The sweet taste of victory

• Amount of dollars increase from monthly rent to mortgage payments: at least $1000
• Amount of money given away at closing: a lot. :)
  
• Number of packages needed to be sent in order for one to arrive: 4
• Number of weeks delayed from original closing date: 2
• Number of sellers needed to fly in from Germany at the last minute: 1
  
• Number of times I just wanted to throw my hands up and quit: too many to remember
• Number of people around the table at closing: 9
  
• Number of our new apartment: 305
  
• Value of finally owning a new home: priceless.

Thanks to everyone for your support during the last trying month. If anyone out there needs a trusted agent, look no further than Elley Kott and Kira Epstein. Anyone can tell you where to look for a place and where to sign your name, but when the going gets tough (as it did too many times in this case), some realtors just go through the motions and some go the extra mile. Elley and Kira went at least 100 extra miles to make sure we got to closing and then added some extra emotional support along the way. They fought our fight and sheperded us through the process like it was their own. We wouldn't have gotten here without them.

Buying property is a real bitch, but if you have the right people on your side- from realtors to mortgage brokers (yay Seth!), at the end of the day, when all is said and done, it's a real rewarding experience.

Now, onto the renovations...!

Real Estate Blues, part Zvvei

The saga just doesn't end.

Last week, we left off with the main characters very sad and stressed out about their temporary living situation. Since then, a lot has happened, but not much has changed.

Once we decided to walk away from buyer #1, we were left in a bind with the apartment we wanted to buy: do we let it go or do we try to somehow find short-term financing to cover for the money we were going to use from the sale of Andrew's apartment? We literally only had a few days to figure it out, and thankfully, we were lucky enough to get it done.

So it's February 13th and closing is scheduled for Thursday, February 15th. The seller (we'll call him Doctor), who lives in Germany, had just put signed documents that we need at closing in the mail through DHL. In the meantime, Washington and most of the Northeast get a ton of ice dumped on them and the airports shut down. DHL was unable to deliver the package on time- as it turns out, DHL was unable to locate the package AT ALL. So the Doctor went back to the consulate, signed and notorized the papers a second time, and sent them off- this time thru UPS. We're told the package will be delivered by Saturday, February 17th, so we rescheduled closing for Tuesday, February 20th. OK, no big deal, so the closing got delayed by a few days, but it's only paperwork that holding it up, so what can possibly go wrong, right??

WRONG!!

Saturday February 17 comes and goes. We check out the status of the package and, as of 5:10am local time on February 16th, the papers left Cologne, Germany. We called UPS and all they can tell us is that the package is somewhere in Pennsylvania but they don't know where. They can put a trace on it, but it will take at least eight days. EIGHT DAYS!!

At this point, the closing has been indefinitely postponed. The Doctor was on business in Luxembourg, but he was going to try getting it nortorized there and perhaps this time use FedEx. Turns out, the private notary needed to get the docs translated into German, as required by law, but our the company we are using for title only accepts a US consular notary, so that would be a waste. So he goes to the Consulate, but it turns out the Consulate only notorizes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and he got only on Wednesday, and wasn't going to be back in Germany until Thursday night, so the earliest he could get the papers sent would be Tuesday, February 27th. Argh. And the frustration and stress continue...

Thankfully, the Doctor was able to get to the Consulate on Thursday. He got the papers notorized yet again and shipped them International Express...but thru DHL, since that's the company the Consulate uses. So, we track the package online all day Thursday and Friday and everything looks good- the package left Luxembourg, took detours in Belgium and the UK, and was on it's way over the Atlantic. We figured that by the time Shabbat is over, the package will have already been delivered, safely and soundly. Right?

WRONG!!

(You didn't think this would end normally, did you?)

Right after Shabbat, we check the status online. And what do we find? The package arrived in Ohio yesterday and left the facility for...drum roll please...WASHINGTON, PA! At 9am, it left the facility in Washington, PA, for delivery, and by 2pm, it was discovered that the address didn't exist, so it was being sent back to the sender. You think I'm kidding, don't you? Check it out for yourself- tracking #4813941952.

But, there seems to be a silver lining, we hope. We frantically called DHL and find out that they realized their mistake (DUH!) and the package should be on it's way to DC as we speak. Yeah, right.

If you're interested in living thru this experience with us, feel free to check in on our package every few hours. For up to the minute tracking details, track package #63413351746.

At this point, all I can do is laugh. This has gotten to be one of the most ridiculous things I've ever been involved in and really can't put into words how ridiculous it is. You'd think that perhaps we just weren't meant to buy this apartment, but at this point, there's no turning back without significant financial loss. Not that I want to turn back. But WTF??

Real Estate Blues

Everyone keeps on asking how married life is treating me. For the last six months, we kept hearing how the engagement is the worst part of your life and the first year of marriage is the toughest, so we've been quite prepared, mostly thinking that everyone was referring to what our relationship was going to be like. What nobody prepared us for was what crap the outside world would heap on us once we started making big plans, like, say for instance, figuring out where we would live.

The original plan was to sell Andrew's 1-br apartment and buy a 2-br condo. Andrew's apartment went on the market the second week of December. A couple people came along 3 weeks later and placed a bid. By January 2, a contract was signed and a buyer was found. Not bad for a declining market. Then we got married, came back to DC, placed a bid on an apartment we really liked. A day later, another contract was signed and we started making plans for our new home. And then God started to laugh...

Slowly, things started to unravel. Our buyer was an older woman working for the embassy of Country "G." As a diplomat, she was required to waive her diplomatic immunity in order to receive the loan she qualified for to purchase this apartment. Traditionally- no, wait, actually, by law- immunity must be waived by a government official. This is a very important point to keep in mind, as it seems some people from Country G (and their agents) don't really believe this.

After waiting until two days before the closing date, the buyer got the diplomatic waiver form signed and submitted it to the bank for approval. Unfortunately for us, though, this particular bank did not accept the signature of a "school teacher" as the official representative of Country G, waiving this buyer's diplomatic immunity. Who woulda thunk that a school teacher's signature wouldn't be sufficient for the bank? Man, banks these days...so demanding...

Closing date came and went. Buyer informed us she found a lender who did not require the immunity waiver form and that it would take 10 days to process the loan. Being the nice people that we are, we gave her an extension to secure financing. At the same time, we were told that as long as she took the waiver form to the Ambassador, he would sign it. So there was hope that either option would work. After being reassured by the new lender that the loan would go thru, we were told that the new lender was just bought out by Wachovia and that Wachovia would not allow the loan to be processed without the waiver. OK, but there's still a chance to get the waiver signed by the Ambassador, right? WRONG! It turns out that, while Spain and France and countless other countries have waived diplomatic immunity so that their diplomats could buy property and receive loans in the United States, Country G won't allow it. Country G instead likes to be different and screw with people for their own fun and enjoyment. (Do I sound bitter? No, I'm not bitter. Why would I be bitter?)

So, we're back to square one. We've given this lady enough chances and we decided it was time to just walk away. After busting our butts to get that apartment empty a week after our wedding so that it could be sold before the end of the month, Andrew's apartment is back on the market, the prospects of actually buying the apartment we were planning on living in for the next 5-7 years decreasing by the minute, and we're living out of boxes in my 1-br place for the forseable future. How does that sound for the first one month of married life?

We all say that God has a funny way of handling things but that they happen for a reason and everything will work out in the end. So perhaps this is your lucky day. Anyone out there interesetd in a terrific 1-br apartment in Foggy Bottom/West End? Let us know...

Prescription Drug Costs

The New York Times's second editorial this morning praises the state of Texas for becoming the first state to require vaccinating girls against HPV. The new drug, Gardasil, boasts being the only drug to guard against the disease that causes cervical cancer in women. Opponents of the mandatory vaccination have nothing more against it than they do against condom distribution in schools, family planning advice, and the birth control pill: that it will promote sexual promiscuity. Of course, we all know that to be false, so there's no point in even trying to debunk that statement. As Governor Perry recently said, the HPV vaccine promotes promiscuity just as much as the Hep B vaccine promotes drug use.

I'm quite impressed that Texas was the first state to pull this off. But other states are not just sitting and doing nothing. Virginia and Colorado are both moving to mandatory vaccinations as well. As is Illinois and probably a bunch of other states as well.

While all of this is good news for the fight against cancer in general, in it's congratulatory editorial, NY Times is overlooking an important issue that is rearing it's ugly head once again: the cost of the drug. A full round of the vaccine (3 doses over an 8-month period) costs $360. While most insurance companies are covering the vaccine, they are reimbursing only $2-$15 for each $120 dose. That leaves the doctor covering at least 85% of the full cost they pay Merck, the makers of the drug. So doctors are either not providing the vaccinations, charging their patients a surcharge, or writing prescriptions for the patients to purchase the vaccine and bring it back. All this does is pass the bloated costs of the drug onto the patients. Meanwhile, Merck is spending it's time lobbying state legislators to pass the mandatory vaccination bills and donating tens of thousands of dollars to their campaigns (see Virgina). What about just lowering the cost of the drug?

What actual good do these laws do if the doctors can't afford to stock the drug and the patients are saddled with the high costs? Will costs naturally come down once the drug becomes mandatory? I'm not an expert in medical economics, and my gut feeling could be wrong, but somehow I doubt it.

Is anyone else as fascinated by what's going in Venezuela as I am?