The House

I avoided posting a lot online about the process of buying a house. For a few reasons: I didn’t want to spam people with stuff, I didn’t know if I would succeed, and I didn’t want to “jinx” the process any.

Right now is a tough time to buy a house in Silicon Valley. There are a lot of foreclosures, yes. About 50% of the houses on the market are foreclosures. Another 30% are short-sales. And the final 20% are “normal” sales.

That would usually be good news, but right now demand is out-stripping supplies. You have to move very fast and bid well to get a house. In some cases, houses are on the market a day or two before being put under contract.

In our case we broadened our search and horizons and had settled on a condo down at the south end of the bay. But our luck was not there. While we bid a good price, we were beat by a comparable cash offer. (Cash tends to win over bank-financed.)

Within a day or two, however, we spotted an old craftsman style house in a nice neighborhood and dove for a quick bid on it.

The letter

We crafted a nice letter to go along with the bid. This is something we did with our previous bid on the condo, as well. There is a human being on the other side of any deal we make, so we would include a letter introducing ourselves and stating why we liked the house, etc. It humanized our bid.

You might think, what good is a letter?

In the case of the older house we sent a letter stating that we wanted to fix it up and live in it. Both Sue and I like older property and the neighborhood felt like home and we said that. Sue and I are also a young(ish) couple and that appeals as well. We included a photo taken of us playing around at Yosemite after being married.

It turns out the house was being sold by the now fairly-elderly children of a man who had died at 103. This was the house that they grew up in as children. Several offers were submitted that were better than ours. One developer submitted a half-cash offer.

But they took our offer. Our bid was 8 grand less than the top offer. But it meant quite a lot to them to have the house occupied and cared for. Instead of some faceless developer, they have the good joy of seeing their home passed on. Never underestimate what a few written words can do.

They asked us to meet them halfway on that top bid and we did. I suppose you could say that letter was worth the $4k they came down from the top-bid price, but it is more than that. We got the house! By all rights we should not even have been in the running.

Banks and Privacy

I’m not going to talk much about the month between that moment of making the bid and getting the final loan documents done. It was an interesting experience, but I don’t think I want to talk online about banks and that process. I’d like to keep that private.

I’d also like to keep the address of my house private too. I want to talk here about the process of fixing it up and making it home, but I’m not comfortable posting all the details and my home address online at the same time. Some of you doubtlessly will know it sooner or later. I don’t mind that. I’m just not going to publicize it.

Anyway… more posted later. For now, I think this image pretty much sums up the wonderful moment that is buying your first house:

The keys to my house, from the day I finally owned it.