Miscellaneous Moving Mumblings....

Been "working" in the garage to attempt to get things ready to go. It always seems that whatever I'm doing, the wife thinks I should be doing something else.

Always....

And of course, her constant litany of "Throw It Away" drones on and on and on and on....

So, do I "throw away" $2,000 worth of stuff to save $500 on moving it?

And by the time I go to replace the $2k of stuff I dumped to shut her up, the cost will have risen to $3k.

....SIGH....

And in the process of "decluttering" the house, she just dumped shit everywhere in the garage, with no rhyme or reason as to why things got stacked where they did.

Which means that to even get at my stuff, I've got to tear the whole freaking garage apart........AGAIN.

And she wonders why I have such a hard time getting started on these things......

New "Owners" Coming By Tonight

Technically, their BANK is the new owner, but we'll be nice and play along with them.

Our agent called and said they'd asked if they could come by to show their kids "Our New House", so he checked with us, and we don't have any objections.

The guy wanted to see the garage, which is packed floor-to-ceiling with boxes, and I think the gal wanted to have a closer look at the kitchen and the bedrooms.

We're investigating movers right now, and I can see the fights between the wife and myself brewing  in the distance.

She's going to scream bloody murder about all the "junk" I have in the garage, and how she's not going to pay to move it, and I'm going to insist it goes.

I've already dumped several thousand dollars worth of perfectly usable stuff, and I'm down to "If I dump it I'll have to replace it" items like antennas, antenna rotators, sections of heavy gauge mast, and a bunch of other stuff that simply isn't available any longer.

Since escrow won't be closing until the end of September, I've made the decision to leave from Las Vegas after the "Supras in Vegas" event and head for Colorado. It'll be a long drive, but I can always overnight somewhere if I have to.

Hey, I did L.A. to Fort Collins in one shot carrying two wimmens and all their stuff, so "just me" in the Supra from Vegas to FTC should be a piece of cake!

But I'm not looking forward to the Great Garage Pack And Move, at all....

Documents Signed, Should Be "In Escrow" Early This Week

And now the waiting begins.....


And the packing.


I'll start going through the garage this week to see what I'm going to keep, what I'm going to sell, and what my wife will insist I throw away.


The big thing to sort will be all the car parts I have for the Supra. I have gaskets, hoses, belts, water pumps, tune-up parts, brake and clutch master cylinders, clutch slave cylinders, and a ton of other stuff. That stuff can get packed away for shipment, except for the belts and hoses. If I drive the car I'll take those with me. If I ship the car I'll stow them inside.


Radio gear, both in the house and the garage, will get packed for shipment, except for my little Elecraft K2, power supply, SignaLink, and portable antenna. I'll want to take those with me so I can get on-the-air at our temporary dwelling. And I'll take a VHF/UHF handie-talkie or two. The Jeep has a Kenwood TM-D710 in it, and that should be fine for checking into local nets and making some new Ham Radio friends. The radio also has a GPS receiver connected to it, so I'll be "trackable" using any of the APRS applications out there.


And I'll take my camera, a couple of laptops, and a suitcase full of clothes, including my N3B parka!


With the 45 day escrow ( ! ) the buyers insisted on, it looks like we'll be here through September. Our realtor told us the buyers should have all their funding in place after 21 days, so we might be able to push them a bit faster than 45 days, but that remains to be seen.

Counteroffer Accepted. Papers Get Signed Tomorrow, Sunday

At this point I think I can say the house is "sold".

Still have the inspections to do, which should happen in the next 10 days or so. I don't expect the inspections to find anything, except for the termite inspection. They ALWAYS find some termite "damage" that has to be repaired.

They wanted, and got, a 45 day escrow. Not sure why they couldn't do it any faster, but I'll talk to our agent when he comes by Sunday.

Negotiations In Progress! **Updated**

Well.....DUH!

I just  found out from my wife that we did get an offer from the nice young couple that came by Tuesday at 1800 to look at the house.

They've offered us the asking price, but our agent told them we have multiple offers (true, but one "offer" was a joke), and their agent told ours that they'd be willing to go "into the $520k range", which means that they just hit our target price.

My wife was visiting one of her friends the last few days, and our agent sent her some paper work which she electronically signed, and returned to him, and now he and the other agent are going to hammer out a few fine points to get to the final price and what contingencies are and aren't covered.

These buyers seemed to be extremely serious, they have $50k cash for a down payment, both grew up in this area, and have been out bid on the last three houses they made offers on.

I don't know what they're going to come back with as a counter to our counter (see your 20 and raise you 50), but if it's at or above $515k, we'll accept it, and then the clock starts running out for us to get moved.

They were asking for a 45 day escrow, and our agent said he'd try and get them to agree to a 30 day escrow, but that was about the only thing he didn't like about their initial offer.

So, (fingers, toes, arms and legs crossed) the house might very well be "under contract" next week.


UPDATE 

 We just heard from our realtor that the other realtor is going over our counter offer, and we should know something Saturday.

Solid Offer Received On The House......

They've offered what it's listed at, have a credit score well north of 700, have 20% down, and our agent says they're seriously looking to buy, and have been "priced out" (I think he meant "out bid") of the last three houses they've made offers on.

He says they really like the house, and really want to buy it.

He told us he knows they can go higher, so we're in the negotiating stages right now.

We should know tonight if they'll come up enough to satisfy my wife.

The fat lady just might be warming up in the wings.......

Saturday Already?

Gee...time sure flies when you don't know what you're doing....or something like that.

Still Friday, but I'm posting this at 2200, so it probably won't get read by many until Saturday.

Had a busy week. We had five more couples and their realtors come by to check out the house during the week, and we're having another open house Saturday and Sunday.

No offers other than the one couple that backed out.

 I'm starting to think the listing price is too low, and people are saying "What's wrong with the house?" to themselves. One down the street and around the corner finally sold after 60-some days on the market. It was overpriced at $600k, and finally sold for $550k. It was a bit smaller than our house, but had more "modern" upgrades, like the infamous "Granite Countertops!!!", and some other things. We'll just have to see what happens, but at this point, after going through all the hype the first three realtors we interviewed told us, I wouldn't be completely shocked if we didn't get out of here until next Spring. It usually starts snowing in late September in the Fort Collins area, and my wife really, really, really wants to get moved before the snow flies. Once we're settled in to the place we'll be staying at, we can wait it out until Spring to buy, unless a Really Good Deal comes up. Moving is a big enough PITA, let alone doing it during snow season.

Spent three full days on the Iowa this week, which I'm sure is what made the week seem so short. I went down Tuesday for the Great Ethernet Cable Pulling Project, but I was the only one in the work party that showed up! Turns out we'll be going with WiFi instead of being hard-wired in. I haven't heard what type of WiFi router we're going to be using. Hopefully it will be one with some Ethernet ports on it so the two big PC's we have won't need another card installed in them. The laptops we're using for running the logging programs all have built-in WiFi, so no issues there.

Thursday we had a special event to commemorate the signing of the Korean cease-fire, but band conditions were absolutely horrible. The Solar Flux Index was 68 (that's baaaad!), and the bands were noisy. We made a total of 35 contacts on the three stations we had on-the-air from 0900 to 1600 PDST. We can generally get that many per hour, per station, when the band conditions are "good".

And today I was down there to give a personal tour to my late brother-in-law's youngest son, and his two boys, ages 8 and 10. None of them really understood what they were seeing, in terms of history, but they enjoyed it nonetheless.

First Buyer Backed Out.....

Well....we had an offer at the listing price for the house. Our agent said they looked like good, solid people, and their loan pre-approval was for "up to" $550k. The sad thing was that both sets of parents had co-signed on the loan forms, showing that it's tough for a young couple to buy a decent home in SoCal.

Since the listing price is about $15k less than what my wife is willing to accept, and our agent knows this, and agrees with her that the house is really "worth" the amount she wants (which is what the appraisal came in at), he sent them a letter asking them to come back with "Their best, highest price" they were willing to go as our counter offer.

He just called a while ago telling us that while they loved the house, the price they offered was all they could afford, so their original offer was all they were willing to spend.

He said he thanked them, and wished them luck with the purchase of their first home.

This house is only the second one I've had anything to do with buying/selling, so I'm pretty much in uncharted territory here. The last house I bought was in 1987, and we all know how much things have changed since then, especially in the Krazy Kalifornia real estate market!

He's bringing some more agents and clients by Tuesday (tomorrow) to look at the house, so we'll see how that goes.

I have a Doctor's appointment at 0900, and then down to the Iowa for a "Cable Pulling Party". We're putting in five new Ethernet drops for the Comm Center (FACCON 1), and our CTO who runs the network and all the servers on board will be putting us on our own subnet. We'll actually be on our own VPN, which will give us full Internet connectivity, while keeping us isolated from the ship's various internal networks.

All the networking equipment and servers on board are new, first-class stuff he was able to get donated through his contacts, and the network has ample redundancy and back-up servers (also redundant) for our use, so we should have a very dependable, rock-solid network set up once he configures everything. I was the network admin for our little corner of the ship's network, but I'm turning that over to the guy I asked to be Station Manager, and I've been getting him trained up on that. Besides being really good at radio stuff, my "replacement" is also another computer geek, and we've both been using Linux since the early days.

Open Houses and OFFERS!

Having "Day 2" of this round of open house.

We had about 15 people come by yesterday, and the agent said they all looked like solid prospects.

He also brought by our first offer. It was for the listing price, and my wife is insisting we get $15k more than the listing price. $15k above the listed price is what the appraisal is, and would pay for our moving costs.

Hopefully we'll get some more interested, people today.

I don't how youngsters do it these days. Buying a little house like ours at over $500k just seems nuts to me. The only house I've ever owned (so far...this one is really my wife's) was purchased back in 1987 and we paid $156k for it. I was making about $40k a year then, and along with what my then wife was making, we could easily afford it. That house is worth about $450k now. While the price of the house has TRIPLED, I doubt that the wages of the kind of person who would be interested in it have kept pace.

As the last line of "The Bridge On The River Kwai" says........."MADNESS!"

Open House Again Saturday and Sunday.

Hopefully we'll get some more interested people.

Our Realtor is a really cool guy. He's a staunch conservative, NRA Life Member, and so are the rest of his family members. I was supposed to take the dog out the other day when he had the "mini" open house, but just as I was leaving, a potential buyer walked up, so I took the dog out back. After that person left I started talking to him about firearms and things and another couple showed up, so I dragged the dog out again.

We never did make it to the dog park as we had so much fun yakking away between people coming by to look at the house!

Best Commercial EVER!

Saw it on Bill Whittle, and just had to share it.