Long Drive Today

Today we did the long drive to Mt. Shasta, California. Strangely, the "Welcome to California" sign seemed to be missing. I guess they don't want visitors anymore. LOL

Maybe they drink too much water, because California was looking more like Africa to me. Everything dead but for stunted bushes.

OMG, it was so much tile. Really, until we saw it all together we didn't realize just how much tile I had bought. Luckily, we had the good sense to drive down there with a trailer even though we didn't want to. (The trailer added at least an hour to the trip each way.) We had a good solid layer in both the bed of the truck and in the trailer, plus a few boxes behind the seats in the cab.

Beautiful Drive to Portland

We set off this morning at 5:31AM from Redwood City, CA. We drove pretty much straight through to Portland, OR and we arrived at 5:29PM! We had to stop for gas twice and we grabbed a quick BBQ lunch in Roseburg.

Shasta was a perfect dog child. She mostly slept the whole way, except for once when she asked us to stop at the next rest stop.

The weather around Yreka, CA was absolutely beautiful! Mt. Shasta was hiding behind the clouds, unfortunately.

Economy Rant

I'm really ready to know what the future holds for us.

I think this weekend I finally internalized that we're going to be permanently renting here in California. When we moved back here, we planned to build a house and it didn't work out. Now, it's clear it never will. There is no house likely to present itself here in California that will satisfy any purchase calculation that would justify its purchase. The prices are just too high here in California; they defy common sense. So, as long as we're living here, we're renters.

I frequently surf through the different MLS websites up in Oregon in hopes of finding the perfect house for a great price. But, of course, that won't happen because I'm looking for something that doesn't exist. I want a showcase 1920s bungalow with the original woodwork, but I want it to be a good deal. Since the majority of them originally built have been destroyed by remodels and paint, that there just aren't that many left. There is little chance that they'll go for anything resembling a good deal. There was one last year we made an offer on--in foreclosure--but we didn't get it. (I'm still disappointed about that.) I keep hoping for another to find its way to the MLS.

In order to pay top dollar for a great house in Oregon, we're realistically looking at up to $600K (in Portland--less in other cities). That's too much for us to spend without having at least one job lined up between us (primarily because of health benefits). So, I continue in school, hoping beyond hope that I'll be able to find employment as a paralegal so, someday I can look for a job in Portland. I try to be optimistic, but it's hard some days.

I try to be happy about all the money that we're saving by renting here in California, but I don't have a lot of faith in our government's ability to not screw up our economy beyond repair. We have a fairly large amount of cash and are making practically no interest on it thanks to our government trying to repair our monumental debt-binge with yet more debt. I just hope the money we're saving right now will be worth something by the time we get to buy.

Sorry--I guess I had a tough week--End Rant

Not Buying Mom's House

Well, after some fairly careful calculations, Jeff and I have decided we're not going to be able to buy my Mom's house. If we were to buy it, we'd likely use up most of our savings buying the house and then remodeling it. And we'd be obligated to support my mother as long as she's living with us (which might be a VERY long time) and that will likely add up to several hundred dollars a month. While covering these expenses is probably a reasonable expectation for my mother to have, Jeff working at Apple long-term isn't part of our plan. And once I finish school I'm hoping to get a job as a paralegal and they don't make enough to support our household expenses as well as my mother's. Oh well. It's a really good opportunity, but we're just going to have to pass.

We finally went to Costco this morning and tried to buy that TV. We wrote a check and they said they had to call the bank to verify the funds. And then they came back just a couple minutes later and said they wouldn't take it. I was shocked! We're running very high balances in that checking account so I suspect they were just too lazy to work through the stupid telephone messaging system at the Credit Union and decided it was better to be safe than sorry. I've called the bank and there isn't a problem on their end. It's Costco's loss, because the total for the transaction was more than $1,800 plus they've probably lost me as a customer.

Update at 4:30PM:

So, it turns out you can buy TVs and Blu-Ray players at the Costco.com website and the price includes shipping and they accept Mastercard and Visa as payment. (But they don't take the credit cards in the stores--how stupid is that?) Since we're sort of in a bind because we need a TV smaller than 38" wide and they happen to have a 40" TV that comes 37.25" wide (the smallest we've found), I just went ahead and ordered from their website. I'm still very annoyed with them... =)

Interesting Week

It's been an interesting week for us. Jeff and I had dental appointments down in Cupertino on Wednesday so I asked my Mom to watch Shasta for us while we were there for our appointments.

Anyway, when I went back to pick up the dog, she made us a *very good* offer to buy her house and we're definitely thinking about it. The deal includes finishing the detached garage into a granny cottage and letting her stay there until she has to move out (because she can no longer take care of herself).

So, now we have to decide a number of things:

1. Do we want to stay in California, probably permanently? (We love Oregon, and have been planning for a while now to move back up there as soon as the economy improved and we thought we could successfully find jobs.)
2. Do we have the resources to buy her out, remodel the house, and responsibly protect our financial future?
3. Can we live with my mother? =)

Anyway, today we had a contractor out to get a ballpark for the remodel and granny cottage and it was quite a bit lower than I expected it to be. It is actually doable with our savings, as long as we sacrifice a number of our earlier plans. For many people, this might be a no brainer, but it's a pretty hard decision. We're still struggling with what we want the plan for our future to be.

I have continued to read from my booklist, though my pace has certainly slowed down. Since I last wrote, I have read:

1. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger. It was a perhaps well written, but IMHO a shockingly bad story. I have a hard time understanding why this book is #15, unless the survey was heavily weighted toward rebellious teenagers!
2. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald. I enjoyed this book fairly well, though I don't think Gatsby was very great... It was a tragedy, and it's nice to read those once in a while.
3. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx. I really enjoyed this story about a widowed father who returns, with his aunt, to the family's old homestead in his native land.

I'm currently working on a book of Jane Austen's Shorter Works. It's pretty good so far.

I started school last night. I now have classes on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday nights.

Lovely Weekend

Yesterday we enjoyed a barbeque at my father's house in Santa Clara. (Thanks Dad!) My brother, James also showed up with his family and Shasta had another evening of playing with Lizzie. Then we wandered over to the nearby grass field and watched the local fireworks display. Shasta did pretty well for her first scary fireworks event.

Jeff has worked most of the weekend, excluding dinner yesterday. He worked yesterday afternoon and then headed to work this morning at 6AM and still isn't home. So much for my plans to take a load of debris to the dumps. Oh well, maybe next weekend.

Today, I've been trying to finish up the sewing room Roman shades. I've gotten them to the point of sewing on the rings and I'm having a hard time staying on task. I keep getting distracted with my laptop.

I think that we're going to order the Toyota tomorrow. We located one in Sunnyvale and Jeff dropped by and checked out the amethyst. The color is subtle and changes, depending on the light and angle. But it's probably good enough; I think we'll go for it.

After dinner yesterday, the family walked over to check out a 1912 Craftsman house about 3 blocks away that's been for sale for about 10 months. I've been watching it since last September or so. Back at that time it was $1.15M, now it's down to $750K. When it had the latest price drop I was really tempted, right up until I checked out the inspection reports which revealed to me that it was a money pit (it needed $150K of foundation work, just for a start). Oh well. After the visit yesterday, though, I continued to dream about the possibilities, but, today I see that it went pending, so I guess that's out as an option.

Even though I'm not seriously looking at houses right now, (really, I'm not) I usually check out what's available in Portland and Corvallis every couple of weeks. The kind of house I'm looking for is very specific (early 1900s Bungalow with the original unpainted woodwork on an oversize lot) and I don't think they're easily available so I keep watching for good houses to hit the market. On Thursday, I found another beauty in Portland, but it's surely overpriced. I think if it were closer in to downtown, they'd be able to get their price. But, according to my quick research, its neighborhood is loaded with much cheaper large houses and a ton of foreclosures. I think they'll have a problem getting their $679K asking price. But I'll keep watching it. If the price comes down to around $500K, then I'll probably get real interested. =)

To Grandmother's House We Go...

I went out with my father and step-mother to take a look at my grandmother's old house. Wow, it's still really full of her stuff. I had understood it had been mostly vacated, but in reality my brother and aunt removed all the furniture and just left all the stuff behind. Ugh. So it's going to be a while before we can get it cleaned up and ready for occupancy; probably at least 3 months.

The house itself has a few issues:  

* It has settled and there's a fair amount of cracking in the sheetrock or plaster. The master bedroom was built over an old septic and has actually sunk enough that it should get jacked up and the support repaired.

* It only has a 50 amp electrical box, and should really be upgraded to 200, especially if we plan to upgrade the HVAC.

* It doesn't have central heat or air, and I desperately want AC; the summers are too hot down here in California. 

* It needs insulation.

Now, if we were buying the house, fixing any of the problems wouldn't be a big deal. But the house belongs to my Dad (and Aunt) and he doesn't want to put much money into it because he's expecting that when they sell it, it's going to get torn down and the lot rebuilt. So, if we want to move in and have him fix some of these problems, we're going to have to commit to renting it for a year. That's a hard commitment to make, because I have been looking out for a house to buy. With our luck, we'll commit to taking this house for a year, and then our dream house will get listed in our price range in California or Oregon.

I'm adding a few pictures below, primarily of the kitchen and hallway, because Jeff didn't take any pictures of the bedrooms or bathrooms. I'll add a few more photos tomorrow, as I'm planning to go out again and try to help sort through some of the stuff for a garage sale.

My grandmother liked elephants and over the years everybody gave her elephants for gifts. I've never seen so many elephants in one place in my life. We need to find an elephant collector to find a good home for these.

Probably Moving to Redwood City

My father's parents owned a house in Redwood City; a cute little 1100 square foot house my grandfather built for my grandmother before they got married. Anyway, my grandmother died in late-2007 and left the house to my father and my aunt. It's just been sitting there vacant as it's a bit of a fixer; mostly because the systems need to be upgraded from their original installations in the early 1940s.

I understood my father was going to sell the house as soon as they got it cleaned up, but I recently learned my aunt doesn't want to sell it and now they're planning to turn it into a rental. So, I think Jeff and I are going to go ahead and rent it from them. We'll be paying a reduced rent cost in exchange for helping with the work to upgrade it (dealing with contractors, painting, easy repairs, etc.).

While the house is smaller than I would want to buy, renting is another matter entirely. Now that we've been paying truly astounding rent for a 4 bedroom in Cupertino, I think I can try and live with a smaller house for a while. At least I'll get to help choose the paint and the carpets. And we'll be able to save about $2,000 a month, which will make me feel much better than our current financial situation.

I've been looking at houses to buy for about the last two weeks and I haven't had much luck finding anything. The bank owned houses that finally hit the market seem to be in very poor condition, often needing structural work. And the nice houses still have unrealistic prices for their sizes; often costing in excess of $400/square foot which in the current market is too high in the neighborhoods we're shopping in. Or, sometimes they're short sales, and I haven't been willing to deal with those yet. We may consider trying on the house on 5th (the bungalow with the great woodwork).

So, I predict that we're going to squeeze into my grandmother's house in Redwood City and put a bunch of stuff in storage. We'll stay there while we save money and I finish school. Hopefully, I'll be able to find a decent job and that will help us to figure out where we should look once I also have a commute.

The commute we'll have from Redwood City is not so great, but at least it's pretty convenient to CalTrain and Apple has a good shuttle system set up that picks up from CalTrain so it will really only be me commuting to school and then a job when I find one.

Planning for the Future

I've just read an opinion piece titled "There's No Pill for This Kind of Depression," published by the Wall Street Journal which, I think, accurately sums up our situation at the moment: "People are in a kind of suspended alarm, waiting for the future to unspool and not expecting it to unspool happily."

We had a dream of traveling for a year, but with the collapse of our savings and the uncertainty of the economy, that seems a bit irresponsible for our future. In fact, the cost of the RV parks and food is, perhaps, the least of the cost; there will be the steady income of Jeff's job we'd be walking away from as well as the expense of maintaining our medical coverage.

The dream has not died, we still want to travel and we will, I hope, in several years. This timing was tempting because we were still young and at a juncture in our lives with the ability to choose from a variety of roads, but we were obviously premature in thinking we were "done" with the serious work in our life. We've been handed yet more challenges and it's not time for a vacation just yet.

Jeff has a good job he likes here at Apple, and while we were eager to get out of California due to the high cost of living, even a much lower cost of living will wipe you out if you have no income. Apple hasn't started lay-offs yet, so I guess we stay, for now. We're feeling, quoting the article again "There is "a pervasive sense of anxiety, as though everyone feels they're on thin ice.""

As a renter I feel really exposed and am worried about our future. I'm not feeling confident about our ability to take care of ourselves if the economy does, in the end, topple over. The government can only do so much to protect people from their own mistakes.

This quote from the article sums up my belief: "I asked a Wall Street titan what one should do to be safe in the future, he took me aback with the concreteness of his advice, and its bottom-line nature. Everyone should try to own a house, he said, no matter how big or small, but it has to have some land, on which you should learn how to grow things." So, despite the preference to leave California for greener pastures up north in Oregon, we spend a bit of time looking for an excellent deal on a house here in Silicon Valley, though few exist so far, even among the foreclosures and bank owned properties.

I suspect our short-term course will be to move in either with my mother in a small portion of her house, or perhaps we may "rent" my grandmother's house inherited by my father and aunt. At least they probably won't evict us if things get bad! =)

One of the very few nice things about this economy is the reemergence of Thrift as a valued lifestyle; I read more and more articles everyday.

BTW, change of subject, thanks to the referral of a friend, I have an interview tomorrow, for a position with some bookkeeping and event planning responsibilities. I'll try and do well; perhaps I'll finally line up an interesting job.

Downtown San Jose Historic Bungalows

We spent about 3 hours looking at houses today; for the most part we looked at fixer bungalows, but they were mostly too far gone to save, in crummy neighborhoods, or just too expensive for the effort. So many of these sellers are underwater. In fact, one of them that was listed for $300K had mortgages totaling $606K. What were those banks thinking?

Anyway, we found two really nice bungalows on the downtown grid that we really liked. Their current prices are too high for the comps and current housing market, but we went and looked at them anyway. We figure once we've seen them, we can watch and see if they sell or if they continue to drop their prices until they're in our range.

One of the houses, on 5th St, is almost exactly what I'm looking for in a historic bungalow. It has the original woodwork, unpainted, and they haven't messed it up too much. When the current owners remodeled the kitchen, they also did a fairly decent job of matching the wood color to the rest of the house. They did convert the closet in the master into a bathroom, which is a bit weird since now it's hooked to two bathrooms, but we could undo a bathroom a lot more cheaply than putting one in. Otherwise, it's quite attractive.


The other house was a total surprise, I expected we wouldn't like it, but we both did. It's located on Julian St near Third. This one, unfortunately, has had every bit of the woodwork painted white and it's had some unfortunate remodeling, but it has a really huge lot for being downtown (7500 sq ft) and it has a ton of space, being more than 2000 square feet. This must have been one of the rich person's houses downtown. It looks like they carved up some of the space into apartments as it has two kitchens; one of them installed in the front parlor. But the woodwork is mostly intact (except for the paint) and it seems to be in good condition as far as we could tell. Though it was weekend, there wasn't really that much traffic. I wonder how much traffic there is during the week? Probably quite a lot more. But at least it has lots of parking and I think the lot has 2 garages and a few mature trees.




















Update on Monday, after I corresponded with our realtor: Apparently the house on 5th is very mortgaged. While their mortgage is less than their la-la land asking price, it's well above their likely market value, so we surely won't be buying this one. Unless the seller walks and doesn't ruin it and the bank takes it over and offers it for something realistic. Oh well, what a shame.

The house on Julian, however, appears to be owned free and clear and has been in the same family since nearly the beginning, so there is some hope on that one. Though that one is even further above what we want to spend on a house, so unless that one sits on the market for quite a while unsold and the price gets a deep reduction, it looks like this shopping trip was mostly window shopping.

Getting Cold Feet About Quitting Job

As the economy continues to decline, as well as our savings, we're now starting to get nervous about our plan to simply uproot and move back up to Oregon, with no job offer in hand. Jeff is feeling reluctant to quit his job with no obvious path ahead. He has been a great trooper and is working hard to re-inspire enthusiasm for his position, working very long days over the weekend, so he can keep at it until some better path presents itself. We just don't feel confident about our ability to line up decent paying positions once we're up in Oregon. And the few friends we've had direct conversations with have told us NOT to come now, due to the job market, themselves having been laid off recently and unable to find new jobs.

So we worry if we go and spend $500K on a house in Portland and then spend the next two years drawing down our remaining (much diminished) savings, then we'll be no better off than if we spend $700K for a house down here and have a good paying job. Even though the value of the house will continue to fall, we're not buying it for its investment value but for its shelter value and right now we're spending more than $40K a year for rent.

And perhaps if I really applied myself, I would find a job as well. If we stay down here, I would probably continue to work on my paralegal certificate and also try to line up an internship, so I can get some recent experience.

So, this morning, I spent a few hours poking around the Santa Clara County market to see if there is anything promising and there were a few houses (about 7). There are, surprisingly, actually a couple decent looking small houses less than $700K within our five mile radius from Apple so, perhaps, we'll go look at a few houses this weekend. More than likely they'll be fixers and, thus, too expensive. We also may pursue foreclosures.

We've also had a conversation with my Mother about renting the finished garage, the "family room," in her house (about 380 square feet total) where we'll put our bedroom and a minimal amount of furniture. We'll just pack up the rest of our possessions and stick them in storage until we figure out our long-term plan. Then we'll be able to save over $2,000 a month that we could add directly to our house savings account. My mother would love to have us, but who knows if she can actually clean out the space. She has a 5-bedroom house crammed to bursting with her "treasures" and has a hard time parting with them. Pretty much when she "cleans" she just shifts from one room to another, with little, if any, actual reduction in the amount of stuff.

I will, of course, continue to watch the Portland market and if something "perfect" comes on the market, then we'll likely move despite having no jobs. Last year, SE Portland did actually experience more than a 15% decline overall in prices, so if the prices come down to where we can buy the house we want for more like $400K, it would be easier to make the jump of faith.

Feeling Better About Renting

Okay, if it hadn't been for the stock market crash as well, we'd be feeling pretty good right now. Not really sure which will fall more in the long run, the housing or stock market. At least we don't have to pay property tax on a shockingly-over-priced-property for the next 20 years. Here are some of the properties in California we considered pretty seriously in our house hunting down here.

THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY

OMG, this house in Santa Clara, on Cooper Drive, was the biggest dump! It had a number of DIY projects started but never finished, one of which was a bathroom that was all torn up. The house was a sty; the seller didn't even manage to do the last month's of dishes before showing the house. You couldn't see the hardwood floors to see if they were in good condition because they had a several foot high pile of crap covering them; there were trails to walk around the house. And the room above the garage? You could walk into it about a foot. The rest of the room was full of junk. You couldn't even get to the bathroom up there. But it seemed a bloody bargain at $699,000! They, of course, had very many offers and bid the price up to $771K. Now? Underwater. It currently shows as being "worth" $706K in zillow and lost $29,500 in the last 30 days.




This house in West San Jose, on Country Lane, was the closest we came to actually buying a house in California (short of my Mom's house). It was the most beautiful street and had a full canopy of mature trees. The house was actually a nice, solid rancher with reasonably attractive remodels and we could have just replaced the kitchen counters and lived with it. But, then we realized when they added the upstairs they hadn't bothered to tie it into the HVAC system so it had no heating or cooling, other than wall heaters. We had a contractor out to find out how much to "fix" it; his guesstimate was something like $50K. They were asking $945,000 and our realtor told us we could offer no more than $900K. Yet, the seller's realtor told us not to bother to make an offer if we didn't offer within 1% of their asking price, so we didn't. They actually managed to sell this one for $930K; there must have been some creative, cash-back scheme in this one given the assessments of the other houses in the neighborhood. Anyway, now? Underwater. Zillow shows as being valued at $866K, down a stunning $52,500 in the last month.

This house in Cupertino, on Phar Lap Drive, was astonishingly a fixer being offered for $1.188M and they got their listing price. With repairs, it was a livable house in a nice, treed neighborhood and we had a long discussion after looking at this one about just how crazy it would be to spend over $1M on a fixer! While it's not quite underwater, it's getting there; having lost $36,500 in the last month, according to Zillow.


We offered my Mom market value for her house, on Myrtlewood Drive. We don't really know what market value was at the time, probably somewhere around $950K-$1M. She didn't take our offer. Now? Given the near-teardown condition, I feel justified in taking the low end of the Zillow value. Zillow gives the low end as $833,700, and the house lost something like $46,500 in the last month.







This was one of the last properties we seriously considered in our search down here, on Robin Court, in Sunnyvale. It was a run-down 1960s rancher with very dated decor. It probably at one time had some nice looking oak cabinetry, but someone had slathered every piece of wood and trim in the place with white paint. But the house had a very pretty 10,000 square foot lot and the house was set way back from the street and you didn't really see your neighbors. The house would have needed a lot of work. I just loved it and desperately wanted this one. They were offering it for $1.089M, but they got something like 17 offers! It ended up selling for $1.18M, an amazing $90,000 over their asking price. For a fixer with a pretty lot! We didn't even make an offer, we had no chance given the interest in this property. The value since selling shot up to about $1.3M, now it's back to the selling price and on its way down fast, falling just under $50K in the last month.

There were quite a few others we considered, but I cannot really remember their addresses. We looked for quite a few months and were astonished at what the prices were for these dumpy, old houses. Now, we are feeling mollified we didn't drink the kool-aid. Though the near 50% loss in our savings in the stock market doesn't feel so good either. =)