Very Few Have Hit the Mark

It’s update time!

It’s funny, we’ve been so busy with all of this house stuff, but it doesn’t feel like anything new has happened lately… it also feels like we’ll never be done with all of these meetings we have to go to and all of these decisions we have to make. I can’t wait until it’s over! I just want to sit back and watch my house get built… and then move in of course!

So far we’ve gone to see the door and window specialist and the cabinet-makers. We still have to go see the people for the plumbing and the tiles and carpets and some others that I just can’t think of right now!

As for work, I’m happy to report that I’ll be starting another contract on April 1st, this one will be for 3 months. While working on 3 month contracts isn’t ideal, I also know that it’s an easy way of avoiding having to publicly post the job opening and possibly have someone else get my job! I just don’t know how this is going to work with insurance and benefits and stuff. I’ll have to wait and see.

Oh, we also went to the Youth Action Montreal conference “Less Talk, More Action” on March 22nd, where David Suzuki and Al Gore were keynote speakers. It really is something to see a bunch of young people banding together in such an important cause, it really is inspiring! David Suzuki is an amazing speaker and so interesting to listen to and so knowledgeable, it’s no wonder he’s so widely respected. Al Gore was also really impressive to see. He stuck rather close to his traditional slide presentation which had obviously been updated to relate to our situation here in Canada. He even acknowledged Quebec as a driving force for environmental action in Canada, which is something all of us Quebecers can be proud of! Al Gore was also presented with an honourary degree from Concordia University, which is also pretty neat!

Hey, I also saw Stephen Harper that day too; it made for a lot of celebrities in one day! I also attended the Americana conference earlier in the same day. Oddly enough, Stephen Harper was the honourary president of this environmental conference and gave an invitation-only speech on the last day of the conference. Not only did I not have an invitation to his talk, I didn’t even have a pass for the conference! My pass was good for the tradeshow but would not allow me into the conference itself. Well, it wasn’t supposed to, anyway! I simply snuck in along with a bunch of my old coworkers from Ottawa. Getting into the Stephen Harper talk was pretty easy after that, we just went into the room before security started taking invitations at the door. So we got there really early and sat right up front. Forty-five minutes later Harper was announcing new initiatives for the environment including national regulations and projects that are closer to home than paying large sums of money to foreign countries (am I hearing another dig against Kyoto??). Anyway, it’s funny how the Harper administration has suddenly become so environment-conscious. Goes to show that what the people want the people will get!

Shall we continue with the politics? Yeah I know it’s not something I get in to often, but all of a sudden I’m immersed in it, so there you have it! Anyway, good on the Liberals for just squeaking by in the provincial elections, and good on the PQ for their poor showing. I don’t want to hear anything about referendums and sovereignty, especially now that I’m now a property owner. I really don’t feel like having to deal with my property value dropping significantly just because the PQ comes into power again. No thanks!

Ok, enough.

Our Hell is a Good Life

It's officially official! We bought a house! Actually, right now it's a $260,000 field of dirt because there's nothing there, yet! But someday it'll look a lot like the photo of the house I posted a couple entries ago.

We signed the mortgage agreement with National Bank yesterday evening and the groundbreaking for our brand new home in Vaudreuil should be in a couple of weeks. Our date of occupation is set for August 17th.

Anyway, I joined Facebook, which I'm really enjoying. What I love about it, is that you can post as many photos as you want, so I plan to take advantage of that. My plan is to take a photo of the house every time I go and visit and post it in an album on Facebook as a sort of time-line as the house progresses. I mean, we have to go out there every weekend anyway to supervise the construction and make sure nothing gets screwed up, so we might as well snap a few photos. And it's so much easier and quicker to upload photos to Facebook than it is to stick them here in the blog.

So we've already had one meeting with our real-estate agent representing the construction company to discuss some of the main construction options for the house. This included the heating system, where we want to knock down walls, deciding on whether or not we want air conditioning, central vacuum, deck, garage service door, etc. Anything that would have to actually be modified in the construction of the house itself. We have another meeting tomorrow to discuss other options (although I don't exactly know what those options are), a third meeting later on to decide on colours and patterns for floors, tiles, carpets, cabinets, bricks, roof tiles and soffits and fixtures such as handles, lighting and faucets. So much to decide!

It's Very Funny 'Cuz I've Got Your F***ing Money

Alright alright alright. Shopping around for houses and going to appointmants with banks is a lot of work. I'm so glad it's almost over! Visiting houses isn't so bad, but the banks have really given us a run for our money, so to speak - har har har.

When Mike and I got our first pre-approval with CIBC, we were so excited because we managed to get such a fantastic rate (prime was 6.0% at the time and we managed to get an interest rate of 4.82% for 4 years). It was around that time we discovered a house from Construction Farand that we both absolutely love and no matter how many houses we visisted afterward, it was that model we kept going back to. Same house from the previous post, by the way. After talking to the real estate agent, we found out that we couldn't get financing through our bank of choice, because the construction company uses National and Royal Bank. So our fantastic rate was out the window; not worth a thing. That was a let-down, because all of the other banks were offering around 5.30%, which would have amounted in us paying an extra $2,250 during the term. What a waste!

So we went to Royal Bank. Our guy there was able to offer us a rate of 5.15% for 4 years. Better, but not close. We also had an appointment with National Bank, but since that bank is much smaller, we weren't expecting anything and decided to get pre-approved with Royal. It was only then we discovered that there was a limit of 120 days on the rate guarantee and there was no way out house could be ready by then.

Well, this was when we really started getting bummed out. It seemed like every time we made any progress, something would pop up to work against us and send us 3 steps backwards. And it's so stupid; we're model cleints with no debts, plenty of money for a down-payment and steady well-paying jobs. So why were the banks making it so difficult for us to finalize a mortgage rate? It didn't make any sense!

Seems we're finally making progress though. National Bank blew us away with a surprise offer for 5.04% over 7 years and $500 cash-back to put towards notarial fees... care to beat that Royal? We'll see who's got the best rate in the end. Pitting banks against each other is fun! We're so tired of running around and constantly negotiating: let someone else do the fighting now!