2021.12.13 Broken Ribs and New House
Amy and I now reside in our collaborative home, using the combined power of our mortgage budgets to leverage things that we want:
- 3+ bedrooms
- 2+ bathrooms
- great kitchen
- modern amenities for the furnace, AC, plumbing, and wiring
- located in Portland proper (biking distance to work/friends, walking distance to park/pub)
- garage
It all sounds fine and good, but it was actually annoyingly stressful in the closing stages. The plan, as conceived by circumstance, was that we would close on selling Amy's house on November 19th (having sold my condo a couple months previously), and use the largish equity from her sale to be a downpayment for the new place on the 22nd. Stretching out that weekend of theoretical homelessness was that the sellers of our new house asked for an extra week of occupancy, so we rented a place to stay for 11 days until the 29th. Rounding out the machinations was packing up Amy's house for collection on the 28th by a moving/storage company, to have it all dropped off at the new house first thing on the 30th.
You can guess where this is all going, right?
Well, no. Not like that at first. Because the sellers ammended, last-minute, that they did not actually need the extra week of residency after all, and they would be fine with us taking possession on the closing day. Before we tried to claw back some of the 2-kilobucks shelled out for the rental place, we checked with the moving company about when they might be able to deliver Amy's stuff - and it turned out that they had no earlier openings, and the original date was what we were stuck with. So be it, no big deal.
But then the obvious thing happened. The lender for the buyers of Amy's place had a bureaucratic hiccup - Bank of America "forgot" to send out the "closing disclosure". Apparently that takes three days to process, because of course it does. Except, of course, the 19th was a Friday, and all the bankers piss off early on Fridays. So it had to be sent out the following Monday - our presumptive closing date for the new place. But, you know: three days. Except, oopsie, that three days doesn't include the day they send it out, and Thursday and Friday of that week are holidays - so they can't count, obviously.
So, with scrambling, our arrayed realtors and lenders and title companies arranged for the ominous "double close" on Monday the 29th.
Luckily, we had the rental place and movers already set for that duration anyway. Good luck really. So, with a break in the weather, I went for a rare-these-days mountain bike ride up at Sandy Ridge. And managed a particularly silly and unexpected crash wherein I pancaked on my side onto a rock. Fractured or bruised three ribs at the impact site, and one rib with a pair of bending/greenstick fractures. And a mess of pulled muscles, scrapes, and bruises. Just in time to start moving and unpacking. Yeah, I'm a genius. And, yes, I got teased from many vectors about it being an intentionally lazy event.
So the day of the double-close comes, and we putter around trying to be patient while getting dribbles of reassuring information from our realtor (and friend, Brad Wulf). At some point during the process, we learn that there is a deadline for fund transfers of this type - 17:00 EST, which is only 14:00 here. And that comes and goes faster than we liked, so we're parked outside of our presumptive new home quietly dreading the prospect of having to find a hotel then begging the moving company not to just dump all the stuff on the lawn in the morning because we don't have access to the house.
Fortunately everything did proceed as planned, and it all worked out.
Aside from the part where I spent the first night at our new house on an air mattress on the floor, writhing in occasional agony. But that's probably just karma.
We're still setting up the place, but we're getting close. The kids have already spent a week here, and they love it. Not that that is surprising, because they are great and resilient kids, and also Amy's little fan club who joyously want to do everything with her. Can't blame them.
I'll save future occasional blog posts to blather about ancillary house thoughts and plans.