weill aspects

originally posted april 20, 2005

Day of the Dark Horse

Declaring Victory in Home Search 2005

On Tuesday, April 5, I was summoned out of a meeting at 1:00 PM by repeated calls to my cell phone. My real estate agent found a property while she was "on tour" with other agents viewing various houses for sale. She said that it was imperative that I see it. I went and saw it at 4:00 PM. At 7:30 PM the same day, I tendered an offer. At 10:00 PM, the offer was accepted. After arranging everything, I'm slated to close next Friday, April 29.

Blank Slate

Here it is. (The link came from my real estate agent; sorry to those of you not using Internet Explorer.) It's in Highland Park, a few miles north of Carnegie Mellon in a quiet residential area. There are a few small businesses and a couple of co-workers' houses within a half-mile of the place. Also of note: a large park (that would be Highland Park itself) and the Pittsburgh Zoo are within a couple of miles of my front door.

I call it "Blank Slate." It's a 1200-square-foot carriage house: basically the garage to an old mansion that has since been divided into three apartments that are sold as condominiums. The style is very similar to the loft that I currently call home. There are just two rooms: a lower level that serves as my living room, dining room, and utility room; and an upper level that serves as my bedroom, bathroom, laundry room, and Jacuzzi. Yes, a Jacuzzi: between the hot tub, the low-mounted mirrors in the bedroom, and the two speakers mounted up on the wall, I get the idea that this house was redecorated by someone who really intended that it be used as a bachelor pad. I can only hope to do just that.

The lower level is just wide open. It's a big tile floor about 18 feet square with a non-vented fireplace at one end and a small kitchen island at the other end. Everything is in pristine condition. The previous owner did some good work on the place, and there's only a few things I plan to do before I get settled in.

I'm now at the point where I'm simply planning the toys I want to put in the place. I have a scale model mocked up in OmniGraffle. The place just begs to have a big TV and a kickass stereo put in -- especially because it includes a security system for my own peace of mind.

The only downsides: no storage (not even a basement and very few closets) and no parking. The latter is particularly ironic given that I'll be living in a carriage house, but it's easy to find street parking in the neighborhood.

So It's Come To This

I started the home search in earnest at the start of this year. Once I had an idea of my price range and a good buyer's agent lined up, I started seeing properties once or twice a week for hours at a time. I ended up seeing at least 50 properties, some of which were just in awful shape. Some of the nicer places were snapped up before I could make an offer.

I had previously made an offer on another condo, but it was turned down and the sellers didn't want to negotiate. As time went by, winter abruptly turned into spring and the real estate market turned white-hot. Condos near universities are now being snapped up by future grad students, medical interns, and staff members. I saw this condo and was told that at least one other person was interested -- so much so that one of the agents actually brought her client along for the real estate tour. I immediately offered the full asking price, stipulating only that the seller throw in everything that wasn't bolted down such as the washer, dryer, and all other appliances. After three months of ups, downs, and frustration, I was sold in nine hours on one day.

A Relationship Built

So I was working through the entire process with an agent of Neighborhood Realty Services, an independent company that this particular agent founded to serve the Pittsburgh area. I chose this agent because she helped two of my (now-former) co-workers find their ideal homes.

At first I was uncertain about the idea of buying a home. I really like the fact that right now, my commute is about ten minutes door-to-door on foot. On the other hand, I'm paying far too much for that privilege. Buying a home is just orders of magnitude harder than renting an apartment. Ignorance is bliss; it's also easy and requires a lot less money up front.

This home I chose is the culmination of three months of feedback. To see a house doesn't require a whole lot of time, but it does require a lot of investigation before, during, and after the first walk-through. There are all these sophisticated applications to search through the MLS database: I received dozens of notifications of new properties within 30 minutes of them hitting the market. I learned that real estate is not a 9-to-5 business. Phone calls and messages get returned at any time, day or night, Saturday and Sunday too. I now know who the real target market is for the $200/month cell phone plans that provide thousands of minutes.

What Comes Next

So I have plenty of photos of the new house, but I won't post them publicly until I own the property out of consideration for the current owners. Barring any tragedy, I will be a homeowner as of the first of May. I will move in gradually during May and June so as to be totally settled before my current lease ends on June 30. Of course, there's a whole new set of challenges and responsibilities associated with being a homeowner. I look forward to meeting these challenges and then writing all about them.

After I started looking for a home, everyone suddenly started offering advice on agents, neighborhoods, and so forth. I've already started talking to a friend of mine from school who is interested in buying a place of her own, and already I've been asked for a lot of advice. Perhaps the quickest part of this process is how soon someone becomes an expert by himself.

Here's to being a homeowner.

Back to April 2005, or to the year 2005.

Where am I?

This is Weill Aspects, the official news archive of Jason Weill Web Productions. All articles posted to the front page end up here. This page was generated automatically by a series of Perl scripts.

Articles in Weill Aspects are organized solely by date. You may find the Google search in the left column to be useful if you are looking for an article but do not know the date on which it was posted.

Weill Aspects is composed of static web pages generated as appropriate when a new article is posted. It was developed in May 2001 as a way of managing the content on this site. I also used it extensively while in Japan, during which time I did not have continuous access to the Internet. I was able to write daily updates during July and August 2002, pack the files onto a CD-R or memory device, and upload them from the Internet-connected computers at school.

These scripts are all hacked together in less than elegant fashion, and I don't plan to release them. Some of the design that went into Aspects also was used to develop Livestat, a suite of Perl scripts to process statistics for academic competition tournaments. Livestat is available freely.