You are currently browsing the archive for the Uncategorized category.
Inspired by the contest over at Problogger.net, I want to share some of my experience. I’ve been blogging for approximately 3 years now, here are a few things I learned -
1) Write what you know. Just starting up a blog to make money may work for some, but I know it wouldn’t work for me. Blogging is a pleasure, not a job. There are plenty of corporate blogs staffed by journeyman writers being paid to write about stuff they don’t know. You can recognize them on the spot - if you are like me you move on before you are halfway through the first paragraph.
2) Lower your expectations on ‘blog income’. I make a modest income from my blogs, enough to pay for things like trips or tickets to Red Sox games (go Sox!) but definitely not enough to quit my main line of work. Since I don’t depend on the day-to-day income to feed my family or put a roof over my head, I don’t get stressed about things like traffic and page ranking. I don’t want to be stressed about something I take pleasure from.
3) Become part of an on-line community. Blogging is an easy access hobby. If you have a computer and an internet connection, you’ve paid all of the access fees you have to pay. The technology is push-button stuff now, anyone can blog if they wish. On-line communities are not terribly different from real world relationships. Be courteous, apologize when your not, and make as many friends/connections as you are wired for. Being part of a community means linking into other people’s work, or at the very least mentioning their names now and again! Comment sections are a great way to keep a discussion running amongst dozens of people across multiple time zones and life schedules.
4) Make efforts to connect face-to-face with members of that community. Ok, not really a blogging tip, but it will actually keep your desire to blog alive. The blogscape is littered with blogs that were started with enthusiasm and then quickly abandoned. Non-virtual connections (I won’t say ‘real’ since despite the actual defination, virtual relations are real relationships) are important for keeping your interest. It is how we are wired - we want to interact with friends.
5) Blogging is writing. A lot of blogs run on bullet points and very short observations. For a few moments distraction, these do the job. The ones that keep my attention are the blogs that stick to writing standards that were taught to all of us or that the more talented (e.g. not me!) writers somehow draw upon naturally. Make no mistake - being a good writer is work for everyone. How do you get to blog about Carnegie Hall? Practice, man, practice.
Mom (Grandma) and Dad (Grandpa) Staley are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary this year, so all the kids and grandkids gathered in Venice, FL to help celebrate.
The Whole Clan
One More
Grandpa, Grandma and the two big grandkids
The littlest one puts in an appearance
The cake doesn’t quite make it into the picture, but it’s the best pic of Grandma and Grandpa!
Quality cousin together time on their Leapsters!
There haven’t been many entries here for a good reason - we were moving through negotiation phases over the purchase of the house.
One thing about negotiations - information is king. There have been Nobel prizes (in Economics) awarded to mathematicians who showed that the side with the most information will get the better of the deal.
There is probably a good chance that the person we bought the house from has never seen this blog. But on the off chance that the seller is internet/blog-savvy, we decided to keep this site a little on the dim side as we passed through these particular phases of house buying.
Negotiations are effectively over - we close at the end of July and at that point it is our intention to open up to our faithful readers the information that we were privy to as well as explain some of our tactics during the process. Both of us spent time attending Stanford Business school lectures on negotiation tactics, and I think that we were effectively able to put into practice some of the things we learned there. In the end we were able to get a house that met all of our criteria in a competitive market (the Boston/Cambridge area) at a price that was slightly below its appraisal value. Not only that - we did it on our first try. A little bit of luck was involved, to be sure, but as the saying goes “chance favors the prepared mind”.
Here are some highlights:
-how we used deadline based tactics to exclude competing offers
-how we used middle-ground bargaining to get price reductions
-how we used partial mortgage deals to force complete competitive deals out of the Gordon Gecko “greed is good” driven mortgage sales market.
In the end, I really don’t think we could have done any better with the financial resources we had and the market that was available. I’d hesitate to use the word perfect, as there were a small bumps along the way (including a brief period where it seemed that a broken doorbell would derail our wheeling & dealing!) but in the end our market research paid off and our process obviously works. We will be moving into our new home in a few weeks and no longer will our monthly living expenses go into a landlord’s pocket.
Well, we didn’t get to do too much documenting on our search for a house near Boston. There were strings of Sundays of open house tours with really nothing special to report. I have a few stories of run ins with nasty realtors, but I’ll save those for another day.
We have found our can.
Because of a lease that we are currently locked into, we had decided that late May was the earliest we could consider making an offer on a house, taking into account ~60 days as an average closing time.
Our hunt just entered the serious phase - that is, late May was upon us.
After struggling with a string of mediocre realtors, we met Michelle from Coldwell Realtors at an open house, and she introduced us to her partner Caroline at an informal house buying tutorial last Thursday evening.
The following Sunday we did our usual trot out to a few open houses. We ended with a drive-by look at a property that was in a nice neighborhood but was a little above our price range.
On Tuesday morning Barb noticed that the price had dropped to within the upper end of our price range and set up a viewing after a quick email to me. Barb toured the house Tuesday afternoon with Caroline. Barb told me that it looked great and Caroline was gracious enough to give us a second tour that evening after I was finished with work.
We both realized that this was the best house we’d seen in 4 months of open house Sundays. I’d call it a Goldilocks fit - some houses we’d looked at were a little on the big side, most were a little on the small side, but this one was juuuust right.
The property was breathtaking - it is set into the side of hill but is easily accessible. The neighborhood was quiet - that is to say it was not near busy Route 2 like most of the other single family homes that fell within our price range.
And best of all, we were probably one of the first few people to be aware of this place. The price drop had placed it into the target range of a lot of other people, so we knew we had to move fast. There was a couple looking at the place with their realtor when we made our second evening tour of the house.
After sleeping on it Tuesday (Barb actually didn’t do much sleeping), we made an offer Wednesday morning.
The seller was out of town, but managed to reply an hour before the 8pm deadline, rejecting both our lowered price and the timeline we had set out for the purchase.
We had been prepared to pay the asking price but thought it worth the try to shave a little bit off, especially when we learned that there had not yet been any other offers.
We countered with an increase to the reduced price that had originally caught our eyes but held firm to our timeline.
Later that evening the buyer accepted our offer and we were in the Coldwell office signing papers on our very first home.
So a recap:
Sunday - drive by. Nice place, too expensive. Sigh.
Tuesday - see lowered price and take two tours.
Wednesday - the place is ‘under agreement’, which is to say that we have agreed to buy (pending inspection, financing, and final negotiations) and the seller has agreed to sell (pending the same stuff).
4 days of intense work after 4 months of relaxed searching and we are firmly on our way to moving in to our very first home.
We have the inspection this Saturday morning. I’m working to combine our various little piles of money into one big pile which will shortly be handed over to the current owner.
Mortgage shopping will be a headache, but I’m sure well worth it since we are borrowing a good chunk of money to pay for this place. If anyone reading this has insights on how best to set up a mortgage, please leave a comment here or get in touch with us.
Pictures to follow (a change on the server I’m using has blocked my normal route of picture publishing!).
Word of mouth on the Arlington single family home market is that there are currently more buyers than homes. Judging from the crowds at the open houses we went to today I’d say that the buyer’s market probably is breaking up. Perhaps things will change as more homes come on the market with the approach of spring/summer.
We went to two places today. I liked the first way better than the second - I hope we will be able to find more places like it when purchase time draws near. A word on that - it looks like we will have about 3-4 months of low key looking and then two months of prime time purchase searching (June/July). If we were to find a place like (1) still available in May, I think I’d jump on it with an offer.
We also took a drive to an area that I’ll call abandoned hospital hill’. I’d mentioned this area a few posts ago. It isn’t nearly so bad when you see it in person - the abandoned hospital is largely screened from most views in the area. The neighbor hood is really nice and reminds of some of the money looking places we checked out in areas like Newton & Lexington. There are some awesome views of Boston from this area and a lot of single family homes. We might be able to score a house in the area if we are lucky, but it would be at the upper end of our purchase range.
Anyway - on to the houses we saw today.
1) 36 Park Ave Ext.
We both loved this place. If we were in a position to buy I would be putting offers in on this! Wonderful layout, great woodwork, and a nice lot (that included a pretty damn cool playhouse w/ slide!). The basement was a little ratty, but definitely not the worst I’ve ever seen. The neighborhood and school district were both acceptable. Park Ave can be busy but the extension region isn’t that bad.
2) 82 Sunset
This is a house that I’d say is ‘ok’. I could settle for it in a pinch, but it would not be my first choice. The home is essentially a single floor setup with a converted attic that would work for a combination child’s room/play area. My guess is that it gets pretty damn hot up there in the summer. I didn’t like the color too much, whereas Barb said she did. Siding color is a minor thing, but on a marginal choice like this it certainly helps tip it towards the negative side for me.
We checked out three open houses this weekend:
10 Lennon Rd
-the house was in need of some serious overhaul. Knock $100K off the price and I would consider it more closely
5 Ernest Rd
-nice house, close to a decent school, but terrible neighborhood. Here is the ratty looking aparment complex directly across the street
And the graffitti covered corner store about two streets away.
Houses in this area are blacklisted from future trips!
And finally, a house that restored my confidence that we will be able to find a nice place -
36 Valentine
Nice layout, great neighborhood and a clean, modern interior. There was a great playroom area near the kitchen that led out to a very cool balcony. Yard space was small, but the balcony space definitely compensated. The basement was adequate, although the furnace looked like it didn’t have many years left. A door led directly from the basement into the garage. After chipping ice off of our currently ungaraged Volvo, we’ve decided that having a place to protect our car from the elements is high priority here in New England.
Hi!
This is our family blog documenting our search for a home in the Boston area. Come back to http://delabarre.us for regular updates.
In the meanwhile, if you have come here looking for some photos of the DeLaBarre family in action, head on over to our photo album.
Copyright
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Recent Comments