The Hyphen editorial retreat is this weekend at my house. Aside from family and a few friends, it's the first public showing of our place since we moved in last August. Since summer we've been busy removing wallpaper, ugly wood paneling, acoustic ceiling, repainting the ceiling and walls, installing mirrored closet doors, vinyl windows, baseboards. We also got rid of the original '70s era master bathroom and had a guy come in and install sweet tile, a custom vanity, brand new fixtures and canned lights. We got a lot of help from my folks (who live down the street) as well as some good contractors. We're finally at a place where we can go, phew! Let's have some people over!
Housing seems like a pie in the sky thing in the overpriced Yay but my wife and I did it. We bought in 1999 when the market was just as crazy and her income was the only income we could claim (I was freelancing and we don’t make much). We scraped up enough down payment, found a loan company crazy enough to lend us money, and got into a 3bd/2ba for 312K, bidding over by a good chunk. I remember calling our realtor guy from the gym the day he presented the bid and learning we got the house. I walked into the living room and exclaimed "We're outta here!" and Betty and I jumped around in exhiliration. Then reality hit: Oh shit. Now what? Our $800 rent was going to triple to a $2400 mortgage. Yikes!
After a few re-fi’s, we turned around and sold it in 2004, leveraging our appreciation to get a better house with a little chunk of change left over for improvements and upgrades. I remember the day we listed it. In the morning, I put out a little decorative plate on the kitchen table for realtors to place their cards in when they showed the house. When I came home that night, there were no cards in the dish; over 30 were scattered all over the kitchen table. On the first day. We got calls every morning and evening for a week. It was insane.
The week went by and while driving over to our realtors to weigh the offers, I heard a KGO news report on the housing market. "Some sellers are getting over 40 offers." He could have been talking about us; we had 42 offers. So long story short, we enjoyed our short period as real estate barons before having to look, beg and plead. Yeah we saw some beauties and some dogs. We settled on this place, got screwed sure, but we're in a great neighborhood, on the block I grew up on, down the street from my folks, with a nice pool. We’re getting into the fun part of home improvement: the window treatments, furniture, artwork. Too bad it's winter and we can't have people over to swim.
I read today in the paper that the median price of a house in Santa Clara Valley is $600K. It sounds absolutely ridiculous but that’s what we thought back in 1999. And if we can do it—me in journalism and her in community college career development—anybody can.
Posted by claire at November 19, 2004 11:24 AM
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