BogoSort

Or perhaps open for visitors…

Finished all of the settlement wackiness in about an hour and a half.

Went to the bank in the morning to acquire a certified check.  Luckily I have a PNC account where the fee for getting a certified check is waived.  Certainly pays to retain those last few ties that I have to Pittsburgh.

Met up with Frank who was sitting in for Bob on my day of settlement.  We did a final home walkthrough/inspection to make sure that the place was still there, intact, and all the components that were agreed to on the contract were left behind.  It went pretty quickly, as the previous owners did a good job of cleaning the place, and everything was quickly verified to be in proper working order.  Supposedly not everyone does the final walkthrough/inspection on the day of settlement.  Just seems like a terrible way of having major catostrophies occur to the property between the last time that it was seen and when it was bought.

At the Coldwell banker office, the settlement process seemed to go pretty smoothly.  Amusingly enough the seller’s agent also had a prior commitment, so both agents were substitutes.  There’s the occasional odd question(the sellers were asked if they were continuously married during the duration that they owned the place for example), but in the end, I bet each of those have a good story behind them.  After a lot of handshakes, and signing of tons of paper(which I didn’t read all of) I’m now the proud owner of a townhome!

Things of note for me to remember that came up during signing:

My FHA loan is apparently transferable.  Which means that if I ever do decide to sell the property later, someone can get it transfered to their name and finish out the payments.  Since I have an absurdly low 5% interest rate, this is a nice selling point.

I should always keep around a copy of my title insurance forever(even if I’m no longer the owner).  There’s the occasional weird circumstance that may require it.

While at my home for the first time(and talking on the phone with my mom while walking around it), I managed to lock myself out by walking out onto the deck and failing to realize that there was an generic non-deadbolt closing lock on the door.  A minute or so of finangling with a credit card got it open, but it just shows that I need to deadbolt that door for security purposes.  Luckiy I don’t live in Cambridge, and thus breaking into my own home is ok.  Also, I’m amazed that I managed to miss the fact that there’s RJ45(Ethernet) scattered throughout the house.  The prior owners apparently put furnature in front of all the jacks as though they were embarassed by it!  Had dinner at Wegmans, which is about a 5 minute walk(I suspect that I’ll be doing this multiple times a day).