Bad timing
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Well it ended up being a 10% cut. I got a pay cut but emotionally it's like a raise, because they presented it to me as management having gone to bat for me and softening the by-the-books 20% cut. Not too significant a cut considering the state income tax going from 10% to 0. Now, if I manage a sufficient taxable investment income, the move to TX will be a net positive.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Bad timing:
My plan is to work somewhere expensive, and retire somewhere cheap. The pension's based on my salary.
What's possibly more likely to happen is that I can't face going through another move.
Well, you get to this point, and the idea of moving somewhere glamorous loses a bit of luster. It becomes about who you are near rather than where you are.
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Down to the wire now, with a choice between two homes. The one we have a contract for, and one from a different builder, in the same neighborhood, but without a water view. Just a privacy fence. But that one is more beautiful, and has a better floor plan. I like the one we have the current contract for, while my wife likes the other one. We're going to talk to the first salesperson tomorrow with a number in mind, a significant reduction from the contracted number we currently have. If we can't make a deal, we'll walk next door to the other builder's sales person, and buy the other one, which is already priced well and with nice incentives.
It will be interesting to see the first salesperson attempt to close us tomorrow. She refuses to give a final number to our agent, until she sees all of us in person. Who knows what tricks she has up her sleeve?
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@Copper said in Bad timing:
@Horace said in Bad timing:
she sees all of us in person.
Stay on your toes.
Those agents are really tricky.
I think math will be involved. She has different incentives than most selling agents, since builders agents get commission from the financing, if you use their preferred lender. It won’t be a simple price negotiation. She will offer some complicated financing options which, in some hand wavy way, will be exactly like getting a lower price.
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Hey Horace, my x SIL is selling her place out in the Woodlands. A cool mil, but a nice place.
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@Mik said in Bad timing:
Hey Horace, my x SIL is selling her place out in the Woodlands. A cool mil, but a nice place.
Nice place, but more than we want to spend.
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@Horace said in Bad timing:
@Mik said in Bad timing:
Hey Horace, my x SIL is selling her place out in the Woodlands. A cool mil, but a nice place.
Nice place, but more than we want to spend.
Thought so. I cannot believe she got that house a few short years after declaring bankruptcy. I love her, but she's a CFO that cannot manage her own debt. She's run up six figure credit card debt several times.
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Looks like we will move forward with the place we originally contracted for. It’s a compromise for the other half of the decision making team. I will be reminded of that, on occasion. We ended up with a 9% discount from the original list price, which matches with the discount we accepted on our own property sale, as compared to its peak value earlier in the year.
Education is extremely important.
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@George-K said in Bad timing:
@Horace there's a kind of relief in knowing that the deal is done. It's probably akin to
taking a huge shit after a large meala big sigh after strenuous exercise.Congratulations, and keep us posted on how progress progresses.
Yeah it’s nice. Just wish we were both super excited about it. But she feels as if she sacrificed a lot, because the other one was her dream home. Sigh. We did save the cost of a very nice car or a house full of furniture, but that is small comfort.
The negotiation was painful. Our original offer was ‘unreasonable and unfair’ according to the sales professional. I guess that’s one way to negotiate. I suppose in a sense it worked since we raised the offer by 3%, and said take it or leave it, but there were more positive ways to have arrived at that final offer.
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@Horace said in Bad timing:
The negotiation was painful. Our original offer was ‘unreasonable and unfair’ according to the sales professional. I guess that’s one way to negotiate. I suppose in a sense it worked since we raised the offer by 3%, and said take it or leave it, but there were more positive ways to have arrived at that final offer.
That's just the language they use. I remember when we bought our house in Canada, and we offered $5K less than the asking price, and they came back with 'that's not an offer, that's an insult' - our real estate guy said 'I don't know why they're using that tone...' - we used the same guy when we sold the house a few years later, and when we received a slightly low offer than asking he said 'That's not an offer, it's an insult!', and I LOL'd.
House sales are weird - the money involved is so much more than anything else we buy, it's so easy to wake up at 3am sweating....or so I've heard.
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After all the rending of flesh over our insolence at negotiating a lower price than we contracted for in June, the appraisal finally came in last night at 1% lower than the price we lowered to. Now the salesperson will try to convince her lender, who she has a business relationship with, to adjust the appraisal. One thing is for sure, I will not be anteing up the money to cover the lower valuation. This puts the Thursday close into doubt too.
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Now the salesperson for the builder has to convince the appraiser to write a new report which supports the value we are buying at. If she can’t convince the appraiser that he sucks at his job and she is way better, then the builder will probably come down in price. That would be nice. Or maybe they will force a choice on me to pay the difference or cancel the contract, while they keep our earnest money. They could do that but probably will not, as a company that cares about its reputation.
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@Horace It seems to me that the appraisal system is pretty farcical. The house is worth what people are willing to pay for it, so the most you can really do is look at similar ones in the vicinity, and check for any massive repairs that are needed. How can somebody operating in this way be accurate enough to say it's worth 1% less than you're offering, particularly when the market is currently so unpredictable?
Proud supporter of Plan 2525. Everything you think, do and say will be in the pill you took today.
