DennisPillion.com

Moving to a Highland Park condo

I'm boarding a plane Monday morning to go to Italy, but I didn't let that stop me from doing a little shopping before I left town: last night, I bought a condo.

I made the offer Wednesday night and got word by lunchtime Thursday that it had been accepted. My first offer on this unit (not including the debacle of my first ever offer to buy a property anywhere). The price is good. The location is good. The potential is high.

There are some issues with the place, but it will give me a chance to gain some experience fixing up an old place: refinishing hardwood floors and old cast-iron bathtubs, making old doors with bad hinges work again, that sort of thing. Also painting. There will be much painting. Lucky for you, I will probably share some of those experiences here in this blog.

But those things are down the line a bit. For now, I can finally shift my focus to my upcoming Italian adventure. I'll blog more about that later, but for now I'll leave you with some more pictures after the jump.

The stages of coping with condo loss

Well, I did not get the condo. Not sure if someone else made a better offer, or ours just wasn't high enough, but it has been rejected. I know some of you may be expecting a virulent diatribe against a certain unscrupulous real estate agent, but I don't have that in me right now. Sorry to disappoint, but apparently I've moved past the anger phase and am now solidly in the numbness/depression phase.

I realize I just threw out the word depression because I wasn't able to buy a condo. Boo hoo, poor me, I know. That's what the phase is called. Actually, the fact that I can get depressed over this mess is making me even more depressed than I already was.

Real estate rampage

Due to circumstances that are largely under some other jerk's control, I still have no resolution on the condo offer I put in four days ago. I haven't even received a counter-offer. I won't go into details at this stage, but let's just say I'm closely examining the realtors' code of ethics and preparing to rain down the full brunt of my real estate rage.

That's right folks, if I lose out on this condo because of a snake in real estate agent's clothing, the gloves are off. He will feel my full wrath in the form of a complaint to his firm and the Better Business Bureau. There will also be a scathing blog post here, detailing his many unprofessional and borderline unethical practices, fully search engine optimized so that whenever someone runs a Google search on this guy, my post will be among the top results.

If I have to pay a little more for the place I want to buy, I'll be ticked but probably won't engage in a full-scale assault on his business practices.

If I don't get to live here... the gloves are off. This is my first real estate purchase, a fact I stupidly admitted to him. Instead of giving me the assistance I needed, he tried to take advantage of my inexperience at every turn.

In 2009, it's just as easy for him to prey on inexperienced clients, but it's much easier for me to warn others away from working with him. Those of you who know me should know that I am not a vengeful, mean-spirited or quick-tempered person. I try to avoid gossip, rumor-mongering, and bad-mouthing. However, I would hate to see someone else fall victim to the same treatment I received. I will take whatever steps I can to make sure that doesn't happen. All you have to do, faithful reader, is sit back and enjoy the ride.

Making an offer on my first condo

On this day in Dennis history, he made his first-ever offer to buy a condo.  That's right, I offered to pay more than five years worth of my salary (before taxes) in exchange for a kick-ass, two-bedroom, 2.5 bathroom plot of earth and drywall in a development called Hampton Heights. 

I've been shopping around for several weeks (months even), looking at houses, condos, lofts, comfy-looking cardboard boxes and vacant closet space, and this is the unit I decided to go for.

It has a ton of space, as you can see in the picture, plenty of breathing room for my next roommate, so we're not constantly invading each other's privacy and personal space.

Yes, I will have a roommate and no, it can't be you. My friend Jenn is going to be renting my second bedroom and it's going to rock.

I probably shouldn't get ahead of myself. I made an offer, but we still have a long way to go. There will (probably) be counter-offers and home inspections and so on and so forth, but the process has begun. It's more than a little nerve-wracking but I think I found a great place at a pretty good price and I hope it'll work out.

How much house can I afford?

For much of the past few weeks, my mind has been ricocheting like a rubber ball in a glassed-in shower over a question that has plagued mankind since we first decided to divide and sublet our caves all those thousands of years ago: How much cave can I afford?

Do I go for the sweet two-bedroom cave by the creek, with a deck that just screams for a hammock and daily late evening naps to the sound of running water of Shades Creek? How about the spacious 2-bedroom 2.5 bath unit on the other side of town, convenient to UAB (where I may start grad school in the near future) and George Ward Park (my favorite disc golf course).

Or do I go for the inexpensive 1-br in the same complex as Sweet 2-BR by the Creek (hereafter known as SBC)? That mortgage would cost me about as much as I would pay in rent at some places I was considering. Then I'd have plenty of extra cash laying around. I could buy a 124" flat-screen and some kick-ass furniture. I could build a koi pond in the patio area in back of the unit, which is less cool than having a rippling creek in your back yard, but still not a bad way to live life.