28 January 2012 - How about a new...

We have been staying in our apartment @ Palomino for about 3 months now and we can't take it anymore because we've been having so many problems with...:
- Water
- Shower
- Fire place
- Heater during the entire winter
- ...and for each, the repair man came several times.


In total, we have called 20 times the repair man in 3 months!!! AMAZING!! So, we have decided to give an end to these problems and though to "eventually" move to a new place.


Our house hunting began end of January with an open house. Nothing really fancy but it was still interesting to see what you can get and for what price. We met our real estate agent, Denise, during this very first visit and since then, she helped us to find our new house. Overall, we have seen about 18-20 houses I guess...and believe it or not, the house that we "fell for" was one of the very first one we visited!


Now, it is good to have found a house but it is even better to have the financing to buy it...and welcome again to America with their "credit history"!!! So my next challenge was to find a lender willing to finance our new home. Do you know many people willing to give you USD300k not knowing anything about you and not being able to get any information about you!!! That has been the greatest challenge of my lender, Mike, from Wells Fargo. The fist time I met him he told me: "ok, let's see what we can do, I don't see how I can help you as you do not have any credit history"...so I told him: "well, this is exactly why I am here and I am sure that we will find a solution"... 


Within the next couple of weeks, I had to give him "proofs" of being a good payer while in Switzerland. So it was a race to have letters from car insurance, utilities, TV and telecom, credit cards, etc... It was quite challenging, in particular for the Credit Cards has I was not too sure how these companies would react. At the end it went well and in less than 3 weeks, I received my "pre-approval letter" for a loan of USD300k!!!


Once you have been pre-approved, it is much easier to "shop" for houses as you are backed up by the bank and the seller feels more keen to sell you his house.


On the weekend of the 10th of March, we went to see (again) the house that we liked and decided to send a proposal to the seller. OMG, I could not sleep at all that night and I finally got a relief on Monday morning @ 07:28 AM when Denise confirmed the sales...

It's a done deal ;-)

We got the house at a very good price...(that's all I'll say about it). And for those who wants to know, there are several US web site which will give you all the details about it (i.e.: Zillow.com).

At about the same time, we also got the final approval from the bank with the confirmation of the interest rate which has been locked for the next 30 years: 3.875% (this is a historically never-been-so-low interest rate), simply fantastical!!!

More details on the house once we will have signed all document. Expected to happen on the 16th April 2012!