cindy's world

Okay, I think we’re offically being jacked around by the short sale house’s bank. Our offer expired yesterday, so waiting till today was already pushing it. We STILL didn’t hear a peep from them today! So how do I know the bank didn’t deliberately drop its asking price $30K just to bait people into looking and starting a bidding war? And how long are we supposed to sit here until the bank decides to pick an offer? And what if the bank holds us out until we lose the other #1 house, and someone finally offers a lot more on this #2 house so we just get a phone call one day where the bank goes, “Sorry, we just got a better offer we’re going with instead of yours”? Then we’re assed out. We’re gonna have to figure out a deadline for holding on.

Speaking of the #1 house, it’s the exact opposite of the #2 house. Its agent called our agent today for a polite status check, asking where we stood on our #2 house. Our agent explained we’re still waiting. Our agent said the other agent could’ve threatened to take another offer if it comes along, could’ve said we’re jerking them around too long, but he didn’t. He just asked how our situation looked, that’s all.

*dipping cracker into Kahlua*
*drinking Kahlua straight from the bottle*

I was able to breathe normally for the past 3 days. Today, one of our trial attorneys said that her 12 year old daughter (who has asthma) had my same symptoms this weekend. Thinking it was an asthma attack, they got her into the emergency room. Turned out it was heat exhaustion. I guess that does explain things for me, too, since I had the breathing problems the Monday after returning from Vegas, when the weather in California was in the 100s all week. This weekend was good because I stayed with Mr. W and he had the air conditioning on the entire time. Today, I didn’t even leave at lunch to go to the gym.

The #2 reason I didn’t go gymming today (#1 being the usual and omnipotent “I don’t feel like it”) was because I was feeling edgy about our housing offer. We were supposed to hear about our #2 house offer today from the bank, and also to get back to the #1 house people who countered our 1st offer by accepting our original price. The #1 house people know not to put themselves on hold for us, so there’s a chance that when their counter offer expired yesterday and if we don’t get the #2 house, someone else could snatch the #1 house away from us and we’re back in square 1. (What analogy is that, anyway? Hopscotch?) Our realtor doesn’t think we’re at high risk for #1 being snatched away, tho, cuz they’re still listed on MLS as their original slightly elevated price. He did call at the end of lunch with an update on #2. There is 1 other offer in aside from ours. However, that is a weaker offer because they offered $449K instead of our $450 (why wouldn’t you put in the extra $1K to make it an even number?), and they’re only offering 10% down instead of our 20%. So our realtor thinks we’re looking pretty good. However, the bank is STILL considering and wants to get back to us either end of the day today or tomorrow. I stayed at work till 6p just in case, waiting for the phone to ring, which it didn’t. Well, it wasn’t a total loss; I got the insane score of 320K+ in Bejeweled, beating the courthouse record of 126K points, so I made sure to email the record holder before I left to rub it in. I was stuck in that one last game of Bejeweled for so long, in fact, that when my judge poked his head in before he left, he didn’t say the usual, “Okay, see ya in the morning.” Instead, he said, “I’m gonna go out and see if I can find you some crack.”

Guess TOMORROW is the new d-day. *sigh*

Our realtor had made us an appointment for 10am this morning with the 2nd house we now have an offer on. The realtor (a close fishing buddy of my dad’s) picked up my dad and met Mr. W and me at the house. Since we were early, we walked thru the 1st house (vacant, so we can do that with our realtor’s lockbox access), my dad was okay with it altho he thought it was surprisingly small, and then went to the 2nd house. Both houses were better seeing it again than we’d remembered, but the 2nd one was still more impressive. I admired how each room was laid out at an angle so instead of rooms above or next to other rooms, these fanned out like wedges in an orange. The unique floorplan got my dad, and they noticed some new things this time around. The boiled water dispenser built into the large deep kitchen sinks, the redone 2nd fireplace in the family room, the mature peach, avocado and loquat trees in the back yard. When the four of us left that house, we stood outside by our cars and chatted for a bit, comparing the two houses. And then we watched an SUV drive up the cul de sac street slowly, with people staring out the windows. The SUV took a u-turn at the end of the street, then slowly parked in front of the 2nd house! “Uh-oh,” Mr. W said under his breath.
“I think this is not good,” our realtor said, making a face.
We only stayed long enough to watch two Asian women and an Asian man walk out of the car up to the house and ring the bell. Apparently the seller’s agent had updated the computers to reflect the new reduced price, so now this house was getting more attention. It’s way underpriced for the current neighborhood presently, and is so nice on the interior we can’t imagine someone not liking it right away.
Mr. W is, of course, perturbed. Through all our many errands this morning, he kept thinking about those visitors, how they’re older Asian people so they can probably afford a better down payment than us and would likely buy the house in cash anyway, how the house is good feng shui to Asian standards, and how he wishes we’d left and not seen those people drive by.
As for me, I like that 2nd house. It’d be really cool if we could get it. But I keep telling myself that I like the 1st house, too, and I’d also be happy in it, and I’d connected with it right away. Even today, the 1st house felt like home to me, more so than the 2nd house. Maybe it’s because it’s vacant whereas the 2nd house is still occupied and those people’s personal stuff are all over the house, so it feels like someone else’s house.
Speaking of connecting with the 1st house, our agent heard from that seller’s agent today. He’d called to ask for an update to their counter offer, since he hadn’t heard from us. Our agent explained that we’d put an offer on a short sale property a long time ago (only the timing was a lie) and that we’d just heard from them. He said that it was unexpected and that we’re waiting to see what the short sale’s response is, which we will likely hear by Monday. I guess the 1st house’s agent was understanding, altho understandably if he gets a better offer before we get back to them, we’re at risk for them taking that offer and losing ours. I guess Monday is d-day.

Remember how I was stuck between my original favorite house, and the 2nd house we visited after we put an offer down on the 1st house? Well, I think admittedly both me and Mr. W prefer the 2nd house, despite the 1st house having its definite advantages of the beautiful yard and full bed/bath downstairs. So we offered $560K for the 1st house, and they took it. Now that this house is $20K less than the 2nd house, after I told Mr. W the “good news” about them simply accepting our price offer without countering it, instead of being excited, he cussed. Cuz he was hoping they’d counter with something unreasonable that would justify our going to the 2nd house, which he prefers.

At his insistence, I called my realtor this afternoon to request that he check the status of the 2nd house. Does the bank on that short sale really mean it when it said that a full-price offer of $580K would be accepted and move it immediately into Escrow? I was hoping for a clearer sign that we’re meant to take the 1st house, like maybe the 2nd house is no longer available. Then we’d know that the sellers simply accepting our lowball bid is “the” sign.

Well, the 2nd house wasn’t taken off the market. Instead, at noon, the bank REDUCED their asking price from $580K to $555K! The 2nd house is now CHEAPER than the 1st house! Mr. W was floored. Since this is such recent developments, the online realty website doesn’t even reflect the price reduction yet. Our realtor called that seller’s agent, and was told that not only did the bank just approve the price drop today at noon, but if the buyers aren’t picky about wanting modifications done on the house or wanting the sellers to pitch in on closing costs, they were willing to let the house go down another $5K and yes, move immediately into Escrow. The 2nd house is now $550K, or $10K less than the 1st favorite house.

Our agent immediately typed up the offer for the 2nd house and faxed it to me at work. Mr. W came by my courtroom after work, we both initialed and signed off on the offer, and faxed it back to my agent, who sent it back to the selling agent. We’re excited, but I feel SO BAD for the owners of the 1st favorite house, whose beautiful house sits vacant and unwanted without offers, such that they were even good enough to take our lowball offer w/o countering on price, and now they’re gonna be left out in the cold again. They probably thought it was a sure thing because of how fast and definitively they accepted our offer, and were sighing and celebrating in relief. 🙁 Our agent said he’ll handle it with finesse. They’ll probably call him this weekend to ask what’s going on with their counter, and he’ll let them know that we had an offer pending on a short sale (which is true enough) which just suddenly came through.

I still feel soooooo bad. Anyone want a beautiful 3 bed, 3 bath house in Mission Viejo to be our neighbors for $560K?

You guys know Jericho, the blogger? Well, HE is the man to get to KNOW, because he has actual magical powers. Take my experience, for example…

* On my post dated 6-11-08, when I wrote about how Mr. W and I were in disagreement over his #1 house in Huntington Beach and my #1 house in Mission Viejo, and how we were gonna let fate decide between those two and a third compromise house, Jericho commented, “Here’s to getting your choice.” And you know what happened? The other two houses fell through and the only one poised to receive an offer was MY CHOICE. I’d gotten MY CHOICE.
* On my post dated 6-13-08, I wrote about my crappy Friday afternoon. Jericho commented, “Next up: a truly fabulous weekend.” Guess what happened that very weekend in Vegas! I had a “truly fabulous” time with Mr. W and his daughter at his niece’s wedding!
* On my post dated 6-17-08, I wrote about how we put a lowball offer down on the #1 house and submitted it to the sellers. Jericho commented “Congrats — now I hope it works out for you, at a decent price, to boot. I have been wanting to sell my former house since July ’07. I finally received an offer yesterday. In my excitement (and relief), I almost accepted without countering. Then I thought, ‘They’re expecting a counter, right?’ So I upped it by $4K, and now I wait.” I even responded to his comment with, “You only countered it with $4K? Man. That’d be a dream come true for me.” An hour ago, my realtor called me. The sellers countered. Remember that their asking price was $589,900. Our offer was $560,000. Their counter? They want our 45 day Escrow reduced to 35 days. THAT’S IT. *swooning and falling down* THIS must be the sign I was looking for! THIS is “the house”!!! Even my agent was shocked. He was expecting them to counter with a figure in the $470Ks. He said if we accept, all we need to do is sign the counter in his office and we have a house.

You guys are all finding out about this before Mr. W, cuz before I could tell him we got into a fight. I’d originally planned, when he called me back in response to my voice mail telling him we got a counter offer, to say all sullen, “Well. We got the counter offer back today. *sigh*”
I’d imagined he’d say, “Really? What’d they counter with?”
And I’d sigh again. “Well…”
And he’d say, “$585, huh? They would only drop it by $5 grand?”
And I’d say, “No. They wanted to change…the Escrow to 35 days!” And then there’d be a lot of excited and disbelieving laughter.

But that’s not going to happen now!

Today, we went to an appointment to view another similarly-sized property as my #1 choice, in the same neighborhood. And now we’re confused.

This new house is BEAUTIFUL. It’s a short sale, but we know that if we offer what the bank wants as its bottom line ($10K less than the original asking price of my #1 house), then the offer will be accepted and we go immediately into Escrow. There is nothing to be done with this house. It’s perfect and very upgraded. The few things that are original are in excellent condition. So here’s what I like about this house more than the #1 house.
* has a separate living room, dining room, and family room. (#1 house has no family room)
* more modern stylistically.
* has a nice deep carpet in the family and living rooms.
* marble tiling in foyer, dining room and kitchen done very well. (#1 house has large travertine tiles throughout)

Here’s what I like about the #1 house more than this house.
* backyard landscaping is nicer.
* 2 master bedrooms upstairs + 1 bed/bath downstairs makes for bigger bedrooms and more privacy for guests staying on the main floor. (This new house has all 3 bedrooms upstairs, and it’s a nice-size master but the other 2 are small.)
* indoor laundry. (new house has laundry in garage)
* significantly better view. (new house has high block walls in back yard)

We figured we’d let the gods of fate decide again. If the #1 house accepts our offer without countering, it would be $20K less than this new house, so it’s a better deal. We know the new house won’t budge from its asking price of $10K less than the #1 house’s asking price. Is that confusing? Okay, here are the specifics.
#1 house we put an offer on:
asking price – $589,900
our offer – $560,000
new house we saw today:
asking price – $580,000

I suppose I’d be fine with either one. But I really do like the many common rooms downstairs in the new house and the carpeting, and I really do like the 1 bedroom downstairs in the #1 house. What should I do?

Remember those 3 houses I wrote about earlier in the week? Mr. W and I were in disagreement over the houses so we thought we’d put offers on all 3 and let fate dictate our future residence. I spoke to our realtor yesterday after he spoke to the 3 selling agents and here’s the skinny.

1) Mr. W’s #1 pick, a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, upgraded 1962 single-story house in Huntington Beach: This is a short sale, and the bank is in an advanced stage of negotiation with a few offers already. They’ve already gone through counteroffers. The seller’s agent said if we really want, we can submit an offer, but our offer’s just gonna sit on the back burner and would only be looked at among the other backup offers if the current offers submitted to the bank are all rejected or all fall through.
3) Mr. W’s #2 pick and my #3 pick, a 3 bedroom, 3 bath, 1985 Cape Cod house in Mission Viejo with a remodeled floorplan: This is also a short sale, with 8 (!) offers already submitted. The bank is working closely with the top 2, and awaiting a second appraisal to come through before the bank decides whether it wants to accept either of the top 2. If we submit an offer now, we’d again just be among the mass of “backup offers.” Plus, who knows how long the bank is gonna drag this on, seems like they’re debating the value of the house. The oldest offer was submitted 5 months ago.
2) My #1 pick, a 3 bedroom, 3 bath, 1986 upgraded 2-story house in Mission Viejo with a beautifully landscaped back yard perfect for co-ed wedding shower barbecue parties overlooking a hilly drop-off into the city: Contrary to what we’d thought, this is NOT a short sale (so no waiting game at the mercy of the bank), they have currently NO offers, so the price is negotiable.
*running around the room cheering*

Mr. W is pissed off about his Huntington Beach house but after some time spent ranting and refusing to let go of the HB house while trying to kick mine off the table, he eventually conceded to our original deal. Fate is pointing. With giant neon signs. While covering up all other options with heavy curtains. It was scary for awhile there as I watched him and thought I saw Hillary Clinton’s image superimposed over him, but it’s all good now.

So today after work, we went to my realtor’s office and signed the offer. We lowballed it by $30K, but we expect a counter. Tomorrow evening we’ll take a peek at one of this house’s neighbors, another short sale that appears to be in excellent condition with similar size/price, just to make a comparison study.

Because life is fair, and karma sees to the balance of experience in the universe, today was an incredible crap-ass day.

My judge is off for the rest of the week starting today, so I expected my work to be very light. I didn’t think I’d have to float anywhere or cover other courtrooms, since half the courthouse was also dark, so we had more clerks than judges available. Mr. W suggested we both take the afternoon off to go real estate hunting with our realtor, which was a great idea. We finally get to look “for real” now, since his financing came through last week. But this morning, not only was I reassigned to a busy criminal calendar courtroom, but I was reassigned to a busy criminal calendar courtroom that had the calendar from hell. Despite my explaining my desire to have the afternoon off to my supervisors, they still refused to move any other floaters around to help me out. We finally compromised by my promising to work through lunch, leave in the afternoon after making sure the courtroom was covered in case anything came up, and coming back in the evening after my appointments and working as late as it took to finish my work before leaving for the night. The morning’s workload was so famously horrid that another bailiff came by, saw me, and asked, “What happened? You drew the short straw this morning?”
“No,” I clarified, “The short straw was forcibly jammed up my ass this morning. I didn’t draw it.” I’d never used the f-word so much at work before. The bright spot was that another judge-less coworker floating next door helped me do 2 cases that got delayed into the afternoon, so that I could take off at 1:30p.

We looked at 1 house in Brea (eh…), 6-7 houses in Mission Viejo (my city of choice), and 1 house in Huntington Beach. Mr. W was already in love with the Huntington Beach house from seeing it online and despite my beef with a house that’s 14 years older than me, only 1 story, under 1700 square feet, and in an old neighborhood, Mr. W would not let me veto the property. We got into bickers about this house and he’d said multiple times that he was going to forego it since I apparently hated it so much, but the next day it was always back on the table as if we’d never had the discussion. After visiting the house itself, I had to admit that it was fully upgraded and done so impressively, and the neighborhood, although old, is not as slummy as previously viewed Huntington Beach neighborhoods that had scared me to the point I knew I’d be afraid to go to the mailbox by myself. But I still preferred the newer, bigger, more modern homes and floorplans.

So we decided to leave it to the hands of fate. We would put an offer down on his #1 choice, the Huntington Beach house, on my #1 choice, a Mission Viejo house, and a third offer down on another Mission Viejo house that was his #2 and my #3 choice. I love my #1 Mission Viejo house. I loved it the instant I walked in. I love the outside, the inside, the light and bright floorplan and the cute manicured backyard with a dropoff view (no residences behind us). Plus, it’s 24 years newer than the Huntington Beach house and $10K less on asking price. It’s 2 stories, has a full bed/bath downstairs, and both upstairs bedrooms are master suites. How can you go wrong?!

Our appointments went on till past 6pm, and I was weak and unenthused by the end of the trip because I had consumed zero calories the whole day. The morning at work was so insane that I never ate a solid molecule of food, never drank a liquid molecule of beverage, and never went to the bathroom. My first bite of food didn’t happen till Mr. W bought me a chicken chipotle wrap after we got back to work. I got my food to go, went upstairs back to the courtroom, ate real quick, and went right back to entering and processing the morning’s criminal cases. I left work a little past 8p.

I popped into my coworker’s house to check on her cats but she’d beaten me there after driving back from Vegas, so I just gave her her housekeys back and handed her a wedding invitation. Then I came home and highlighted my hair. I got a scare initially since the highlighting foam stripped my hair color so dramatically that instead of leaving it on for the recommended 10-30 minutes, I panicked at 5 minutes and washed it out. The instructions said that the color of hair after taking the highlighting solution out isn’t the final color, and that the final color would be shampooed in later, but I didn’t trust it. I ended up stripey, but it did come out much better than it’d originally looked. I think I washed it out too early; only the top of my head took. But that was okay, since the bottom half of my hair still had the lighter coloring in it, so what I did (inadvertently) was blend the top to the bottom. Oh well, you can’t win ’em all.

Based on today, tomorrow should be great.

I had 4 tasks today.

1.) Call my HELOC people and demand why I was told I could lock my interest rate twice for free but everytime I call, I’m either told I can’t lock it, or am given the runaround. I left messages with two employees of my bank and the one who’s new to me called back. He explained fixed rates vs. variable rates locks to me, and it’s all clear now. I’m happy with the information I received. Turned out the way the first guy explained it to me was misleading and I’d misunderstood the “rules.”

2.) Call the wedding catering company and demand why I was charged 18% as “service charge,” which I took as tip, and then was taxed the standard tax rate over the service charge, cuz last I checked it’s illegal to tax me on a service tip. The food coordinator explained that the service charge is taxable, because it’s actually a fee used to pay the worker’s wages, and not a tip. Darn.

3.) Call the bridal gown store and demand why I was charged so much for the gown alterations. I spoke to someone in the alterations department who was not there the day I did the alterations, and told her I had questions on my alterations order. She nicely got my ticket and answered each of my questions and concerns. She said my alterations lady marked “take in zipper” in error when it should’ve been “take in or let out sides”, but that it wouldn’t create a misunderstanding with the seamstresses because the point of alterations were clearly pinned and they could tell the zipper was not to be touched. $95 is the “standard fee” for this on bridal gowns, she explained, and especially because my bodice has pleating/ruching. So okay, fine. If it’s standard I’m okay with it, altho my opinion is still that it’s high. What about the hemming that they charged me $150 for? I told her my dress has no lace on the bottom, no multiple layers, no embroidery or beadwork that has to be redone. “I’m gonna have to talk to my manager about this charge,” the lady said, and put me on hold. She returned within minutes and said, “This is a mistake, the charge is supposed to be $120. Maybe she didn’t know. I’m going to write on this that you get $30 credit. When you come back to pick up the dress, make sure to tell them about your credit.” I knew that the register automatically printed out $120 and they had to add a separate transaction of $30 for a reason. And I knew that my alterations lady had written $120 and then got talked into changing it to $150. Scammers. So I asked whether the $30 credit would be paid to me in cash. She said no, it’s store credit. What am I going to do with store credit? I’ve purchased everything I was going to from that store! She said to talk to the front cashier when I got there and maybe they could do something, like credit my card since it’s already prepaid. Well, it’s better than nothing.

4.) Saved the best for last. I was to meet up with Mr. W’s daughter and go dress shopping with her since neither of us had anything to wear for Mr. W’s niece’s wedding this Saturday. Daughter finally decided last minute to come with us to Vegas to attend this event, so I invited her dress shopping with me. She met me at Mr. W’s house, we went to a new upscale shopping plaza where she not only scored a very pretty flirty sundress and belt on Mr. W’s dollar (he gave me $60 for her dress allowance, her total ended up with me pitching in another $2.50, so she did pretty good), but she scored a job interview at that store for tomorrow. Now that’s productive. I tried on a few things at various stores but couldn’t find anything that I thought looked good on me. We then gave up for the evening, I treated her to dinner at a place she recommended with good 1/2 pizza/salad/soup combos, and then we came back cuz she still had schoolwork to do. She came in, showed off her new dress to her dad, gave me a hug, offered to go back shopping with me anytime this week if I wanted to give dress hunting another shot, and was off.

#4 was my favorite task today.

Chinese tradition would have it that the bride change to a red qipao (“cheongsam” in Cantonese) for the dinner banquet of her wedding. Red is the Chinese celebration and luck color, and most wedding qipaos have gold accents or designs (sometimes sequins and embroidery) for prosperity. When the traditional fabric is used, the dress has no give whatsoever, so it has to be custom-made to fit. Just about every Chinese girl I know who got married has a red qipao sitting in her closet. It’s not exactly something you can pass on or share because of its precision-fit feature (hence the creation of many many many red qipaos), and it’s not exactly a versatile piece of clothing to wear over and over again because if you wear it to someone else’s wedding you’d look like you’re trying to steal the bride’s show, if you wear it out people think you just got married an hour earlier, and you sure can’t go to the gym or do much in it but look pretty. So what is a girl to do with her expensive custom-tailored bright red qipao after her wedding?

I’m tossing around the idea of throwing a semi-formal qipao-wearing party, perhaps coinciding wth Chinese New Year so red is the “it” color by tradition, and we can all wear our wedding dresses again. Of course people can wear any color qipao they’d like, and girls who don’t own a qipao can go out and buy one off the rack or get one made. And the theme/food will be Asian chic, not Asian fob. Orchids and lit lanterns, candles and lotus flowers floating in a pool, red envelopes at each place setting for fun, decorative chopsticks for the girls’ updo.

Am I crazy?