We Love The Stars Too Fondly

The worst part of buying a house and being in escrow? Being forced to turn off the “Silence Unknown Callers” feature on my phone.

Remember?

I have inspectors, vendors, insurance agents, utility companies, etc all calling me and I really need to take those calls ASAP. So all calls are allowed through.

It sucks. About half of the calls are spam.

The other thing I’ve found is that these days, as soon as you say something witty and snappy that indicates that you’re fully aware that they’re lower-than-whale-shit spammers, they start insulting and swearing at YOU, and then they hang up before you can start insulting and swearing at THEM. How is that fair?

The chandelier in the entryway is nice – wait until I install the lasers!

Dare we even hope that we’ve solved the last two big issues that could have potentially held up our close of escrow next week? Dare we??!!

Maybe. Still more paperwork tomorrow, but it might be that we’ve slain a couple more dragons.

My biggest lesson from this experience (the first time that I’ve really bought a house – when we bought our Pomelo house back in 1992 or so we had been renting it and living there since late 1990 and we just worked with the realtor who had been managing it for the owner to do paperwork) is that you absolutely must have a really good, competent realtor or real estate agent who can guide you through the pitfalls (there WILL be pitfalls!) and having a great loan officer will be invaluable as well. Unless, of course, you have $800,000 cash to pay and don’t need a loan, in which case, why are you reading my drivel?

We have a fantastic realtor, a friend of The Long-Suffering Wife, and we literally could not be doing this without her.

Before we close we’ll have to double check the area between the palm tree there and the driveway – one of the issues we’ve been dealing with is the state of the septic tank and I think that’s where they’ve had to dig to inspect it. And no, that’s not grass next to the house and over by the front door, it’s turf. As hot and dry as it gets out here, keeping any amount of grass that green requires more (expensive) water than a small, third-world country uses. Only the golf courses and country clubs can afford that.

We’ll need to find someplace out here for a nice “sitting rock” or bench. Preferably in the shade.

We’re at about the halfway point (-ish!) of our escrow, trying to iron out a couple of questions that came up at the end of last week, but assuming that gets done (inspections, insurance, loan docs, etc) this upcoming week we’ll move into the final phases of getting the Seller’s remaining stuff out, crossing I’s, dotting T’s, stuffing our stuff into PODS and getting on the movers’ schedule, and trying to stay more-or-less sane in preparation for the actual escrow close and move next week.

And you’ve got a ringside seat to the madness!

Ceiling fans are almost mandatory in most homes out here, especially if you’re in the desert like we will be. Not just for the heat! Yes, in the summer there will be weeks at a time when the daily highs will be 100ºF or higher, but in the winter there will be weeks at a time when the daily highs will only be in the 30’s and 40’s, with occasional snow! Hesperia is surrounded by the San Gabriel Mountains and several of those peaks go up to over 12,000′ and have ski resorts.

No matter the weather, ceiling fans are a low-power, efficient way to keep the room air circulating and mixed and more comfortable. Our rental house of the last seven years has one ceiling fan in one bedroom – the Forever Home has them in all bedrooms, plus in the living room, kitchen, dining room… And they’re not the inexpensive (but functional!) ones from Home Depot or WalMart, some of them actually look fancy and interesting! Yet another nice little touch that separates the houses we’ve looked at from “Okay, I guess we could live here” to “WOW! We’re putting in an aggressive offer first thing on Monday morning!”

Sooooooooooo many boxes. Boxes everywhere.

Boxes filled with smaller boxes, which in turn go into bigger boxes, which then are placed in the PODS units out in the driveway and on the street. Which will then be taken 100 miles away, where we’ll reverse the process.

Physical media, baby! CDs, DVDs, VHS tapes, books, printouts, hard disks, floppy disks, backup tapes! And working drives/devices to read them! NEVER, EVER have your only and/or final copy of your data or information be on some cloud server hosted by an international megacorp!! (The question is not whether or not I’m paranoid. It’s whether or not I’m paranoid ENOUGH.)

Crisis averted? Maybe? Possibly? Probably?

We’ll know more on Monday, but things are most certainly more hopeful than they were yesterday, even if certain aspects are more confusing. We will get through this. Hopefully with our Dream Forever Home in eleven days.

Good, solid bones and lots and lots of insulation. We think of the desert as being 100º+F all the time, and during the day in the summer that’s true. But in the winter, it’s often barely above freezing, and even in the summer it will cool down rapidly after sunset.

Insulation is your friend!

And then we hit the speed bump at Mach 9. This has large amounts of suckage.

The next day or so will hopefully have a good resolution, but the Dream Forever Home failed a major inspection. This has the potential to be a true deal killer, but we’re trying to find a solution.

Two other far more minor questions seem to be getting resolution.

First, among other things that the agent’s junior assistant had wrong when we saw the property the first time, the second tree in the back yard is not giving us persimmons. These are apples. Google a picture of a persimmon – not even close. Come the end of September, we’re gonna have a bushel (or more) of apples and pears.

Secondly, we might be in Oak Hills instead of Hesperia. It’s sort of like how West Hills used to be part of Canoga Park, but neither is an actual city, they’re both actually part of Los Angeles. So while technically we’re in the city limits of Hesperia, where Oak Hills is an unincorporated area of San Berardino County next to Hesperia, most of the paperwork on the house says the zip code is 92344, which the Post Office says is Oak Hills, so who are we to argue with the US Postal Service? In the end, it doesn’t matter. Whatever gets escrow closed!

Up early, drive to Hesperia, spend all day at the new house for inspections. Termite inspections. (Clean, no problem.) Septic tank inspections. (Wait, we’ve got a septic tank? No problems yet, but the detailed inspection is tomorrow.) General inspection. (A gazillion things checked, a list of a couple dozen deferred maintenance issues to be dealt with, but nothing serious. And several interesting and wonderful things that I’m loving!)

Eleven days ago we spent 48 minutes there, less than an hour. Today we spent over five hours and got to poke into everything. DELIGHTFUL! We are extremely pleased.

One of the features that I absolutely love is an interior courtyard, open to the sky, with my future office on one side, the dining room next to that, the living room next to that, and the back of the garage on the fourth side. It’s about 10-12 feet square, with lots of small shrubs and bushes around the edges, so there’s plenty of room for us to put in some lawn or porch furniture. It will be toasty in the daytime during the summer, but in the evenings it will be lovely. And we’ve got a fake owl! And clouds! And the Sun!

All along every exposed upper surface in the courtyard are anti-bird spike strips, so apparently the current owner considers the presence of birds to be a problem to be solved – we’re more likely to take down the spike strips and put up feeders, so there’s a post-move-in DIY project that even *I* can tackle!

Pears.

Persimmons.

I love pears. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a persimmon. We’ll have to try them out.

Most of the green that you’ll see outside of the Forever Home is plastic, i.e. astroturf. That will be new and I’ll have to figure out how to keep it clean and maintained. I will be happy to save on irrigation costs – our water bills at our current house can be $600+ per month, and that’s mainly to water weeds and dirt after the drought of a three or four years ago killed almost everything.

The Forever Home has these two small fruit trees and some small shrubs and bushes – we’ll probably add more, as well as roses. If you’ve been with me on this site for any length of time, you know that I love the roses we have next to the driveway. We’ll need something similar at the Forever Home.

But no big lawns or putting greens or sod. The “drought resistant desert landscaping” of rocks, gravel, palm trees, and small shrubs only will work just fine, thanks!