… So if David and I moved to Winston-Salem, would y’all ever come to visit?

We’ve been looking at houses there. There’s so much more of the types of neighborhoods we like there, and it’s all so much cheaper. Plus the decay and oldness of the place satisfies our ever-so-gothy aesthetic affectations… Plus it’s much closer to David’s folks, who are needing their baby nearby more and more lately.

… It’s by no means a sure thing, but I would regret the idea of all the new friends I made in Charlotte and having to do it over again…

…Please share with me your first-time-home-buyer stories.

As many of you know, David and I are shopping for a home. We are looking to move this summer. I’m so totally clueless and I want to hear something from people other than industry peeps and my parents on what the best ‘order of operations’ might be.

I’d be especially giddy if any unmarried couples (homo and otherwise) who are sharing ownership of a house have some pointers for us from a legal/tax perspective…

More houseunt blather - feel free to move along if you’re sick of it…

Just got a call from the preapproval lady.

Wow. Our credit health is better than we thought.

They’ll probably try to make us look at like 500k houses and junk, even though I know we can only afford around 150k.

Now to find that 1962 mod split-level with rust shag carpet and orange mosaic bath tiles…

This weekend we made our first visit to one of the ‘new construction communities’ of Charlotte. Blah. Alas, I remember back when my parents did the same thing in the mid-80s and it was actually pleasant and promising.

The hot real estate market has made people shelve the idea of owning a home in favor of owning Real Estate. People no longer want a home of their own to live in, they want an investment to occupy or hold for a while before reselling.

This is overwhelmingly the reason for new neighborhoods all being fenceless, colorless, treeless demi-condo developments where living without a Home Owners Association is the worst of all blasphemies.

The proliferation of HOAs alone to me is proof that people are more concerned with the near-term investment potential of their property than with having a home to live in and make theirs. Rather than buying a home and having a sense of ownership and self-investment for it, they buy Real Estate and ensure that they can control the behavior and appearance of their neighbors to avoid damaging their investment.

I just don’t understand the point of these places. If you want a ‘low maintenance investment property’ you buy a condo. To me, the reason one buys a house, as opposed to a condo, is the ability to paint, landscape, and personalize the property. Ceding control of those privelages to a committee of your neighbors for any reason just baffles me - why bother with the burden of property at all in that case? It’s especially true these days when you pay a 100-200% monthly premium just to own (at least that’s the figure in most markets).

I look forward to the day the bubble bursts. Then maybe I’ll finally be able to find new construction like my parents landed in the 80s: landscape your own friggin’ yard, paint your house green and purple, park your hearse on the grass, and by all means, spend a couple decades there…

We made an offer on a place in Winston-Salem yesterday evening. We’ll know by tomorrow morning whether we got it.

It’s on the higher end of what we wanted, but it’s friggin’ huge: 2100 immaculate sqft on the main level and an unfinished full basement that would make the coolest dungeon on earth one day. Not to mention that it’s in a nice neighborhood that we really like and has a 2-car garage, a nice small, low-maintenance yard on a corner lot, and would require absolutely no work before we could move in.

…Fingers crossed…

Geez, getting a house is a lot of work. We write our closing check today, after which we’ll be so incredibly broke. Thank gawd for that King of the Hill episode - maybe I’ll spend some time panhandling while I’m in SF next week - everyone else is doing it, and I’ll probably make more money than actual work…

Yeah, so that’s all I’ve got. Sorry a 2-week absence couldn’t produce anything more worth reading…

Or something like that…

We signed about 300 different papers and got a big comfy king-sized bed delivered, then spent our first night in the big empty house.

Now I’m off to San Francisco again in 12 hours. Hopefully I’ll have some time on my hands for catching up on journals then. When I return to NC on 6/12, it’ll be a mad rush to finish painting, moving, setting up the new office, etc before I have to leave again. It’s gonna be another busy month. Geesh.

I land in Charlotte tomorrow night. Sunday morning we move into our house in Winston-Salem. It’s going to be a long weekend.

Anyone feel like being used for cheap labor? I’ll feed you and house you overnight and give you a ride home, even.

So yesterday we had a family housewarming get-together with all the in-laws from Greensboro. Now we know what it’s like to have about 30 people in the house all at once, and how well the A/C deals with that many bodies whilst also protecting us from the 95-degree heat outside.

Conclusion: the basement “game room” and screened porch is the place to hold gatherings in the future. The house is really big, but no upstairs rooms are singularly large enough to hold such a huge family as that which I’ve joined into. Especially considering that this wasn’t even the whole family - Xmas at hubby’s parents’ place last year had about 35 people, and some were even missing from there.

Still, I like our house. I also like presents. I hate people (esp in quantity), but I’ll tolerate them for an afternoon when they bring gifts and Ooo and Ahh about my house.

This is a great tool which seems to get to the heart of what I journaled about a while back: how well does your ‘hood walk?

 The results? What I expected. My neighborhood in SF got an 85 (out of 100) and my neighborhood in Winston got a 48. I’m actually surprised my neighborhood in WS got so high a score. But then, I never much planned to be able to walk farther than my yard - thus my desire to grow ever more abundant foodstuffs on my property…