I'm taking a teeny break. We've been packing nonstop for the past several days. We DO have a house and it's downtown-ish -- 2.5 miles away from the park and ride for the light rail. Yay!!
I thought that we'd be getting rid of bunches of stuff -- it seems like we did, e.g. 3 carloads of books to the 2nd hand bookstore, but we still have sooooo much to pack! Stephen is coming tomorrow night to help. Yay again!!!
I'm gonna stop and watch I Love Lucy for a while.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
In the Middle of Stuff
On Friday the 18th, our house was supposed to be auctioned. It wasn't. We found out when we received a notice several days later, taped to the garage door. Fannie Mae now owns our property. At the bottom of the notice was contact information for a Realtor. I called.
The gentleman on the phone had a kindly voice. Good start. His name is Joseph. Joseph asked me if I was the homeowner. "Not any more," I joked nervously.
He explained that Fannie Mae needed to know if the house was vacant, occupied by renters, or occupied by the original mortgage-holders. We are choice #3. Being a Friday afternoon, Joseph explained that he'd fax the information to Fannie Mae, but we probably wouldn't hear from him again until the middle of the next week. That's now.
"So the sheriff won't be backing up a moving van?" again a nervous joke. That's what I do when I'm scared. Either that or begin sobbing. I thought the nervous joking was a more acceptable choice. Joseph, again with the kindly voice, explained that Fannie Mae wanted to be ... he couldn't come up with the word. Have I mentioned that in addition to kindly, Joseph sounded quite elderly? I think he's the parent in the family real estate firm.
I tried to help him. "Nice? Considerate?"
"That's the idea," said Joseph. Kindly. "Considerate. They don't want to cause you additional pain."
I e-mailed our attorney, Robert. Robert is also kindly, but not at all elderly. And considering we paid him a chunk of change to support us during this transition, I suppose he has to be kindly.
Robert told me to determine our moving costs: security deposits, moving company, cleaning.
Cleaning? Is it possible that Fannie Mae will reimburse us to have the house cleaned? Wow! I'd never considered that. Ever.
Maybe this move won't be as traumatic as I've been imagining.
After my chat with Joseph and my e-mail to Robert, I jumped into research mode. I found a really cool website that had a map of the city with "push pins" indicating available rentals. Position the map in the area you want to rent, click on the push pin, and a box of info appears about that particular rental. After about an hour, I got pretty good at it. I zoomed in enough so that I could see the size of each push-pinned property. That way I could focus on individual houses rather than apartments. I used to have this fantasy that we could live in a sexy downtown loft in a high-rise. One glance around the reality of our lives, reminds me that this fantasy will have to stay in fantasy-land.
In reality-land, we need a house with a yard for the dogs, some area for Paul's "science projects" -- outside, definitely -- he's been known to mix things up that turn extremely toxic (that's a whole other post for another time). At one point I was doing some painting on the back patio; then it got either too hot or too cold and I put away my art supplies. I'd like to have a place where they could live.
Within these parameters, we want to pay the least amount of rent possible. That seems to be about $500 less than our current mortgage.
We want to spend the next year and a half socking away as much as we can so that if we decide to retire after the 2012 school year, we'll have a cushion to support us as we figure out our next adventure.
So now we're in that Limbo space: some boxes packed, but more things that we're still determining whether we should sell them or not. The antique organ, the sofa bed that no one ever sits on or sleeps in, boxes of books that we hauled from Delaware but never unpacked, the Mac equipment for editing videos -- now well over 10 years old, a dinosaur in the world of technology.
Today we're looking at rental properties. I hope we find one that we like and whose landlord approves us, warts and all. I will feel better having an image of where our life will continue on -- at least for the foreseeable future.
The gentleman on the phone had a kindly voice. Good start. His name is Joseph. Joseph asked me if I was the homeowner. "Not any more," I joked nervously.
He explained that Fannie Mae needed to know if the house was vacant, occupied by renters, or occupied by the original mortgage-holders. We are choice #3. Being a Friday afternoon, Joseph explained that he'd fax the information to Fannie Mae, but we probably wouldn't hear from him again until the middle of the next week. That's now.
"So the sheriff won't be backing up a moving van?" again a nervous joke. That's what I do when I'm scared. Either that or begin sobbing. I thought the nervous joking was a more acceptable choice. Joseph, again with the kindly voice, explained that Fannie Mae wanted to be ... he couldn't come up with the word. Have I mentioned that in addition to kindly, Joseph sounded quite elderly? I think he's the parent in the family real estate firm.
I tried to help him. "Nice? Considerate?"
"That's the idea," said Joseph. Kindly. "Considerate. They don't want to cause you additional pain."
I e-mailed our attorney, Robert. Robert is also kindly, but not at all elderly. And considering we paid him a chunk of change to support us during this transition, I suppose he has to be kindly.
Robert told me to determine our moving costs: security deposits, moving company, cleaning.
Cleaning? Is it possible that Fannie Mae will reimburse us to have the house cleaned? Wow! I'd never considered that. Ever.
Maybe this move won't be as traumatic as I've been imagining.
After my chat with Joseph and my e-mail to Robert, I jumped into research mode. I found a really cool website that had a map of the city with "push pins" indicating available rentals. Position the map in the area you want to rent, click on the push pin, and a box of info appears about that particular rental. After about an hour, I got pretty good at it. I zoomed in enough so that I could see the size of each push-pinned property. That way I could focus on individual houses rather than apartments. I used to have this fantasy that we could live in a sexy downtown loft in a high-rise. One glance around the reality of our lives, reminds me that this fantasy will have to stay in fantasy-land.
In reality-land, we need a house with a yard for the dogs, some area for Paul's "science projects" -- outside, definitely -- he's been known to mix things up that turn extremely toxic (that's a whole other post for another time). At one point I was doing some painting on the back patio; then it got either too hot or too cold and I put away my art supplies. I'd like to have a place where they could live.
Within these parameters, we want to pay the least amount of rent possible. That seems to be about $500 less than our current mortgage.
We want to spend the next year and a half socking away as much as we can so that if we decide to retire after the 2012 school year, we'll have a cushion to support us as we figure out our next adventure.
So now we're in that Limbo space: some boxes packed, but more things that we're still determining whether we should sell them or not. The antique organ, the sofa bed that no one ever sits on or sleeps in, boxes of books that we hauled from Delaware but never unpacked, the Mac equipment for editing videos -- now well over 10 years old, a dinosaur in the world of technology.
Today we're looking at rental properties. I hope we find one that we like and whose landlord approves us, warts and all. I will feel better having an image of where our life will continue on -- at least for the foreseeable future.
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