When the personal becomes the political all the.....time

The post- before-last is why I finally broke down and started a politics specific blog. It occurred to me after hearing others mourn for the lost, possibly mythical, days of polite and gracious discourse that I knew at least one reason for the loss.

The polite rule for dinner parties and social gatherings was "never talk about politics or religion" and if in doubt speak of the weather or perhaps the other persons health. Well, what do you do when weather is now a religion and health is politics? In fact politics has invaded, or perhaps infected would be more accurate, every part of day to day life.

This brings us back to the post in question. In it I had started to say that when governments ignore the natural laws bad things happen, but changed it to people so as to try to avoid the political. The latter statement is still true, it just avoids the actual point. Which was that a main reason my family was having trouble selling a house was that the market was soft in general. The market was soft not just from the bubble, there had been little actual increase in foreclosures in CO, but because members of the current administration just could NOT restrain themselves from thinking out loud about all the various ways they might fix it without ever making up their collective minds. Just as uncertainty causes volatility in stocks it does the same in any other market as well, and so what should have been straight-forward private enterprise took on political aspects.

I'm going to do my best to keep this blog at the dinner party level but now I have a venue where can at least express the frustrations growing out of a world where everything is political even when I'd rather it weren't.

Webcams

We now have webcams on both computers and it was easy. It only took a software engineer and a guy with two masters degrees a couple of hours to get it all running./sarc



Actually, they are pretty cool, we've talked to in-laws, BIL, and my sister and her husband this weekend and the in-laws got to see youngest child's new glasses. The seeing bit does seem nicer than just a phone chat for some reason, although it takes our heavy-duty gaming setup to smoothly update the camera.

Now we wait

The ranch we were looking at has a contract on it now. Someone who wanted it without needing the basement finished first is clearly a better choice for the seller.

We've decided to wait a bit and see what happens with the market. The trailer we're renting isn't bad, except for no overhead light in the kitchen, and current economic philosophy looks likely to cause a continued drop in prices.

Our CO house is scheduled to close Friday and at this point we're very glad we dropped the price and got it off our hands. Finances are bound by natural laws and when people ignore those laws things go badly. That being the case, we wonder if the house would have sold at all this year if we hadn't made it the steal it was. We definitely would have lost the quick sale bonus and the stress of an unsold house 1,000 miles away would have been at best unpleasant.

Wow

The owner of the ranch style house in the neighborhood we want to live in is willing to work with us to get the basement finished before we buy. This is important because if Beloveds company moves us again they will only reimburse us for loss on purchase price, not any improvements made after. This bit us with our last house as the thousands of dollars we had put into improvements were completely ignored in the loss protection. Thur the available house is of value to us at a higher price if the basement is finished and apparently the owner, a realtor who took the house in trade as part of another deal, wants to get rid of it badly enough to make it worth his while as well. It would certainly be nice if we can come to an agreement. We'll know more once the owner gets bids on the work we need.

Looking further

The first time Beloved and I put an offer on a house in Windsor we were turned down. We went on to purchase the house we lived in for the five years before we moved here. We also went on to thank God literally every day that we had been turned down because that house was about 100 yards away from what had been a fairly quiet rail-line but within a short time of our moving to Windsor it picked up activity a lot. If we had purchased that house there would have been trains going by several times a day and frequently at night as well.

In a lot of ways we feel the same way about being turned down for the property we offered on. It has caused us to evaluate our needs and consider exactly what counts as meeting them. There is a ranch-style house across the street from the plot we offered on that looks promising.

Interestingly there is another house for sale in a different subdivision that was clearly built on the same floor plan. Unfortunately for the family selling that house, they're asking for more than the newer version in the neighborhood with a pool and park. We feel sort of bad for them, and a lot of sympathy as well since that's pretty much the situation we were in until we gave up and decided to lower the price. As much sympathy as we may feel, we're naturally much more interested in the cheaper, newer, version with more amenities. Particularly since that one would actually meet our needs better than the one we were going to have built. And if we hadn't been turned down for the land we would never have looked at the ranch.

Aaaand...we have not come to an agreement

The builder's agent says the builder told her that he would be building at less than cost if he took our offer. When we removed a couple of things and added a little cash he still didn't like it. Beloved was annoyed when it sounded like they were asking for more cash and more items removed and told the agent that having done builder's tax returns he wasn't convinced it was as close to the bone as all that. And that's where things are at the moment since Beloved was driving when the agent called and used that as the reason he couldn't talk further. That was probably wise since driving while talking on the phone and being really annoyed doesn't seem very safe.

One of the strangest things about our time here so far has been that when Beloved gets annoyed the situation abruptly changes in our favor. He has been trying very hard to express his displeasure in reasonable words and tones, and usually succeeds, but somehow people seem to be much more willing to work with him afterwards when they were stonewalling before. The irony of the whole thing is that Beloved has always had a temper and has been learning to control it the entire time I've known him. All this sudden positive reinforcement is startling to both of us and worrisome to him.

I wonder if the take-away from this is that it is OK to let people see that you are displeased and have a temper as long as the temper is clearly leashed?

Making an Offer

Beloved and I have made an offer on a to-build home. The builder's agent is concerned it's low but says it's worth a try. We're asking the builder to come down about $35,000.00 with the options we've requested. Our real estate agent says she thinks he'll come back with a counter offer and then Beloved and I are going to have to pray about what to answer because until the house actually closes there's the possibility of getting stuck with two payments and the largest loan we could get would pretty much be what we have plus the offer we made. We're asking God for favor, but wisdom and guidance wouldn't hurt either.

House under contract

Not only is the house under contract but we have a back-up offer. It's amazing what a complete exterior/interior repaint and dropping the price $25,000.00 dollars does. Actually, with the loss protection offered by Beloveds company we still end up OK, they take the hit instead of us. The lower selling price also means that we don't have to worry about USDA recapture since there's absolutely no question of our having made a profit. The closing is for early September which also works out well for us as it means not having to make another house payment on an empty house.

The sermon last week was about being loosed from formerly good things that were now hindrances and both Beloved and I felt a strong re-assurance that the house was taken care of. Thus, neither of us are surprised that things are suddenly moving when not much had been happening for awhile.