T Minus Two

Two days until close. We're pretty well on track with most of the stuff we have control over. I'm still skittish about the circumstances with the porch and getting that permit, but I just don't think we're going to have the time and resources to bring that situation to 100% certainty before Friday. Additionally it's starting to look like the roof integration is going to be such a problem that we won't be able to build it as large as we wanted to anyway. We have 48 hours to figure out what we can, and neither one of us has time to do it.

Even though Liane gets out of school at 3:15 (officially) she is so consumed with so many things to do she almost never leaves before 4:00, and even then she drags home a pile of work to do. Perhaps the idiots I see on the TV yammering on about how few hours teachers work would like to come over and help grade papers. That would be rhetoric reserved for another blog, but we must remember that the major point of this move, the big reason we are spending all this money to move further away from town into an (only) incrementally better house is to cut down her long drive time to work, which is especially daunting at 6:00 AM on winter mornings with snow and ice covered roads.

Rant over.

The Complete Transaction

A transaction isn't complete until the customer says it is.

A few weeks ago our mortgage lender sent us some paperwork to sign. About two weeks later I got a call asking if we were going to sign the papers in the package they sent. "What package?" I asked. And from there confusion reigned until the person in charge remembered personally giving the package to Liane. When I dug into in with her we finally figured out she had given me the contents of the package, but somewhere the fact that I needed to sign those forms and get them back got lost in translation.

No real damage was done in this case, but I told the lady that if I don't respond to something within a day or two she should assume something is wrong and follow up immediately. 

At work we deal all the time with customers who claim, "I did not receive my shipment." Usually we find someone else has it, or in some cases an industrious Fed-Ex driver manages to leave it hidden well enough that even the resident doesn't find it. Interesting to see it happen from the other side.

Signatures

Things are looking much better on the house front than they were a week ago. The seller managed to get signatures from everyone around the pond, which is the first step to getting approval for a building permit. I really had my doubts as to whether he would be able to pull it off, but it doesn't sound like it was that hard. Wow. Good neighbors I guess.

Now we have to finalize what we want to do and go actually get the permit. I feel we need to have this set in stone before we close to ensure there aren't any more snafus.

And I Wonder Why I Never Have Any Time...

So a friend of mine started seriously looking for a house last month. They made an offer and it was accepted last week.

By contrast, we've been at this for over two years now.

Almonds and Shingles

Almonds and Shingles. Sound like a strange combination? Apparently not at the Fort Wayne Home and Garden Show. We attended last weekend and saw an oddly eclectic combination of vendors, including people selling chocolate covered almonds, chiropractors, fitness centers, culinary training, footwear vendors, SPCA (Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), the zoo, martial arts, sausage vendors, religious institutions, jewelry vendors, bookstores, a bowling league, vitamin vendors, The Sexual Assault 5K Run (?), purse vendors, Northeast Indiana Bee Keepers Association, as well as all the insurance companies and things you'd expect to see at a home and garden show. And the funny thing is there wasn't just one of some of these odd ones. I think there were three almond vendors on the floor, on top of who knows how many selling some type of prepared junk food or homemade jewelry. There had to be four fitness centers there, etc.

It made for a very weird vibe. In spite of all those distractions, which really just made it harder for us to get around and see what we wanted to see, we did have a few productive conversations with people selling products that directly relate to remodeling (or building) a home.

Hope

There may be a resolution to the building line after all. The realtor has taken the ball and is running with it. We have a possible solution, which among other things involves getting the signatures of all the residents around the pond. Interestingly the current owner (who we had been led to believe was not in town) has taken the torch and committed to getting it done this weekend. Of course that's just one step, but it's arguably the hardest step. That has to be taken before the association and approved, then the building commission, and then I don't remember what after that. But it sounds like most of those remaining steps are formalities. We'll see. The pessimist in me thinks things like, "What are the chances that all of the neighbors will be in town and available this weekend, not to mention being willing to sign off on this?" People don't like to sign things.

I Dropped a Bomb on You

We met with our realtor last night to go over the marketing plan for selling our house (more on that later). I told him about the situation with the building line. He was totally and very visibly bummed, in part because I made it pretty clear this may well be a show stopper.

The situation has gotten a lot worse sounding since we first uncovered it. It turns out there is really no way around it other than to get a variance, which requires, among other things, the approval of the Neighborhood Association, which means it has to go before the neighbors themselves. We don't yet know the details of how this would be done, but any way you slice it I get the impression it could take a while. With our close date two weeks away this is turning out the be a major problem.

What we've been doing the past few days is trying to see what all of the scenarios are. Who really has to approve it, what is the best way (and best order) for getting all that done, how long will it really take, etc. Lots of questions that people don't have good, concrete answers for.

We have learned that the building commission was aware of the existing violation (the current deck is over the line), and it is documented. They believe, but aren't sure (I am not making this up) they contacted the owner some time ago, but they never heard any more about it and for whatever reason never followed up. Of course, now we've put it up on the radar screen again. One guy said that line is important for being able to get pond maintenance equipment in without disturbing the structure. He sounded like he could be someone who might fight it if we try to get a variance. Yikes!

Meanwhile we've gone back to the builder to see if he can work something up that will allow us to have a (smaller) screened porch without needing to go over this line. I am not a fan of this idea, but I think it's at least worth looking at to see if it could somehow be workable. We expect to hear back on that Friday.

So, it's really not looking good at the moment. I can't in good conscience close on this house knowing it is currently in violation of building code, with any doubts about being able to get the variance we'd require to move forward. All of that will take time to sort through.

Poor Chris (our realtor). He's going to dig in and see what he can do to help. And maybe he can, so there is some hope. He said we can ask for (and probably would get) one extension on the close date, but anything more than about three weeks wouldn't happen. That might buy us some time. I have my doubts if that would be enough. Because it's a short sale there's a relative lack of flexibility in what we can do, and communication is very difficult because of their bank's involvement (meaning they are very sloooooow).

This has really taken the wind out of our sails. We keep trying to pack and move forward with everything in case it does get worked out, but it's hard to keep skepticism from taking over.

Maybe the smaller plan will be acceptable. Maybe Chris can work some type of miracle. Maybe, as we continue to probe and talk to people we'll come up with some other angle.

Meanwhile we've started looking at listings again...

Being Environmentally Conscious is Hard

We need boxes for packing. Based on how frequently I see semi truck trailers parked behind local stores this should be an easy problem to solve. In the old days people would just drive to almost any grocery or department store and ask for their unneeded boxes. Usually you'd get some. Hit a different place the next day, etc. Sometimes you could get all you'd ever want from one place. It's a great benefit for them because they don't have to mess with breaking them down or otherwise disposing of them.

Nowadays when people move they go out and buy moving boxes. This borders on the insane to me. They're expensive, and when you're finished they end up in the same landfills as most discarded boxes. (Yeah, I know there is recycling now, but a lot of it still ends up in landfills.) In fairness these purchased boxes can be quite nice for moving. They are just the right size (heck, just having a uniform size makes the truck pack so much easier), and often have other cool features to make life easier. But even though we could get this done much more efficiently by purchasing them it goes against my sensibilities to waste like that.

So we've been trying to acquire boxes from some stores. Now I know why people just buy them. What a pain. We've spoken to four or five different stores now, a few of them on several occasions. Thus far we've  acquired about 10 boxes, most of which were virtually unusable -- they were fruit boxes that had no tops, and large gaps all over. They never seem to have any when we call so invariably it turns into something where they promise to hold some back out of the next shipment they get. Many of these places get one or two shipments per day. However, when we follow up we find that Manager A (who is working one shift) seems to have not communicated it to Manager B (working the other shift). And so we don't get boxes. Try back later, call at such-in-such time, ask for so-in-so, etc. Every imaginable thing, and it doesn't get done. The guy at the grocery where we got the fruit boxes was a hoot. He seemed to have no idea that moving boxes required lids. Liane wanted to ask, "Uh, have you ever MOVED before?" Alas it isn't worth burning more energy debating it.

Of all the things we're dealing with it blows my mind how much time and energy this one simple little thing has now cost us. Thankfully I have stored quite a few boxes in anticipation of our eventual move so it hasn't hit critical mass yet. If I find myself in the store buying boxes in a few days I sure will feel defeated.

Go!

The move has officially begun. Saturday we started packing things up in earnest. Our initial objective is to empty the current house of all items not wanted onsite for showings. Even though the new house is going to be a construction zone for a while we still want to get going on listing ours to hopefully attract some spring fever buyers. We may end up selling it before we're really ready to move, but will cross that bridge then if it happens.

In order to get things out of the house we rented a storage unit nearby. What a hassle that was. The last time I rented a storage unit was back in the band days. One of the bands I was in kept some of our staging gear in one for a while. I think it cost either $19 or $29 per month for a 10' x 20' unit. I showed up at the site and within 10 minutes had the unit rented. Things have changed...

We rented a 10' x 20' for well over $100 per month, which is what it is. What amazed me was the ordeal of getting it all going. After calling the number to set it all up we learned (toward the end of the call) that we were just talking to a national call center for the parent company, not the local owner/manger of the unit in question. So....they had to have the manager call us back to firm up the details. Both of these calls took WAY longer than seemed necessary and covered a lot more detail than we expected or were comfortable with. Nevertheless we pressed on and loaded up the SUV with stuff to take over there. When we arrived we learned that there was a pile of paperwork to do, including a contract that was eight pages long...for a 10 x 20 shed... (I swear I am not making this up). Then, the coup de grâce....they wanted fingerprints! Wow. I fought the urge to just walk out and say, "forget it." Again we pressed on. We were burning daylight and just wanted to get something we thought would take all of 10 minutes completed and checked off the list. Very weirdly unsettling experience. I realize they must deal with a variety of questionable types (the terrorists win again in making our lives worse), but the overriding vibe of circumspection on their part does not make the customer feel good. I can't imagine ever renting a unit there again.

Anyway...over the course of the weekend we made 10 or 12 trips. Sadly Liane's SUV is so small it's going to take a lot more trips to get it done, and that doesn't even count the furniture that has to go, which will have to be transported some other way.

In the midst of making these trips the realization hit me that, at the rate we are going, we'll probably have possession of the new house before the first showing of ours....thereby making the whole storage unit a nearly complete waste of time and energy.

Ahhh yes, moving is such fun...

Bureaucracy

The screened in porch/deck situation is proving to be much more difficult than it initially appeared. We're making this purchase in part based on the assumption that we'd turn the existing deck into a screened porch and then build a new deck next to or behind the existing one. Behind it there is just a few feet before you get to the pond, so I figured we might not be able to get permission to go that direction and would have to go beside it instead. But as it turns out getting permission to build the screened porch itself is in jeopardy.

Apparently the deck was built with no regard for the building line. The building line is the line you cannot build past on your property. The intent is generally to keep you from encroaching on your neighbors with structures. In our case the existing deck already crosses that line, but there is no neighbor there -- the line in question is between the house (or most of it) and the pond. I'm not sure how they got that deck built, but I assume the line was just ignored. In order to build the screened porch, which involves integrating the roof and foundation everything has to be on the up and up with full permits, etc. No way can we build it without getting that line moved.

So Liane has been going around and around with various entities to try to do that, and naturally each one attempts to pass the buck to the next one. No one wants to claim the authority to do it. Initially no one we talked to had any idea how to go about getting it done. Eventually though, if you're persistent enough you begin to learn how to ask the right people the right questions that eventually lead you in the direction you need to go. What a pain.

So we're working from the angle of, "There is already a structure over the line. We are buying the house and want to get the line corrected to correspond with what's there." We are not even getting in to turning it into a screened porch with them -- that would be too much information and could raise concerns we don't want to tackle just yet. We just want to get the line to be consistent with the structure that exists now. That will give us what we need to go for the porch.

Well, apparently this is no small feat. For starters it has to go to the engineer for the original developer, and of course he isn't available. The person who is available isn't sure whether it can be done.

So all of that is in limbo at the moment while someone researches what can be done. We're supposed to hear back by Wednesday. Heck, for all we know they may come back and tell us the deck has to go.

And if that happens....well....I haven't handed over the money yet so I assume there is still a way out of it, however painful that might be.

Oh boy...