Proceed to the Closing

More flurries of activity to prepare for the Closing. Interest rates are beginning to rise (Spring/Summer, 2004), so timing is critical.

Our rate lock expires at the end of July. The closing got pushed back to August 3, as the owner and her father were in their home country for the summer. We got our rate lock extended to August 5th. The closing got pushed back to the 5th. Rates were rising. We were sweating.

Owners try to push closing date back again, but this time we push back, too. Let's get this DONE.

Turns out that when an apartment is owned by a girl in her early 20s, and you hold her to a closing date, there are consequences.

The Walk-Through:
It's one hour before the closing. We're in the apartment for the first time since April. The refrigerator, which was broken back in April, is still broken and very smelly. Sub-Zeros are expensive to fix. The range? Some burners work when they feel like it. And the apartment is filled with piles of clothing, piles of kitty litter (seems the Chihuahua was tray-trained) and piles of trash - including broken glass - all over the floor. Some cabinet doors are hanging from broken hinges, and very personal items are strewn throughout the apartment. The air conditioner downstairs blows air, but not cold air.

We decide to push forward anyway, but are pretty darn grumpy - even for two people about to give up their life savings and future income.

Closing Ceremonies:
We get to the managing agent's office, and Jay and I start signing. And signing. And more signing. Papers fly around the conference room table. About an hour into the festival-of-signatures comes the query to the prior owner: stock certificate? No, she doesn't have it. Folders slam closed, people say "well, this is adjourned" and start to leave. WHAT??? A quick cell phone call to her daddy, and he's is on his way with the needed document. Signing resumes.

We had a two-hour window for this closing. That clock has just run out when Daddy finally arrives. Frantic arrangements, rushed paperwork, more signatures, and the apartment is OURS.

That's when the Mythical Renovation begins - a somewhat interesting story....

An Interlude, and An Interview

So now we're engaged, which should make us more attractive to the co-op Board by showing that we're more likely to stay together than if just dating. Jay reiterates that we'll wait until we actually have the same address before we marry, so we can't make the Board feel REALLY sure about our commitment ;-).

With the mortgage broker working her magic on the numbers, and the apartment broker doing nervous handstands as she's got a stake in the Board approving us, we anxiously await our interview. We go over various scenarios and possible questions, and ready our own non-threatening questions in case we get asked "is there anything you'd like to ask US?"

We don't know if we'll meet the whole Board, just a committee, or a consortium of people-hating snobs that want to feel superior by tossing us on our ear. We choose our clothing - fully suited for that "successful professional" look. We arrange to get me into the City at least two hours early in case of transportation issues. Which happen - a 20-minute delay at Hicksville. Randy clears a block of time at work so he won't get hit with a last-minute emergency request.

We get there right on time, thanks to a Starbucks nearby as we were really quite early. We wait a few minutes, then the doorman sends us upstairs. To two remarkably normal-seeming people that seem to be making sure that we have one head each, are not visibly dangerous, and have regular jobs so we won't foreclose right after purchasing the apartment.

They did give us an obligatory light grilling, mostly about our current owned homes and when we'll have them sold along with some job-security feelers. Plus some extra eyebrows for me as I have a zillion dog-related references but no dog...will I be slipping an unauthorized pooch into our apartment without appropriate interviews and maintenance additions???

Once we get through the tough questions, they give us the lowdown on laundry (no washers or dryers in apartments, but laundry facilities with a smart card that we refill with funds), volumes on noise volume (a park nearby can get noisy, but otherwise pretty good on "our" side of the building), and a caption on common-space (see earlier "nearby park" above).

They do not tell us whether we passed. Were they just being nice and will let our broker know they think we're demon-spawn? Are we a shoe-in? Other???

A few days later we received the call. Yes, we're in and living in the building should be interesting....

We Tell All, Bother Many, and I get a HUGE Surprise

The mortgage broker needed all our financial information - where we work and for how long, what we have in the bank, any investments, every penny that comes in and goes out. With copies of all financial statements, pay stubs, and any other piece of paper within reach. That was the less intrusive requirement.

Aaaah, the famed and legendary Co-Op application. No, not in triplicate. In quintuplicate. Financials, personal info, five reference letters for each of us (we did some deep thinking on who to bother to write on our behalf, and still owe those 10 favors), mortgage commitment info, and letters from our workplaces reiterating salaries and how long we've been there, etc. Once again, the Barron Team helped us out by letting us fill out the application pages longhand and having Jennifer amass all the papers, type the information neatly in the usually-too-small boxes, lines and spaces provided, and make the requisite five copies.

We put in our bid which was accepted by the seller in April. It took several weeks to get the mortgage underway and the Board Package prepared. When that was submitted, we settled in for the wait for an appointment to be Interviewed by the Board (what to wear? what to say? more important, what NOT to say???).

We got our interview date for early June.

.....were you waiting for the surprise mentioned in the title? I wasn't, hence the surprise.....

Hunter College High School's Alumna/i/ae (we were an all-girls school, and then there were boys, and plural) Association contacted graduates to be part of a directory. Hmmm - don't know if my address is about to change, but perhaps if anybody contacts me (please do if you're a HCHS alum!) it will get forwarded. And Margaret (now Marge), my friend and classmate who now administers Alum matters, was compiling a collection of essays about where we are now and what we've been doing. So I wrote one. It talked about my jobs, and house, the excitement about possibly moving into a Greenwich Village loft apartment, and my wonderful beau, Jay.

I read my essay to Jay that weekend - it was Memorial Day weekend, 2004. Then he said that on such a beautiful day, we should sit outside on my porch swing (a favorite feature of my house). And then, on that lovely Spring day, he told me that my essay may be incorrect. I had called him my beau. At that moment asked me to marry him. Yup - change beau to fiance!

We were calm and cool about this. Except I realized a few minutes that my eyes had leaked, and hands seemed to be shaking a tad. Also very impressive: the ring fit perfectly. Ummm, how? On one of our train rides from Long Island into The Island of Open Houses, he had jokingly put his hand under mine and commented about how small my hand was compared to his. The secret agenda was that eyeballed measurements were taking place - he measured his own finger and subtracted for the difference he had seen on the train ride. I remain impressed.

So now we're engaged, and ready for life to get a bit more interesting....

Saw Many, Wanted One, But Bid On Another

After the "perfect except for the mashing of the tall guy's head" apartment, we put the search into high gear. We liked the broker we met at the open house for that space, Vickey Barron at Elliman - pictured here. She and her team started looking on our behalf, sending us listings that we'd sometimes seen on the NY Times site, sometimes not.

We spent every weekend running to Open Houses, with the "Barron Team" checking out some of the spaces during the week so we'd go to ones that were better fits, and blow off ones that were not for us. Jay really got into the idea of a loft, so we targeted open spaces. After a few weeks of this, we saw two listings that interested us, both of which had Open Houses on the same Sunday. I liked the second one - a narrow three-floor space that needed a second bathroom (heck - I'll share a bedroom, but a bathroom?). But it had outdoor space - a tiny "backyard" with a little electric lawnmower. With actual bowling balls affixed to the fence. And windows of all the other apartments in the courtyard looking down on the little space. The bottom floor inside was below grade, so it got only light that filtered down a hole dug for ventilation and/or filtered-down teeny bits of light.

The first apartment we viewed that day was also long and narrow, and had two floors. And two bathrooms. Upstairs and most of downstairs was 10'9" wide, if you can believe floorplans. It opened up to a spacious 12' wide. Ooooh - a whole dozen feet. All one room, with the second floor created as a mezzanine. So you enter a double-height foyer (FoyYay!), then the straight stairs disappear into the mezzanine level, and you pass the kitchen and dining area to get to that coveted 12' wide living room. One and a half windows facing west-ish, 14' high. And best of all, it overlooks a little park with a playground behind that. Nobody peeking into your windows (not that what they'd see would be worth viewing). The photos we saw online were taken so the space looked great, and in person it was pretty darn cool if you like exposed brick with lots of character. I do. This pic has the prior owner's furniture, and was from the online listing.
We asked about bidding on the triple-height space with the backyard-ette, but there was already a bid at full asking price which was higher than we could go. So we bid on the duplex loft, even though it needed a heck of a lot of renovation (yes, that's the Renovation in the title of this blog). We were so tired of the process that we added a sweetener to the bid to cement the deal, and then only had the paperwork and board approval and mortgage to go. Which could at best be considered an interesting process....

Fast Forward to a Possible Home in the very small Big Apple

Some of the open houses we visited were clearly not to become our future home. Tiny rooms carved out of what were small rooms to begin with, too far uptown for a reasonable commute to work (with Jay's monstrous hours and my work situation unknown, anything over 96th street was questionable), or too much neighbor-in-the-window potential. Yes, we wanted it all.

Then we saw The Place. A big loft right in the middle of midtown, with gorgeous windows overlooking Bryant Park, and a mezzanine around two sides of the the perimeter that had a bed on one side, and a little place to put an office on the other. And a straight staircase, not a spiral that would have me dizzy every time I changed floors.

A little over our price range, but that wasn't the problem. No grocery stores close by, but that wasn't the problem. A business-oriented neighborhood that pretty much closed up by 8pm, but nope - not the problem. A 2' wide beam that could not be walked around to get from the upstairs bed area to the bathroom and/or stairs - now THAT was the problem. It was 5'9" from the floor. Jay is 5'10". Yes, it would only need to brain him once and he'd never forget to crouch, but just not safe. We heard later on that comedian Andy Dick bought the place - and he's even taller than Jay, but perhaps doesn't need his frontal lobe quite as much?

So the hunt continued. But it wasn't bad, as soon it got interesting....