The house auction was a smashing failure, with the final bid coming in at $50k below what we paid for the place, and a bit below what we owe on it. The next step is trying to convince the bank that they should take the short sale, because our savings have all been dumped into trying to sell the thing. The backup plan for that is to just leave and ruin our credit, which I was thinking would be horribly awful, but then I realized that since we did everything right; taking out a reasonable loan we could afford, living within our means, trying to save something (this works better if you don't get laid off 8 months after paying off your very reasonable wedding expenses) that it's entirely the banks' fault we're in this situation anyway. On Skype last night, R mentioned we need to write a letter explaining things to the bank. I like this one:
dear bank,
because you and your cohorts bought a bunch of politicians before we were born in order to deregulate your market so you could make pretend money and thereby destroyed the economy, we can no longer pay you for this house. maybe if you had been less greedy the extensive layoffs destroying both our income and the housing market would not have been necessary. This is the best you'll get, so take it.
with absolutely no love, me
Today is not a good day, and I'm very frustrated. So I thought I'd make a list of some things I'm grateful for, in an attempt to change my perspective a little bit.
1. I live in Holland, where the financial sector is heavily regulated.
2. My friends are pretty awesome.
3. I have enough money for food, heat, and shelter.
4. I have extra money in fact, for travel, comfort, and fun.
5. My family is pretty awesome too.
6. I have access to good healthcare.
7. I got a job I like, related to my field, even though the economy is very very broken.
8. Things won't suck this much forever, and I can always earn more money.
It is a mathematical fact that the casting of a pebble from my hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe. — Thomas Carlyle
Showing posts with label home ownership. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home ownership. Show all posts
22 September 2010
25 July 2010
Things that are happening
I've been getting together all the papers so we can get R's visa. Since I'm a "highly skilled worker" he automatically gets a work permit, which is making this process a little easier. Since he was born on a military base in Europe, the paperwork has been a giant pain. I registered our marriage at Gemeente Delft, which is like a city hall. That part was easy, since I just had to take the marriage certificate, its apostille, and my residence card (which I'm legally required to carry all the time anyway) to the building and hand them to the people there. However, I recieved a new form to fill out, which had some awkward spots. Since R is still in the states, he doesn't have a visa number yet; what goes there? Do I have to mail it to him to sign, or can we fax it? Naturally, I didn't read the form thoroughly until I got home, so I couldn't ask about it. I have it (I think) all ready to go, though, so it gets mailed to R tomorrow. Just as soon as I find out where to buy stamps.
The world cup is over, and I haven't heard a vuvuzela since. Pure awesome.
I tried fixing my bike tire, but I think the hole was too big. O very thoughtfully loaned me a tire repair kit, and explained how to use it. The whole process was pretty simple, I'm just not sure it worked. I suspect I'll need to buy a new inner tire (this is like, 5 Euros or so) and learn how to replace that. Fun times! I like fixing things. I had planned to take pictures of the tire patching process, but my hands had too much adhesive on them to be touching my lovely camera.
Now that I've been paid again, I'm planning an exciting trip to IKEA. I really need a new mattress, so I don't have to sleep on the perpetually falling apart bed, and I could use a couple picture frames. Plus, IKEA is fun to wander, and Delft has a ginormous* one.
R and I have had some more activity with showing the house since we lowered the price again. We're giving it a couple more weeks, and then are probably going to take it to auction. We've reached a point where as long as we have to keep paying the mortgage, we're losing money, so it's better just to cut it loose now. Besides, we're young, and can earn more money later.
I need to find a tailor, or borrow someone's sewing machine, to fix a tiny fit problem on the dress I bought for MM's wedding. The top needs to come in by about half an inch, and the hemline could definitely be raised an inch or so. I could do it myself with a machine, but I'm not hand stitching it, because I really really don't enjoy hand sewing at all. This is very apparent in my choice of knitting patterns, which rarely require any seaming. Granted, that's also partly because it's cheaper to buy a sock's worth of yarn than a sweater's, but still. That's not my point, which is that hand sewing is tedious and sharp. I am a huge fan of nice blunt plastic yarn needles, I must admit.
I'm impatient to finish the second red sock in the pair, because I really want to use the leftover red yarn with leftover brown from the previous socks and make a nice pretty scarf or something.
July has just flown by here, partly due to the week I had a migraine, I'm sure. I'm way behind on pictures, so I've added a handful of old ones. The only unusual thing I've done was have a BBQ (by this, people here mean grilling out as a social group, not actual BBQ-ing) with all the roommates. However, as it started raining right as we sat down to eat the first course, I didn't get many pictures after we finished prepping all the food, because we were busy running inside with all the stuff, and then finishing the cooking under an awning as the rain poured down. It was fun though!
*Is ginormous really a word? The spell check doesn't underline it, but does underline IKEA. Which is even stranger, since spell checkers usually assume all caps words are acronyms, and therefore not subject to normal spellings.
The world cup is over, and I haven't heard a vuvuzela since. Pure awesome.
I tried fixing my bike tire, but I think the hole was too big. O very thoughtfully loaned me a tire repair kit, and explained how to use it. The whole process was pretty simple, I'm just not sure it worked. I suspect I'll need to buy a new inner tire (this is like, 5 Euros or so) and learn how to replace that. Fun times! I like fixing things. I had planned to take pictures of the tire patching process, but my hands had too much adhesive on them to be touching my lovely camera.
Now that I've been paid again, I'm planning an exciting trip to IKEA. I really need a new mattress, so I don't have to sleep on the perpetually falling apart bed, and I could use a couple picture frames. Plus, IKEA is fun to wander, and Delft has a ginormous* one.
R and I have had some more activity with showing the house since we lowered the price again. We're giving it a couple more weeks, and then are probably going to take it to auction. We've reached a point where as long as we have to keep paying the mortgage, we're losing money, so it's better just to cut it loose now. Besides, we're young, and can earn more money later.
I need to find a tailor, or borrow someone's sewing machine, to fix a tiny fit problem on the dress I bought for MM's wedding. The top needs to come in by about half an inch, and the hemline could definitely be raised an inch or so. I could do it myself with a machine, but I'm not hand stitching it, because I really really don't enjoy hand sewing at all. This is very apparent in my choice of knitting patterns, which rarely require any seaming. Granted, that's also partly because it's cheaper to buy a sock's worth of yarn than a sweater's, but still. That's not my point, which is that hand sewing is tedious and sharp. I am a huge fan of nice blunt plastic yarn needles, I must admit.
I'm impatient to finish the second red sock in the pair, because I really want to use the leftover red yarn with leftover brown from the previous socks and make a nice pretty scarf or something.
July has just flown by here, partly due to the week I had a migraine, I'm sure. I'm way behind on pictures, so I've added a handful of old ones. The only unusual thing I've done was have a BBQ (by this, people here mean grilling out as a social group, not actual BBQ-ing) with all the roommates. However, as it started raining right as we sat down to eat the first course, I didn't get many pictures after we finished prepping all the food, because we were busy running inside with all the stuff, and then finishing the cooking under an awning as the rain poured down. It was fun though!
*Is ginormous really a word? The spell check doesn't underline it, but does underline IKEA. Which is even stranger, since spell checkers usually assume all caps words are acronyms, and therefore not subject to normal spellings.
15 March 2010
Open House
The open house today went well. Most of the people in the age bracket appropriate for this size of house LOVED my paint colors, although several elderly neighbors were rather taken aback. I hope they were only shocked by the orange wall in the basement, because if my blue and gray living room was too much, that's kind of sad. The realtor really liked how we staged what little stuff we have, which was nice to hear after all our hard work! Another realtor who came to see the house thinks a house-hunting client of his would like ours, and love the neighborhood, so we'll hopefully be showing again later this week.
In the past week, not only have we cleaned the house twice, we've also painted the front door white, painted a small angle wall gray, scrubbed the baseboards the dogs get muddy, washed, folded, and put away a month's worth of laundry (since I don't have to wear job appropriate attire, laundry is usually motivated by R running out of socks, and he has a lot of them), moved all the packed stuff into the van, organized the storage room, put the storage room door back up, fixed the guest room door, planted butterfly garden seeds and mulched the flower beds, and changed the dining room light switch. We didn't manage to get the bedroom ceiling fan up, because R slept wrong and strained a neck/shoulder muscle. He couldn't lift his arms above his head, making wiring near the ceiling impossible.
We spent most of our exiled time at the bookstore, where I overheard a conversation between a couple of 15-ish year olds. The boy was sad because some girl wasn't calling him, and the girl was recommending not stalking the not-calling girl. I really wanted to tell him "she's just not that into you, quit trying" because the situation sounded like the not-calling girl just didn't know how to say no. I didn't, though, because that would be a tad creepy. I imagine he'll figure it out.
My lovely blue lace knitting project is moving right along. Now that I understand the pattern, it's pretty fast work. I imagine it'll get tedious before the end. I've finished 3.5 of 14 pattern repeats, so I still have a fair amount left to do. According to my spreadsheet, I'm 30.38% done. I'm very happy with the clear beads, and glad I went with them instead of blue ones.
In the past week, not only have we cleaned the house twice, we've also painted the front door white, painted a small angle wall gray, scrubbed the baseboards the dogs get muddy, washed, folded, and put away a month's worth of laundry (since I don't have to wear job appropriate attire, laundry is usually motivated by R running out of socks, and he has a lot of them), moved all the packed stuff into the van, organized the storage room, put the storage room door back up, fixed the guest room door, planted butterfly garden seeds and mulched the flower beds, and changed the dining room light switch. We didn't manage to get the bedroom ceiling fan up, because R slept wrong and strained a neck/shoulder muscle. He couldn't lift his arms above his head, making wiring near the ceiling impossible.
We spent most of our exiled time at the bookstore, where I overheard a conversation between a couple of 15-ish year olds. The boy was sad because some girl wasn't calling him, and the girl was recommending not stalking the not-calling girl. I really wanted to tell him "she's just not that into you, quit trying" because the situation sounded like the not-calling girl just didn't know how to say no. I didn't, though, because that would be a tad creepy. I imagine he'll figure it out.
My lovely blue lace knitting project is moving right along. Now that I understand the pattern, it's pretty fast work. I imagine it'll get tedious before the end. I've finished 3.5 of 14 pattern repeats, so I still have a fair amount left to do. According to my spreadsheet, I'm 30.38% done. I'm very happy with the clear beads, and glad I went with them instead of blue ones.
21 January 2010
Living Space
Making some progress on paperwork, finally. Thanks in huge part to my future roommate, E, who took care of figuring out exactly what was needed and filled out the forms so all I had to do was sign them! Also thanks to R, who did all the printing/scanning because my computer's acting up and it's really really cold in the basement. I now have somewhere to live, just as soon as I can move! It's a three bedroom apartment, which I'll be sharing with two roommates. E is currently there, and another woman who will be moving out in March, so we'll be roommate hunting once I get there (or, if my departure is delayed, possibly sooner) to keep the rent nice and low.
When people say the Dutch tend towards bureaucracy, they aren't kidding. There were two forms to fill out/sign, which E took care of. Typically, proof of ending a previous lease is needed, but since I own my house, I had to send my mortgage info and a letter explaining I was in the process of selling. They also needed a passport scan and proof of employment. But it's all done and dealt with, so that's pretty awesome.
It's going to be weird adjusting to having so much less space. R and I could probably go an entire weekend without seeing each other and without leaving our house, if we tried. I'm actually kind of excited about it, because our house here seems so empty without furniture, and we simply hadn't filled it up yet because life got expensive. My car was totaled, we had wedding expenses, then the whole roof mess, then layoffs. And since I don't buy stuff I don't love, just to have it, and there's no IKEA (or similar cheap modern furniture) nearby, we just didn't have stuff. Which was fine, because just the two of us certainly don't need a ton of stuff. In fact, I'm finding that I prefer owning less, and doing more, if that makes sense. Why buy a dining room set for $1000 when I have a kitchen table already? I could instead use that money to take a weekend trip with R, or shop at the farmer's market and get delicious local produce instead of shopping at a chain store with flavourless tomatoes, or get season tickets at a theatre, or pay for half a cruise vacation. Or even put it towards R's master's degree (if he ever decides what degree to go back for) or to keep in savings as a comforting slush fund, just in case. I get so much more out of anything except the dining room table, and I'm grateful I bought this much-too-large house because otherwise I wouldn't have learned that. Looking at Dutch real estate, initially I was all panicky. How will I ever live in such a small space? Then I did some math, and really, R and I only actually use about 800 sq ft of space. We use either the living room or the basement, but certainly not the whole basement room, which is ginormous, the kitchen (but only the cooking side, not really the breakfast nook) and the master suite. Really, our bedroom could be 20 sq ft smaller and we wouldn't even notice. I've also found that while I thought for sure I'd need "my own space, to be alone" that that isn't the case at all. Even if we're doing totally separate things and not talking, I prefer that R and I are in the same room. This was true even when I was working, and not spending all day hanging out by myself. I married him because I enjoy his company, after all! So now I'm looking forward to having less space and less stuff. I'm also looking forward to the challenge of making a small space work in terms of furnishing and decor, although that won't be until we can find a house-ish living space.
Much as I love my little car, I am thrilled to be shifting to a car-free lifestyle. Which will only be possible because the new town is totally walkable and bikable. And while we may buy a car once R has a job there, the prevalence of public transport combined with high gas prices makes me think that's unlikely.
Even the dogs don't use the whole backyard, and would be perfectly fine with much less space. Especially since I'm moving somewhere that will be much more fun for walks. The path behind my house is lovely, but it gets boring to go in the same loop all the time. My new neighborhood/city will be much more walkable.
I will admit, however, that I will absolutely miss my glorious backyard, my trees, and the massive potential for oodles of flowers and vegetables. My apartment does have a patio, so I might try some small-space container gardening this summer.
When people say the Dutch tend towards bureaucracy, they aren't kidding. There were two forms to fill out/sign, which E took care of. Typically, proof of ending a previous lease is needed, but since I own my house, I had to send my mortgage info and a letter explaining I was in the process of selling. They also needed a passport scan and proof of employment. But it's all done and dealt with, so that's pretty awesome.
It's going to be weird adjusting to having so much less space. R and I could probably go an entire weekend without seeing each other and without leaving our house, if we tried. I'm actually kind of excited about it, because our house here seems so empty without furniture, and we simply hadn't filled it up yet because life got expensive. My car was totaled, we had wedding expenses, then the whole roof mess, then layoffs. And since I don't buy stuff I don't love, just to have it, and there's no IKEA (or similar cheap modern furniture) nearby, we just didn't have stuff. Which was fine, because just the two of us certainly don't need a ton of stuff. In fact, I'm finding that I prefer owning less, and doing more, if that makes sense. Why buy a dining room set for $1000 when I have a kitchen table already? I could instead use that money to take a weekend trip with R, or shop at the farmer's market and get delicious local produce instead of shopping at a chain store with flavourless tomatoes, or get season tickets at a theatre, or pay for half a cruise vacation. Or even put it towards R's master's degree (if he ever decides what degree to go back for) or to keep in savings as a comforting slush fund, just in case. I get so much more out of anything except the dining room table, and I'm grateful I bought this much-too-large house because otherwise I wouldn't have learned that. Looking at Dutch real estate, initially I was all panicky. How will I ever live in such a small space? Then I did some math, and really, R and I only actually use about 800 sq ft of space. We use either the living room or the basement, but certainly not the whole basement room, which is ginormous, the kitchen (but only the cooking side, not really the breakfast nook) and the master suite. Really, our bedroom could be 20 sq ft smaller and we wouldn't even notice. I've also found that while I thought for sure I'd need "my own space, to be alone" that that isn't the case at all. Even if we're doing totally separate things and not talking, I prefer that R and I are in the same room. This was true even when I was working, and not spending all day hanging out by myself. I married him because I enjoy his company, after all! So now I'm looking forward to having less space and less stuff. I'm also looking forward to the challenge of making a small space work in terms of furnishing and decor, although that won't be until we can find a house-ish living space.
Much as I love my little car, I am thrilled to be shifting to a car-free lifestyle. Which will only be possible because the new town is totally walkable and bikable. And while we may buy a car once R has a job there, the prevalence of public transport combined with high gas prices makes me think that's unlikely.
Even the dogs don't use the whole backyard, and would be perfectly fine with much less space. Especially since I'm moving somewhere that will be much more fun for walks. The path behind my house is lovely, but it gets boring to go in the same loop all the time. My new neighborhood/city will be much more walkable.
I will admit, however, that I will absolutely miss my glorious backyard, my trees, and the massive potential for oodles of flowers and vegetables. My apartment does have a patio, so I might try some small-space container gardening this summer.
10 January 2010
Who needs savings anyway?
Just because the visa paperwork chaos, trying to sell the house/car/furniture, and broken laptop power source weren't quite enough, we have no water to the house. There's no water coming in anywhere, at least, so there won't be another horrible sheetrock experience, but still. We waited all day (why yes, we were planning on doing dishes and laundry today) for the city water guy, who showed up at 9:18 PM. Twelve hours after we called, but who's counting? And it is Saturday. He took the meter apart, fussed around, threw fire in the ground, and determined that the city's end was working fine. Water is getting to the pipe that goes to our house, but not to our house. So hopefully tomorrow (Sunday! so probably not) but more likely Monday, we'll be summoning a plumber to figure out what's wrong, which will hopefully be cheap and fast to fix. Awesome.
Until the car sells, we don't really have a slush fund to cover major home repairs. And the car was supposed to be my moving slush fund, so that when I get to the Netherlands I can, for example, buy a bed. Not to mention that the plane tickets are going to be rather pricey, since I still don't have a visa and have 3 weeks until my theoretical work start date.
I might be a little frustrated.
Also, I feel really gross, and want to take a shower.
Until the car sells, we don't really have a slush fund to cover major home repairs. And the car was supposed to be my moving slush fund, so that when I get to the Netherlands I can, for example, buy a bed. Not to mention that the plane tickets are going to be rather pricey, since I still don't have a visa and have 3 weeks until my theoretical work start date.
I might be a little frustrated.
Also, I feel really gross, and want to take a shower.
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