The house buying process

We've been looking at houses recently. Although we are staying in the apartment just now, it's always ever been a temporary measure until we found an area that we liked, and then a house within that area to buy.

So it's off we go down the uncharted road that is the American house buying process. Of course, it is completely different to the English way of doing things. And I say English way as the Scottish system is different again.

First of all, you need a Realtor. I think if you know what you're doing you can get away without one but for us, we need a guide. A Realtor is someone who will find you houses to look at, who will arrange appointments with owners/agents for you to go and see the houses, and who will prepare all the paperwork for you.

If you know exactly what you want, you can be taken on by a Realtor as a customer, in which case they can't advise you or do anything other than what you want them to do. We chose to go as a client (which most people do) so Jamie, our Realtor, can advise us, show us more homes etc. There's more to it than that, but that's the gist of it.

So all this is about as close as it gets to being an equivalent of the British estate agent, who has a list of houses for sale and will do all the paperwork etc. It seems that Realtors, while tied to one listing house, have access to all the houses listed anywhere, so in the end maybe it's a bit more flexible.

So once you find a house that you like, the next step is to make an offer. Here is where it gets quite different. The Realtor will prepare a contract which you have to sign. This details how much you are offering, what you will put in as down payment ('deposit' has a slightly different meaning here), how much earnest money you will pay, what time periods things will be done in, what the closing date is to be, title policy, tax district, property condition, floodplain/environmental factors, termination options and broker fees, amongst many other things.

What it boils down to is that you have to sign the contract and write two cheques.

The first cheque is a $200 option fee. This means that if your offer is accepted, that $200 buys you the right to get out of the contract within a set time period (usually 10 days) for any reason. You'll forfeit the $200 but that is all.

The second cheque is for something called 'earnest money' which as far as I can figure just means that it's a serious offer being made in earnest. (They're very literal in the States!) This should be around 1% of the purchase price, although it helps if you bump it up by a couple of hundred bucks to show that yes, you really are serious. It's kind of a second, smaller deposit ahead of the main down payment.

So you leave these monies with the realtor, who then goes off to the seller and puts in the offer. If the offer is rejected, you get all the money back. If the offer is accepted, the money goes towards the purchase price of the house.

Compare this with the English method in which you see the house you want and tell the estate agent, "OK, I'll offer £X00,000" and that's it!

Here endeth the first lesson. I am sure there will be more to come :-)


Meanwhile as I said up front, we have been looking at houses. We've seen some really nice ones but they all have their little quirks and wierdnesses. I guess this applies to houses in any country!

A common feature here is to call a house two-storey and then you'll have a huge living room in which the ceiling is the full height of the house. These things are cavernous, almost to the point of being quite oppressive - to me, anyway. You might have one or two rooms upstairs but in general, it's an awful waste of space.

Another one is to have a huge entraceway, often with a curved staircase. It's meant to look impressive and I suppose it does but again, all that space which could be used for better things! I guess this is a European viewpoint; we're all used to such smaller houses than the ones we have been seeing. They don't have the same issues here in Texas where land is plentiful.

One house was really lovely with great views over the Hill Country, but the plot was very long and thin, and went down the hill and back up quite steeply, obviously it was a water channel down the valley. Where's all the water going when it rains? Straight across your only entrance into your property.

Another one was very pretty, again with great views, but arranged a bit topsy-turvy inside and was a bit small. And a bit too far out of town, with a gravel road about a mile long to reach the place... my Jeep would have been OK but Alan's VW wouldn't have been so happy.

There was a great one in the area we're most keen on, which had been built out of special insulating concrete and had a complete rainwater collection system. Very enviromentally sound but it was the wrong shape inside for our needs.


Here's one we looked at. Oh no, wait! It's the Intel building on Wednesday, three days after demolition. Looks like they have a bit of clearing up to do.



You'll notice the ends of the building did not collapse. This was intentional; the demolition started in the middle and pulled everything in towards it (it _was_ meant to be an implosion, not explosion, right?) so that debris did not leave the site. The end walls did not have charges installed, so they fell inwards to contain the rest of the rubble. They're talking about bringing in wrecking balls now!

The News 8 Austin video of the demolition is worth watching.



In other building news, here's the latest view of the car park by us:



A man spent half the week spraying it with something on the outside. It didn't change the colour of it, I guess it might be a weather sealant or something. Today they're pouring concrete inside to make the ramps for cars to drive on, according to the drivers of the concrete trucks whom I asked about it.

Next to the parking garage is the rest of the construction, which I have largely ignored so far. They're putting in all the retail units around the edge of area. This starts with them laying a huge square of concrete for the floor. They then bring in reinforced concrete pillars and make a forest of them. A large truck or three will turn up after this, bringing scaffolding, which each pillar is enveloped by. A structure is then built between the tops of the pillars to form the ceiling area. The pillar tops are built out with bits of wood (looks a bit dodgy, this part!) and then mysterious work goes on for a few weeks over the ceiling area while they put the metalwork in place. It seems that concrete is poured in at some point, because some of the scaffolding has been removed on one part and you can now see what the process has been driving towards.

Here's a part where the scaffolding is still in place. You might just make out the top of the pillars and the surrounding structures.



This section has been cleared, and now it is apparent that the pillar tops have been filled with concrete to make a good support for the ceiling. (I'd love to have shares in a concrete company or two having seen the colossal use they make of it here). I assume the metalwork stays in place and reinforces the concrete around it.



Meanwhile, Flipnotics coffee shop around the corner is coming along, there are men digging holes and doing all kinds of things in there so perhaps they'll be open in a couple of months.

Construction and Destruction

I've been putting photos of the new parking garage on here that is being built outside our window, but that is just one one tiny part of the huge amount of construction that is going on in Austin.

There are currently seven new skycrapers scheduled to be built in the heart of downtown, mostly to be offices and condominium/apartment blocks. Here's a big one going in on 2nd street, just east of Congress. Here's a digger, framing the newest existing skyscraper, the Frost Bank Tower:


and here's the big hole they're making. Notice the size of the guys in the hole - you can just see their yellow jackets - to fully appreciate the scale here:


Meanwhile, some destruction is going on too. Until this morning, the Intel shell stood on 5th street. This was started several years ago during the tech boom, but Intel never finished it and gave up their lease, and it stood as an empty, controversial frame until now. There's all sorts of local politics surround this which I won't go into here. This is the building last week:


And this morning at 07:37, it was destroyed by implosion. About a thousand people turned out to watch, including Alan and me. You can see the full sequence here, but here's a couple of shots. BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG (pause) BANG BANG!



*whump!*


I'll probably go down soon to check out the pile of rubble, for completeness. They say it will take a couple of months to clear it. The ends of the building did not fully collapse - I suspect by design; as it's kept the main pile within the boundaries of the site. So there will be men with jackhammers all around soon, I would reckon.
They're going to build a new courthouse on the site but that won't be built for another two years or so yet...

I see tall ships

Well, not really. But you too can see the view from my window with my new Weather Cam!

No more need to look out of your own window to see if it's sunny or not, just look at this instead! Or for those of you not in Texas, see what you're missing! (It rained this morning; it's not all rosy, y'know)

The image will be updated every 5 minutes unless the computer falls over or I need the USB port for something else ;-)

Photo time

I've been making myself reminders of more comparisons to make but you might have to wait for those. Meanwhile, here are some photos.

Although I should mention that last weekend, we attended our first American wedding. The bride is Monica, Alan's fitness instructor from his work. She turns up four times a week to the office gym and puts Alan and some other guys through hell. So she invited the guys to her wedding.

The wedding was held at the Driskill Hotel which is about the poshest place in town, right on 6th and Congress. The proceedings were much as a tradition British wedding would be. However Monica is half Korean, so there were some Korean elements to the ceremony, such as the giving and receiving of a (wooden) wild goose from the groom to the bride's mother, symbolising love and steadfastness as wild geese mate for life.

We enjoyed the wedding reception, although we found it a bit odd that the party stops at 4 in the afternoon. British weddings tend to go on a lot longer. There was also two wedding cakes, one for each of the bride and groom. They were the only real differences to a British wedding though. I did take plenty of pictures, but I don't know Monica well enough (or at all!) to be posting her wedding all over the internet, so tough. All you need to know is that she looked lovely.

Right, here we go.

The car park on the 2nd February:


Sunset on the same day was really nice and covered half the sky. This is a blend of four images, necessary to fit it all in.


The 14th of February and it looks like they have finished the main structure of the car park. I'll get a proper picture later on. The far corner has ended up being recessed which you can't really see here. The big crane is still about but has moved off a bit and men are crawling all over the car park stucture doing various things.


Sunset was nice that day too!


OK, these are from earlier today. Our friends Peggy and Lloyd have mentioned in their blog about the guitar sculptures that are currently taking over downtown. I've seen some of these around and have been meaning to investigate them. So being as it was a glorious day, I went downtown to capture some of them. There's 33 in all and I got 15 of them. I intend to get them all... in due course, in due course...

I couldn't be downtown with my camera and not visit the Capitol Building, which is something I've been meaning to do for months and something always comes up to nix it, or the weather's crap when I have a free day. Ha! Got it today. Will have to go back with a tripod (friendly guard said he's never told anyone off for using one so I should be OK) for more/better interior shots.

The gate:


The building itself, which is 15ft taller than the White House if memory serves. Everything's bigger in Texas!


Inside the main hall, looking up into the dome. This is grainy as hell and I will have to do this properly with the aforementioned tripod but here you go:


Right, Alan's home now and we need beer so I'm signing off.

Shootin'!

We have just come back in from Red's indoor shooting range, to which we were invited by Alan's colleagues Larry and Neil. They have a fine collection of firearms between them and asked us to come and shoot with them.

So, we went along and had the pleasure of firing mainly Ruger and Sig-Sauer pistols, in .22, 9mm and .40 calibers.

Here's a couple of Larry's guns:


Later on, Neil brought in a pair of rifles. One of these is an AR-15, which is the civilian equivalent of an M16 rifle. Here's Alan firing it:


And here's the item in question:


This is a lot easier to shoot than it looks. The recoil is surprisingly light. It's a .223 caliber, so the rounds are not all that big, but the shell cases have a hefty dose of powder which spits the rounds out at very high velocity and creates a HUGE muzzle flash. It's pretty cool.

T'was a good evening. Thanks, Larry and Neil!

A bit of live music and some observations

Alan had to go and meet with a chap on Thursday, so rather than stay in on my lonesome, I went down to the Saxon Pub where our friends Peggy and Lloyd were going to see Carolyn Wonderland, who they have been raving about as being very good. It only took me 50 minutes to make the 3-mile journey down Lamar Boulevard (Austin traffic!) so I was there in time to see the previous lot, Forlini Cross & Holden, who were playing some LOUD blues/rock. It was not bad - the keyboard/bassist had a good voice - but none of us could hear ourselves think!

Here's the culprits:


After a half-hour break, Carolyn Wonderland came on. Here's Carolyn with her drummer behind. Her keyboard player was too far to the right to get into this shot.


These guys were very good (and a bit quieter). Ms Wonderland plays regular guitar, a very small guitar that seemed to be strung like a mandolin, a lap harp and the trumpet.

Peggy and Lloyd told me that a number of their friends have been reading this blog, so hello to y'all! Leave a comment, say hello, I don't bite :-)


Here's a couple of shots that Alan took yesterday from my Jeep's passenger seat as we drove up Congress Avenue. The first one here is just after we crossed the river:


Now we are at the top end of Congress, turning left onto 11th, while Alan captures these anti-Iraq-war protestors outside the Capitol building:



Now, I've been gearing up for a bit of observation for a while. Some little differences between the UK and US.

First up - Washing machines. The tradition in the US is for top-loading machines that gush loads of water in, jiggle the clothes about a bit and spin them. We notice a growing trend for front-loading European style machines. They use about a 1/3 of the water, get the clothes cleaner and damage them less. OK, they take longer to wash but it's worth it. We are looking forward to getting one of these again; right now we are stuck with a top-loader which will have to do.

Light switches. Wall switches toggle the opposite way to those in the UK. And lamps are not switched with a horizontal push-rod but with a rotary thing in-line on the cable. These are a pain, quite frankly, as it's hard to tell when the thing is switched far enough.

Cars. Yes, they are driven on the other side of the road. But did you know that cars in Texas can't be started unless you depress the clutch? Oil changes are more frequent, too, with most cars wanting one between 3000-5000 miles. In the UK it's more like 12,000 miles. I guess the heat has something to do with that one. Likewise, roads here are surfaced with really hard tarmac. It gets very slippery in the wet but does not melt in the heat. British tarmac would be a pool of molten muck in Texas summer temperatures.

Tomato puree. Really! In the UK it comes in squeezy tubes like toothpaste. It is convenient like that. In the US it is called tomato paste and comes in tiny cans, so you have to decant the stuff you're not using into a dish and fridge it with cling film on.

Talking of toothpaste, we are delighted that in the three years since our previous stay in Texas, Colgate have decided to sell Mint Fresh toothpaste. All toothpaste in the UK is mint-flavoured, but American stuff is mostly a wierd cinnamony flavour. It is nice to be able to get minty toothpaste.

The way Americans spell names. I suppose it's a combination of different accents and the way people hear things, but the default spelling of our names seems to be Allen or Joe. For the record, we are ALAN and JO! To be fair, in the UK Alan often gets 'Allan'. I wonder if Jo isn't such a common girl's name here that most people just know the male spelling.

I guess that will do for now on those until I think of some more.

I had a dose of Karma the other day. I took a one-night evening class the other day and afterwards gave a classmate a dollar the other day to be able to get out of the parking garage we were in - she'd got in two minutes too soon and was charged $8 instead of the $3 she was expecting and only had $7 on her. She told me good Karma would come my way. I was in Lowe's two days later and a plant dish that I picked up was 87 cents. Their computer did not recognise the item so the clerk gave it to me. The lady was right!

I bought a micro-cactus to sit on that plant dish. I miss my cacti :-( So now I have a new one. Hopefully the first of many :-)


Last photo for now. We walked back from the Draught House last night where we had spent a pleasant evening with Peggy and Lloyd, introducing them to the dlights of that establishment. The lake in front of the apartments was millpond smooth, so I took this: