The story so far

Today, The Wife and I signed away our home. We've lived here 11 years, and closing the sale was bitter sweet for us. Our real estate agent was actually concerned we'd back out. But we'd made a commitment to the young, newlywed couple who are giddy and eager to settle into their first home together, and it would be cruel to renege on the agreement. So, we are no longer homeowners. We have a three-week lease-back, and after that, we're homeless.

Yeah. That's proven to be an "interesting times" situation.

We had settled on a house, 3148 Oak Hollow Drive, New Braunfels, Texas, to be specific. You can Google it if you want. On the surface, it had everything we wanted--almost 3,000 square feet of living space in a house with some quirky charms. There was a detached three-car garage with a garage apartment that could be converted into a spectacular photo studio for Lisa On Location Photography with minimal effort. It was quiet and rural, with plenty of space (and woods!) between us and potential neighbors. Oh, and did I mention it came with more than three-and-a-half acres? It was just about as perfect as we could ask for.

Except... it was a forecosure. It'd sat vacant for more than two years, and was owned by Fannie Mae, which had a reputation of being difficult to work with. The house and apartment needed work. Siding and soffits and such had suffered damage over the years of vacancy. An above-ground pool had devolved into so much scrap metal. It looked like it needed work, but we could make it our own. So we began negotiations. And negotiated, and negotiated. Fannie Mae and their representing agent, ***** ******* of ******** ******, were indifferent at best, slow to respond to our offers and insulting in their counter-offers. Very inflexible. Most of the time it seemed like they didn't care if the house sold or not, which you have to wonder about, since it was a foreclosure taking up red ink on their books. After nearly a month of back-and-forth, we reached an agreement and got the property under contract. Then we had our home inspector take a look (they were selling it "as-is" with no disclosure) and that's when everything took a turn for the worse. Raccoons had invaded the attic, destroying all the HVAC duct work, ripping out a tremendous amount of insulation and leaving feces and fleas everywhere. Our inspector was repulsed by the mess and so concerned about hanta virus he insisted with both wash down with massive mounts of sanitizer. Squirrels and rats and found their way inside as well. All the wiring in the house turned out to be a do-it-yourself kind of job, violating pretty much every building code known to man. The foundations were solid--very solid, in fact--but laid in such a way to almost guarantee water would seep into the house. And yes, we found copious evidence of water damage. The water well wasn't functioning properly and... well, I'll be here all night if I try to write it all out. I'll save us all the trouble and just let you read the actual 3148 Oak Hollow Inspection Report

Suffice to say, the house was unliveable. Our lender wouldn't finance unless the most egregious of the hazards were addressed by the seller, so we wrote up the list and submitted it. Seeing as how our option period expired that Saturday, and Fannie Mae is closed over the weekend, we were eager to have some sort of closure so we wouldn't risk losing our earnest money. So when our rep contacted the listing agent that Friday, she was rewarded for her hard work on our behalf with an ass-chewing. The listing agent was quite rude, and concluded the sad affair by saying, "I don't have time for this." She's a realtor. That's her job. She doesn't have time to do her job? So we rescinded our offer. By that time we had little faith they'd be responsive to the problems with the house anyway, so we thought it best to cut our losses and preserve our earnest money.

The downside is, of course, we have no home awaiting us in three weeks. We do have a Plan B, but that's a story for another time. Fingers crossed.

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Chicken Ranch Central

In which house-hunting takes a turn for the suck

We've identified a house we want to buy. We've actually had our eye on it for quite some time. In fact, back in June, when I first kinda semi-seriously flirted with the idea of selling our current home and moving, I searched some real estate sites just to see what kind of properties were available and whether or not a move would even be worth it. This house was the very first one I looked at, and convinced me we could make a move work.

So with our house under contract, our lender pre-approved us for a certain maximum price level we could offer on any particular property. Once we close on this home's sale, said max loan increases, as we'd no longer be carrying that mortgage. So we made an offer on the Prime Target.

A little background is in order. Prime Target is a Fannie Mae-owned property. It was a foreclosure. It has been on the market for 100-plus days at this point, and undergone several price cuts in that time to bring it close to our pre-approved loan amount before closing on our sale. Our offer was on the low end--our max ceiling was still less than the current asking price. We had reason for optimism, though. We were offering about 10 percent below asking price, and we'd seen Fannie Mae homes sold for that kind of price cut when they'd been on the market as long as this one. In addition to it being on the market for a long 100-plus days, other homes in this area and price bracket were newer and swankier. This one wasn't so much a fixer-upper as a cleaner-upper. We did some digging, and discovered it'd actually been on the market, off and on, since 2008 with no takers prior to going into foreclosure. I tracked down the original owners, and they were quite forthcoming about the circumstances of the foreclosure, their plans for the home (it's completed, but a lot of finishing touches such as replacing the vinyl siding with stone and stucco weren't accomplished). They want someone to buy and live in the house and bring it back from the brink of neglect Fannie Mae has left it in. They bid us good luck in our effort to buy it. There were quite a number of cosmetic issues that detracted from it's potential value to the average buyer. For us, though, it was a blank slate upon which to put our stamp. More than 3 acres of property, no HOA and a triple garage with upstairs apartment that simply begged to be converted into a full-blown studio for Lisa On Location Photography. It was perfect for us, decidedly imperfect for anyone else.

Today Fannie Mae responded to our offer, saying they had received a competing offer and inviting us to make our "best and final" bid.

You're telling me this house has languished on the market for seven fucking years without buyer interest, and the very week we make an offer somebody else does as well? Really? Really? Coincidence much? My gut tells me this is total and complete bullshit, a fake auction conjured by Fannie Mae to squeeze a few more pennies out of us. A little internet research turns up any number of people who've experienced the exact same thing as us. There's no way to prove the competing bid exists. There's no way to prove it doesn't. And there is no way for us to up our bid--at least not until Oct. 20, when we close on the sale of our current home (at which point this "best and final" auction will be ancient history).

At this point, there's nothing for it. There are three outcomes, all beyond our power to affect: 1) out current "best and final" wins the day and we get the house straight up, 2) we lose the house and someone else goes "neener neener" at us, or 3) all "bids" are rejected and the house stays on the market, or gets de-listed for a couple of weeks only to reappear at a later date. Regardless of how this shakes out, we'll be fine... given enough time. But again, I dread the prospects of having to go the short-term rental route as we hunt for a replacement that ticks as many boxes as Prime Target does.

Losing out on Prime Target is one thing, but the overwhelming feeling of being scammed is tough to stomach, regardless of the outcome.

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Chicken Ranch Central

Under contract

Have I mentioned how much I hate moving? Because I do. I hate everything about it, from the selling of the house to the buying of the new house to the actual packing and hauling and storing and trying to make vastly differing closing dates work so that we don't find ourselves homeless for a spell. It's actually every bit as bad as I remember from last time--which was 11 years ago. Nothing is different, other than the fact that this move is, believe it or not, by choice.

The Wife and I are fully committed to living out the remainder of our lives in whichever house we end up with, just so we never have to move again. Oh, yeah--we don't have a destination yet. Joy.

Yesterday marked the end of our prospective buyers' option period. Which means they're locked in to buy, and we're locked in to sell. The closing date's roughly three weeks out, but could possibly be moved up if their financing falls into place. Which is fine by us. After that point, we have a three-week lease-back, and then vacate. Won't that be fun? The buyers are a young couple, married a little over a year, practically kids. They don't really know what they're doing, but that's fine, because neither did we when we bought our first house. They're getting a great deal, though. They should be happy with their new home.

But back to that option period, and the source of my current headaches. Their building inspector turned up some issues they wanted us to address. No surprise, that's what building inspectors do. But the guy was a jerk, and shut off the power to the house even though he knew The Wife was working on a wedding on her computer at the time. Fried the entire batch of photos she had open in Lightroom, and made the computer very glitchy for about a week, until she emptied the entire cache to wipe the slate clean. And he departed leaving lights on, the AC set to sub-zero conditions and faucets trickling water--pretty much completely disrespecting us and our home. But one of the big demands they had from him was to install peak vents along our roof. A somewhat condescending explanation accompanied, which just about set us off. Our current vents weren't good enough for them? What they were demanding was no small task, and no small expense. Especially after we'd gotten a brand-new, Energy Star roof installed just a year earlier. We were this close to firing off a blistering counter-offer when I got a little twitchy feeling. The inspector's report hadn't said "install more vents," it said "install vents." Suspicious, but not really believing it possible, I pulled the ladder upstairs to take a look inside the attic and visually inspect our extant vents. That photo up above is what I saw. The roofers had shingled over our vents! Checking our contract, there were clearly line item charges for A) removal of existing vents and B) re-installation of said vents. I don't know where to begin. Fortunately, the roofing company seemed suitably embarrassed by this mess and ought to have the situation corrected before I get home. Except now I get a concerned call from home that gives me a dread feeling that even this simple task may have been botched. *sigh*

Now Playing: Sting Mercury FallingBut that's just one thing to fix. The concrete slab outside where the central AC unit sits has subsided over the past decade, so that the unit now sits at an angle. That needs to be leveled. I'm doing this myself, and managed to raise the shebang about 4 inches yesterday. Another 4 inches should do it, and I'll tackle that this evening. Another chore is to climb a ladder and check out a couple of bare spots where wind has pulled away siding. We suspect the siding simply telescoped into adjacent panels as we've never found any loose pieces on the ground, but it's still a logistical pain to accomplish two stories up. The final item is one I can't DIY, however. Our electric meter box has somehow pulled out of the siding and whatever it was mounted to inside the wall, and is now just dangling. It looks like a simple fix--three long screws, maybe use some sort of drywall anchor to make it more stable, and you're done in 10 minutes. Except the meter box is locked, and I'm not terribly keen on working around high voltage. I called the utility company, and they refuse to help. "Call an electrician," they said. So I called an electrician, who'd be happy to help, but they need the utility company to come out and unlock the box. And thus an infinite loop is created.

All of this would be more tolerable if we simply knew where we'd be living in another month, but even that is denied to us. The house we want, that ticks pretty much every box for us, won't take contingency contracts, period. And the amount we're pre-approved for whilst owning our current house falls just short of the magic number to get it under contract. So we wait, and watch, and occasionally look at other houses in an effort to compile a viable "Plan B" list in case our hoped-for home gets bought out from under us as we wait for our current house to close.

Have I mentioned how much I hate moving? Because I do.

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Chicken Ranch Central

House for sale. Comes book-ready

We've finally bitten the bullet and placed our house on the market for some lucky family to buy. The complete listing can be found here. And here's the Realtor.com listing: Click here.

We've lived here 11 years, which is the longest Lisa and I have lived any place that wasn't our hometown. The kids barely remember living in Temple. Bug has never lived anywhere else. We really like this house, and have put a lot of effort into making it our own over the years. Here's my office, below. One of the first things I did when we moved in was close it in and install floor-to-ceiling book shelves. I really, really wanted to include a ladder on rails, but I just couldn't justify it in the limited space.

Astute readers may notice there aren't actually that many books on my library's shelves. That's because probably 90 percent of my collection is boxed up in storage. That was a lot of boxes. Double-stacked, and horizontally stacked on top, those shelves held a great number of books. I'm damn proud of those shelves--especially since my father couldn't understand why I just didn't get some cinder blocks and plywood and save all that effort. Our new house will have a new office, and I'll build a new set of book shelves, bigger and better, but I'm not looking forward to the considerable effort involved, and I'm not going to miss these any less. Heck, I miss my office already. I wrote "Prince Koindrindra Escapes" in here. "The Whale Below." "Being an Account of the Final Voyage of La Riaza: A Circumstance in Eight Parts." I edited fiction for RevolutionSF in here. I put together Voices of Vision. Heck, the massive undertaking that is my Chicken Ranch history book was conceived and executed entirely in here. I did a tremendous amount of writing in this room, even if my publication history doesn't reflect it. This office is going to be hard to replace.

We never expected to stay here forever. We always planned on moving to a more rural area with acreage we could develop (and the girls have been begging for horses for a decade now). Lisa on Location is going great guns, so much so that Lisa's already outgrown her studio in the Landmark. We need more space, and need a much larger studio space in particular so her business may continue to grow. We've already scouted several potential houses in our price range, and several are promising... if we're able to sell before someone else buys them out from under us.

The house has been on the market five days, and already we've had four showings, with another scheduled for tomorrow. When we were trying to sell the Temple house--which we loved, even though it was old and drafty--we would sometimes go an entire month without a single showing. So the initial interest is encouraging. Moving is entirely dependent on a sale, as our down payment is tied up in our home equity. This raises the interesting prospect of having to move out before we've closed on a new home. That's a scary thought. But as I say, we'll burn that bridge when we come to it. If you know anyone in need of a New Braunfels home in easy commuting distance to San Antonio, San Marcos or even Austin, point them our direction.

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Chicken Ranch Central

The "M" word

It looks like we're moving. This does not fill me with joy. There are few things I despise more than moving. I'd make a terrible nomad.

No, I haven't gotten a new job or anything drastic. We're staying in the New Braunfels area. We're just selling and leaving the house we've lived in for the past 11 years. We like this house quite a bit. We've put our stamp on it. I love my office with ceiling-to-floor bookshelves I built myself. I'll miss the wine rack I built in the kitchen. And I'll really, really, really miss the pecan, pear, peach, plum, pomegranate and fig trees I planted in the yard and are only this year all producing mature crops of fruit and nuts, for the first time in the 10 years I've grown them. I'll also miss the passion vines (and passion fruit) and grape vines I've been growing for 10 years now. Now I'll have to start over from scratch, and wait another 10 years for all my plantings to mature. Moving really, really sucks.

But you know what sucks even worse? Neighbors. Neighbors who refuse to weather-treat their side of the privacy fence, so that it rots through from their side. Neighbors who let their dogs rip the fence apart so they can get into our yard and wreak havoc. Neighbors who constantly park in front of our house, blocking our mail box so that the post office refuses to deliver. Neighbors who throw raucous parties every other weekend that last until 3 a.m. Neighbors who laugh you off when you politely--or even not-so-politely--complain about these acts of inconsideration. You know what also sucks worse? An HOA run by a corrupt property management company that continually raises HOA fees and provides absolutely nothing in return for it. Public areas of our neighborhood are a disaster. Fences falling down. Fences unpainted and rotting. No parks, no playgrounds, no club house, no pool. Absolutely nothing that other HOAs with far lower fees take for granted. Pockets are being lined, and lined lavishly. From the full-throated defense of this property management company from our HOA board, someone's getting kickbacks as well.

The final straw came the day before we left for vacation last month. When the city passed an ordinance last year permitting homeowners to keep a certain number of backyard chickens within city limits, I picked up some chicks from the local feed supply. I grew up with chickens, as did The Wife, and we wanted our kids to have the experience of gathering fresh eggs. They raised those chickens from hatchlings. Those chickens were outright pets, following people around, looking for attention. Whenever we took table scraps out for the beagles, the chickens muscled right up in there amongst our dogs to claim their share. So when we got home from a wedding to discover the neighbor's dogs had once again broken through the fence to get into our yard, killing all of our chickens and leaving a horrible, feather-strewn mess to traumatize our kids, I'd had enough. So had The Wife. We're moving.

Our next home will be in the country, with some amount of acreage to buffer us from any neighbors. I'll have a shotgun to deal with any feral dogs or coyotes that choose to violate our property with their presence. The girls can finally have that horse they've pined for all these years. I'll re-plant my orchard, bigger this time, and include jujubes and avocados and mandarins and loquats, if only to break up the number of fruit trees starting with the letter "P." The Wife will get a full-blown photo studio--we'll build one from the ground up if we can't find a property with a barn or workshop or such that's suitable for conversion. We'll also do some landscaping to support her studio work, and have the most obnoxiously dense field of bluebonnets Texas has ever seen.

The trouble is, while The Wife and I are doing better financially than we ever have and have paid down our debt significantly, we still can't carry two mortgages. We have to sell our current house in order to finance the new one, which obviously puts us in the untenable position of being homeless if we can't find a suitable new home and close on it within a few days of selling. That's not likely (as we hate moving, this new place better be as close to perfect as it can be. We're not settling for "meh") so we're looking at short-term rentals, and that is no fun, either. It'll work out in the end, somehow.

So where does that leave us? Packing. We're boxing and boxing and boxing. Well, The Wife is boxing. I'm mostly hauling and stacking. We've rented a big storage locker and are doing our darnedest to fill it. It's amazing how densely we've lived in this house, expanding to fill every nook and cranny. But cozy and comfortable to us is cluttered and cramped to potential buyers. We're emptying the house with an eye towards showing staring in September, and already the results are impressive. I haven't started on my office yet--boxing all my books is a daunting task, and I swear one box of books from our previous move (with some of my Greg Egan collection) has yet to turn up. My 18" Bill The Cat doll vanished during the last move as well. And the disruption of the move comes right as I'm back to seriously working on Sailing Venus. Conducive to writing the moving stuff is not.

It's all for the best, I keep telling myself. I hope so, because it's too damn much work for a lateral move.

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Chicken Ranch Central