Yesterday I baked a loaf of whole wheat bread in our sun oven.  Then I decided to make eggplant sandwiches.  I had a fresh farmers market eggplant, which I sliced up and drizzled with fresh garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper.  Then I put the eggplant slices in the sun oven and left them there for about an hour.  Halfway through their cooking, I added a bell pepper from our garden to the sun oven, and roasted it along with the eggplant.

I assembled the sandwiches with tomatoes (from the farmers market – ours aren’t ready yet), lettuce from our garden, mustard, and vegan mayo, along with the eggplant and roasted pepper.  They were amazingly tasty, and I love that all the cooking was done for free.  As a bonus, it was done without heating up my already warm kitchen, and while I was able to get other stuff done in the house.  Here’s a picture (I’m not a food photographer by any stretch, so please ignore the glare):

We also installed a clothesline yesterday, which I’m very excited about.  Actually we just installed the poles – we still have to add the lines, which we’re going to do tomorrow.  My husband found the poles at a scrap metal place he’s been frequenting lately.  They had been cut off at ground level, so they’re a bit shorter than normal.  Once we got them embedded in concrete they’re only about four and a half feet high.  But they will work perfectly… after all, I’ve been using folding clothes racks that are about four feet high for the last two years.  The best part about the poles was that they were scrap metal, sold for 25 cents a pound.  He bought a bunch of other stuff with them; we don’t know exactly how much they cost, but we’re guessing it was probably around ten bucks.  One of the T-bars was broken, so my husband snagged another piece of pole scrap and welded on a new T-bar.

We commented on the fact that our new clothesline area takes up as much space as we had in our entire backyard at our old house.  Here, it’s only taking up a tiny little area of yard to the side of our house.  Reason number 742 that we’re glad we moved!

Nope, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth.  It’s been a bit crazy around here lately.  We are absolutely thrilled with our new home, but moving is a bit of a drag.  Hopfully we won’t be doing it again!

Everything was going smoothly until two days before our move date when I called UHaul to double check on our reservation and make sure that everything was looking good with our truck.  Unfortunately, that was not the case.  We had a 26 foot truck reserved from the morning of the 27th until the morning of the 30th.  We were closing on our old house on the 26th, and then loading the truck on the 27th.  Then we were going to park it at my brother’s house over the weekend, and stay with him while we waited to close on our new house on the 29th.  Then we would unload our stuff at the new house, and drive to my parents’ house and load up the stuff we had stored there back when we started getting our house ready to sell.  It was going to be a long day on the 29th, but we were up for it.

UHaul had other plans.  Or rather, they had no plans.  They didn’t have a truck for us.  They said that the soonest they could get us a 26 foot truck would be the 29th.  Not so good, considering that our contract stated that we would be charged $300/day if we were still in our old house past the 27th.  I talked with lots of people at their regional and national offices, and nobody could do anything – there just weren’t any trucks, even for people who had reservations.  I finally tracked down a 14 foot truck that they allowed us to pick up on the 26th after our closing.  They gave us unlimited mileage, but said that we had to return it where we got it, by 7am the next day.

That sucked.  My parents came to our house and took care of our son and helped us pack everything into the tiny truck (without their help, I don’t know how we would have made that day work with the truck and timeframe UHaul gave us).  We had to make two trips, and since we hadn’t bought our new house yet, we had to stash everything in a storage unit in our new town (my brother and sister live nearby, and came to help us unload the truck at the storage unit.  It took until 3 in the morning, but without their help we would likely have worked all night).  It was completely disorganized and rushed, and some of our stuff is still in the storage unit, more than a week later.  We bought a little trailer on Craigs List, and have been using it to haul stuff from the storage unit to our house.  But compared with just unloading everything from a truck into the house, it’s been a huge pain in the butt.

Our original reservation with UHaul was going to be $350.  We ended up paying $150, and they gave us a $50 credit because they didn’t have our truck (trust me UHaul, I’d much rather tha you keep your fifty bucks and just have the truck we reserved ready for us).  So the truck was $100.  But we had to pay $200 for the storage unit, and had to pay extra gas money to make two trips in the truck and then return it back to where we got it rather than dropping it off in our new town.  So money-wise, it was a wash.  Effort-wise, it was much worse the way it ended up working out, but at least we’re here.

Check back tomorrow for more details.  We did get our truck returned where we picked it up, and went back to our old house to clean and tie up loose ends on the 27th.  Then our weekend became a roller coaster ride.  Stay tuned…

We’ve been tying up loose ends all week, getting ready to sell our current house and buy our new home.  Our closing is set for Friday morning, and then the closing on the new house is on Monday.  It feels like we’re never going to get everything packed up and moved out of her by Saturday, but I suppose we will.

We’ve got our final numbers on both sales now.   We’ll net just over $42,000 from the sale of our house, and we need to show up at closing for the new house with about $45,000.   So that works out just about perfectly.  We decided to go with a 15 year mortgage on the new house, and we got a rate of 4.625%.  The shorter loan term means that our monthly payments will be about $300 higher than our current mortgage payment.  We debated for a while on that decision, but in the end the lower interest rate won us over.  The HOA dues at the new house are only $50/year, as opposed to the $80/month that we pay now.  So that reduces the difference in mortgage payments down to about $225/month.  And for the last several years, we’ve made additional payments on our mortgage, ranging from $100 to $1000.  So we feel comfortable with the slightly higher payment, given the lower interest rate and the shorter loan term that we’re getting in trade.  We don’t have any debt other than the mortgage, which helped make the decision a little easier.

We’re going to focus on our emergency savings account for a while, just in case.  But given the relatively small difference in mortgage payments, it was worth it to us to go with the 15 year loan.  Our goal is to pay off the mortgage in about seven years, so for now we intend to pay quite a bit more than the required payment each month.  But we feel confident that even if our job situation were to change, we could handle the new payments without too much stress.

I don’t know many people with 15 year mortgages.  Have any of you opted for higher monthly payments in trade for a lower interest rate and shorter term?  Are you glad you did, or do you wish you had taken out a 30 year loan?

We think we’re finally past most of the speed bumps on the road to selling one house and buying another.  The appraisal was the last hurdle for selling our house, and unfortunately it came in $5000 lower than our asking price.  We knew this was going to be an issue even before we listed our house.  We discussed it at length with our realtor, and she even took us around the neighborhood to check out other houses that we for sale before we set our price.  We knew that the highest price any house in our neighborhood had sold for recently was $205k.  And the lowest was $135k.  So we knew that finding comps in our neighborhood was going to be tough when it came time for an appraisal.  There were a couple houses for sale for more than we listed ours, but they haven’t sold yet, so they don’t count.

The appraiser tried his best.  He was aware of the offer price, and how few days the house was on the market.  He even went to a fancier neighborhood and looked at comps there, to give us the benefit of the doubt as far as locations (we are in one of the best possible locations within our neighborhood).  He gave us a value of $210k, which is higher than anything else has sold for here this year.  But that meant that our net from the sale was going to be reduced by five grand.  We really had no option but to reduce our price.  More than 80% of the loans in this area right now are FHA, and this FHA appraisal would stick with our house for the next six months.  Considering the comps, there is really no reason to think that a conventional loan appraisal would put it any higher.  So our only chance of selling the house for more than $210k was to find a cash buyer.  And that doesn’t sound like fun at all.  So we agreed to lower our price.  But we wanted to check out the closing costs situation with our buyer, to see if we had any negotiating room there.

Our realtor requested to see the schedule of fees for the buyer’s closing costs, and the buyer’s agent agreed to let us look at them.  I noticed that our buyer had a good rate (4.85% on a 30 year loan), and was impressed with that.  But her closing costs were huge… nearly $8000.  We had originally agreed to pay up to $7500 in closing costs for her, with her paying full price for the house.  But with the lowered house price, we were hoping to pay less in closing costs.  It was our realtor who figured out that the reason our buyer’s interest rate is so good is because she bought the rate!  I don’t know a whole lot about creative financing, but apparently you can pay an additional fee at closing and secure a lower interest rate – lower than you would otherwise qualify for.  And in this case, with the sellers (that would be us) paying her closing costs, that’s exactly what this buyer did.

Our realtor discussed this with us, and suggested that we play hardball.  She contacted the buyer’s realtor and said that we were willing to pay all necessary closing costs, but that a fee (four thousand dollars in this case!) to lower the buyer’s interest rate did not count as a necessary cost, and that we would not be paying it.  The next day she called back to say that the buyer had agreed to pay her own rate buy-down charge.  Whew!

My husband and I had discussed this before we talked with our realtor, and had decided that even if we couldn’t get the buyer to budge on closing costs, we wanted to go ahead with the deal.  We have money in savings that would could have used to make up the difference when it was time to close on our new house, and we didn’t want to start over with finding a new buyer.  But that said, we’re really glad that our realtor did such a good job with this transaction.

Once it’s all said and done, the lower appraisal value is only going to impact our net proceeds by a couple hundred dollars, since we’re now only paying about $3500 in closing costs, and not paying commissions and fees on the $5000 that got knocked off the price of the house.

So now we’ve started packing.   And I remember why I really don’t like moving.

Our home appraisal is tomorrow.  My husband and I are both on pins and needles about the appraisal.  Our house was listed for $214,900, and got two offers for the asking price, one after three days on the market, and the other after five days.  We had tons of showings in the few days before it was under contract, and lots of interest even after we stopped showing it.  So we know that it was priced correctly for the market.  But the appraiser has to agree.  And the problem is that the comps in our neighborhood aren’t really all that comparable.  Our house backs to open space, and beyond that is a park and an elementary school.  There are only two other houses in the whole neighborhood that have the same feature, and they are our neighbors on either side (neither of which has sold recently).  We know from our own experience and from the showing feedback that the open space behind our home is a major selling point.  But the appraiser will be comparing our home with other homes in the 400-house neighborhood to determine a value, and none of them back to open space.

There are lot of other features that make our home stand out – mostly stuff that we’ve done to it over the years since we’ve been here.  Our realtor said that the appraiser will take all of that into consideration, and will be able to add value based on the proximity to the open space and park.  We just aren’t sure if it will be enough to balance out the low-ish prices that some houses in our neighborhood have sold for recently.

We’ve agreed to pay $7500 in closing costs for the buyer, which essentially leaves us with a selling price of $207,400.  Once we subtract all the fees we’ll have to pay, this will leave us with enough to make our 20% down payment on the new house and pay our own closing costs on that transaction.  But if the appraisal comes in lower than $214,900, we won’t have much choice but to lower our asking price accordingly (it’s an FHA appraisal, which sticks with the house for six months.  And most loans in this area right now are FHA).  We have some money in savings, but we don’t want to use it to buy our new house.  We’re keeping our fingers tightly crossed that everything goes ok with the appraisal, but it’s a little worrisome.

The appraisal objection deadline is next Tuesday, so we’ll know by then if we have to lower our price or if things are good to go.  Could be a long five days!

We had our inspection today on our house today, and the results are pretty sweet. The only things the buyer is asking us to do is add GFCIs to the kitchen, bathrooms, and laundry room (the new section of the kitchen that we remodeled last year has GFCIs, but the rest of the house was wired in the 80s), and fix a leak that was found under our kitchen sink. We had never noticed a leak under the sink, and there’s no evidence of one when we look under there. But our realtor said that inspectors will sometimes fill the sink with water and then let it all out at once to check for leaks. So we’ll do that ourselves to find it, and it should be an easy fix. The GFICs are easy too, and cheap. One for each circuit should be about $60 total, and the whole project can be done in an afternoon (with a little supervision from my parents, who were planning to visit next week anyway).
So things are moving along very well this time around. Now that the inspection objection deadline has passed, the buyer would lose her earnest money if she backs out, unless it’s due to an appraisal or financing issue. If the house doesn’t appraise for at least the current sale price, we’d probably just have to drop our price. Our buyer is getting an FHA loan, so it will be an FHA appraisal. Our realtor said that those stick with a house for six months, and that the vast majority of loans that are being done in this region right now are FHA. So we’re somewhat at the mercy of the appraiser. But we’re hopeful that it will work out. As far as financing, our buyer is supposedly pretty far along in the mortgage approval process, and everything looks good.
We’re thrilled that the inspection turned up such small things, and things that will be easy and cheap to fix. Now if we could just figure out when to lock in an interest rate on our new mortgage…

When we bought our current home, we got a 30 year loan with 6% interest for the bulk of the mortgage, plus a HELOC with a variable interest rate (which has ranged between 4.25% and 8.75% over the last six and a half years). The total amount that we borrowed was $180,000.

On our new house (fingers still crossed that everything goes through as planned and that it does indeed become our new house), we’ll be taking out a loan of about $172,000. It will be just a single loan, with no second needed this time, as we’re putting 20% down on the house. And we’re getting a 15 year mortgage this time. Interest rates are driving me nuts – as I’m sure is the case for everyone else who is trying to buy or refinance right now. We had applied for our loan while our house was under contract the first time, but then we put things on hold once that contract fell through. By the time we got the house back under contract last week, the rates were rising at an alarming pace. We haven’t locked in a rate yet – we’re waiting to see what happens over the next few days. If only I had a crystal ball…

Whatever happens with interest rates over the next week or so, I imagine we’ll end up with a rate that is lower than what we have now. And we know that we’re getting a smaller mortgage this time around than we got when we bought our first house. The payments will be a few hundred dollars more per month, because we’re doing a 15 year loan, but the interest savings over the life of the loan are huge if we go the 15 year route. Our goal is to pay off the mortgage in six or seven years. This will mean substantial mortgage payments, but hey – we might as well aim high, right?

Lots of anticipation right now… Our buyer’s inspection is scheduled for tomorrow, and the appraisal will follow sometime soon. We haven’t heard yet whether the sellers on the house we’re buying are willing to move the closing date up for us or not, so July is a bit up in the air. Now if only we could get all of our ducks in a nice row… good interest rate, early July closing date, full price appraisal on our current house… it can’t hurt to ask for the moon, right?

This house selling process is quite the roller coaster.  Last Wednesday, our buyer backed out, and the house went back on the active MLS.  We had a few showings, but nowhere near as many as we had in the first few days it was on the market.  Then on Monday, we had three showings and got an offer.  By Tuesday morning, we had the house under contract again.  This time, the closing date is June 26th.  The buyer has already been through the mortgage approval process, and all that remains is for her to get an inspection done (which we hope will not turn up any issues, since we’ve already been through one), and for her lender to have an appraisal done.

The sellers on the house we’re buying had pushed our closing date out to the end of July in order to give us time to find a buyer, but now we’re hoping they’ll agree to close sooner than that so that we aren’t homeless for a month.  So much is up in the air right now – I’m trying to figure out whether we should rent a truck or a portable storage container, but until we have more concrete dates it’s hard to accurately compare prices.

The new contract isn’t quite as good as the first one.  It’s still for full asking price, but calls for us to pay the buyer’s closing costs.  This is closer to what we had originally expected, and will still allow us to put 20% down on the house we’re buying without dipping into our cash savings.  Now we just have to keep our fingers crossed that everything goes through this time…