-free trip to just look at some houses and relax for the weekend in our soon-to-be hometown, it unfortunately wasn’t…
You see, as soon [...]

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Using A Buyer’s Agent

May 18, 2008

The fiancee and I headed to Atlanta a few weeks ago on our first house-hunting trip. In preparation, I decided to look into finding a real estate agent to help us better get our bearings on the local area where we are considering buying, as well as to help us negotiate and close once [...]

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Reverse Sticker Shock

May 17, 2008

I’ve been in California for about 8 years now. When I first moved out here from Maryland, one of my best friends in Maryland had just bought a $200K house (and a nice house at that!). I remember thinking about how ridiculous it was to spend that much money on a house, and [...]

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