A Condo Sold, A House Purchased

It's been a month since my last post. What have we been up to?

Well, we closed on our condo on 11/14 and closed on and moved into our new house 11/15.

Apparently, when you sell your property, there is little or no need for you to be present for the closing. Everything is a formality from your side. It is the buyer who has all of the responsibility. They must understand what they're getting into, from the property lines to the financing. The latter is probably the most important part - the lender wants to make sure that you know that you owe them a lot of money for a very long time; and if you fail them, they will take everything you have, and would own you in your next life if they could.

The condo closing went seamlessly. There was some delay, but all resolved and we got paid. From that point, though, we were not living in our condo anymore, but were renting the place for a day from the new owner. This is called a lease-back. It felt strange renting our place, but was worth the money.

Thursday was our big day. It was coordinated and delegated. My mother picked JD up on Wednesday and would bring him to the new house on Friday after the move. My mother-in-law showed up at 7am so she could supervise the move. The movers would come to the condo at 9am. My wife gave me power-of-attorney to sign all of the papers at the 9am closing, as she had to work. The first furniture delivery had a delivery window between 11:30am and 1:30pm. Everything had to go according to plan.

(Note: For anyone out there who will at some point have POA in this circumstance, make sure that you practice signing the person's name! You will have to sign it many many times and if you're not practiced at it, it takes longer and there is a greater possibility for a mistake. Mistakes are bad on these forms.)

I was able to overcome my failure to practice signing my wife's name. My mother-in-law made sure the movers did what they needed to do. The closing went smoothly and I made it to the house well before Room & Board showed up to deliver our bedroom and living room furniture. The movers showed up not long after and they had everything put into our house by around 6pm.

We have been in our house for over two weeks now and we are very happy here. There were a few unexpected things and we are still learning the idiosynchrosies of the house, but I am very happy here, as are JD and my wife. He's so happy here, that he started crawling the first day that we were moved in!