irvinesinglemom_IHB
New member
To my friends in the IHB Community:
Well, to blatantly steal an idea from our beloved Trooper, I would like to briefly take a time out (after 499 previous posts) to reflect since zovall and I started IHB way back a thousand years ago. Well, okay, since zovall posted a question on ocfliptrack.com asking if anybody was interested in helping write for a new blog he was creating, focused on the city of Irvine, and I offered to take a stab at it. I know nothing about the real estate industry - my career has been in drug and medical device manufacturing firms. However, starting in 2004 when I moved from Fullerton to Tustin Ranch, I developed a growing fascination with the housing bubble. We sold our house in Fullerton and bought in Tustin Ranch, and the interactions with our mortgage broker infuriated me. He pressured me (I was the financial decision-maker in the family, not my then-husband) intensely to "buy more house" because he could get me into one worth twice what we ended up buying, given our household income. He also pressured me hard to take on a toxic mortgage with a ridiculously low teaser rate (I think it was like 1.9%, but can't recall for what time period. Probably 6 months).
So we bought the "cheap" house in Tustin Ranch in 2004 for $730,000 against the advice of our broker. A year and a half later I asked my husband for a divorce (and THAT's a story only told over a couple of good martinis!) and we put the house on the market. That was December, 2005. We had spent about $50 grand putting in a new kitchen, new flooring, landscaping, etc. I was getting really nervous by that time - how much longer could these insane prices hold up? I was panicking to move forward with letting the husband know I was leaving him, and getting that house on the MLS, before it all fell apart. So we listed with the local "area expert" for a 1% fee, I cleaned out all our personal effects, and every morning, with a 2 year old in tow, I wiped down every surface to get rid of toddler fingerprints, and I vacuumed the whole damn place, all 2000 square feet, with my son on my left hip (my left biceps were hard as a rock that year). I left that house each morning with it looking like a model home. Then I drove my toddler to daycare and went to work. Can I just tell you, my house looked like a model and I looked like the inside of a garbage can - all sweaty and disheveled from that insanity every morning. Several visiting realtors left comments about how amazingly clean our house was, which was nice. And it sold, in 13 days, for $865,000. Thank god, because I could not possibly have kept up that insanity for much longer. We actually did receive two offers on Day 12 - I saw them with my own eyes. So our realtor let each potential buyer know there was another offer. One took a pass, and one bumped their offer up from $860 to $865. Sold!
At about that time, I discovered <a href="http://www.thehousingbubbleblog.com">Ben's blog</a> and ocfliptrack. And some others...AnotherF$%$'dBorrower, and <a href="http://www.piggington.com">Piggington</a>. I already had the gut feeling that I had gotten out just in the nick of time, and these blogs helped put facts and data behind my instincts. I began to read them all, and while I can never hope to be able to explain how The Great Housing Bubble developed as articulately as IR and others (especially <a href="http://www.calculatedriskblog.com">Tanta</a>, what a genius and what a tragedy!), I have definitely done my share of talking about this fiasco to everyone I know. And I think I might have had an impact! There are at least half a dozen people I work with who are watching my actions closely - that they have told me they won't buy a house until I do so they know it's safe!
I have been renting from IAC ever since. I have to admit I have had some trouble keeping my spending in check and have tapped into my nest egg on more than one occasion. I am not nearly as disciplined as many of you are - I cannot live a scrupulously frugal life. It is just me and my little boy, mostly - we have trouble making friends and I am estranged from my mother and sister. My dad lives in San Diego and I don't get to see him and my stepmom nearly as often as I'd like. So to fill the void, we do a lot of traveling. I take him on mini-vacations all the time to places like Palm Springs and Las Vegas, and last summer I took myself to Utah for a week of hiking bliss at a gorgeous resort. We also both like toys - he the train/truck/videogame kind, and me the laptop/camera/iphone kind. So we live very comfortably and I have to say that there is something to be said for that. It is a trade-off; I could have a fatter nest egg right now, but I have done what I felt I needed to do to slog through an otherwise unspeakably lonely time in my life.
It has been a lot of fun being part of the IHB community. It has been especially fun for me knowing that, through pure good luck I managed to be one of the founders even though compared to the others (zovall, ocfliptrack/effenheimer, evalseraphim, graphrix, and of course IR, just to name a few) I am a very weak contributor indeed! I have to admit, I do miss the good old days of our original blog software, when the Forums were unorganized and new postings just kept piling on every time you stepped away from the computer. I am sure it's just perception and not accurate, but it feels like our participation radically changed from that point. For example, I think LawyerLiz just couldn't handle the change! Having gone to college in Miami, I always enjoyed hearing her Florida perspective.
Cheers to IHB for providing me with ongoing entertainment, education, and companionship over these years. Thank you all!
Well, to blatantly steal an idea from our beloved Trooper, I would like to briefly take a time out (after 499 previous posts) to reflect since zovall and I started IHB way back a thousand years ago. Well, okay, since zovall posted a question on ocfliptrack.com asking if anybody was interested in helping write for a new blog he was creating, focused on the city of Irvine, and I offered to take a stab at it. I know nothing about the real estate industry - my career has been in drug and medical device manufacturing firms. However, starting in 2004 when I moved from Fullerton to Tustin Ranch, I developed a growing fascination with the housing bubble. We sold our house in Fullerton and bought in Tustin Ranch, and the interactions with our mortgage broker infuriated me. He pressured me (I was the financial decision-maker in the family, not my then-husband) intensely to "buy more house" because he could get me into one worth twice what we ended up buying, given our household income. He also pressured me hard to take on a toxic mortgage with a ridiculously low teaser rate (I think it was like 1.9%, but can't recall for what time period. Probably 6 months).
So we bought the "cheap" house in Tustin Ranch in 2004 for $730,000 against the advice of our broker. A year and a half later I asked my husband for a divorce (and THAT's a story only told over a couple of good martinis!) and we put the house on the market. That was December, 2005. We had spent about $50 grand putting in a new kitchen, new flooring, landscaping, etc. I was getting really nervous by that time - how much longer could these insane prices hold up? I was panicking to move forward with letting the husband know I was leaving him, and getting that house on the MLS, before it all fell apart. So we listed with the local "area expert" for a 1% fee, I cleaned out all our personal effects, and every morning, with a 2 year old in tow, I wiped down every surface to get rid of toddler fingerprints, and I vacuumed the whole damn place, all 2000 square feet, with my son on my left hip (my left biceps were hard as a rock that year). I left that house each morning with it looking like a model home. Then I drove my toddler to daycare and went to work. Can I just tell you, my house looked like a model and I looked like the inside of a garbage can - all sweaty and disheveled from that insanity every morning. Several visiting realtors left comments about how amazingly clean our house was, which was nice. And it sold, in 13 days, for $865,000. Thank god, because I could not possibly have kept up that insanity for much longer. We actually did receive two offers on Day 12 - I saw them with my own eyes. So our realtor let each potential buyer know there was another offer. One took a pass, and one bumped their offer up from $860 to $865. Sold!
At about that time, I discovered <a href="http://www.thehousingbubbleblog.com">Ben's blog</a> and ocfliptrack. And some others...AnotherF$%$'dBorrower, and <a href="http://www.piggington.com">Piggington</a>. I already had the gut feeling that I had gotten out just in the nick of time, and these blogs helped put facts and data behind my instincts. I began to read them all, and while I can never hope to be able to explain how The Great Housing Bubble developed as articulately as IR and others (especially <a href="http://www.calculatedriskblog.com">Tanta</a>, what a genius and what a tragedy!), I have definitely done my share of talking about this fiasco to everyone I know. And I think I might have had an impact! There are at least half a dozen people I work with who are watching my actions closely - that they have told me they won't buy a house until I do so they know it's safe!
I have been renting from IAC ever since. I have to admit I have had some trouble keeping my spending in check and have tapped into my nest egg on more than one occasion. I am not nearly as disciplined as many of you are - I cannot live a scrupulously frugal life. It is just me and my little boy, mostly - we have trouble making friends and I am estranged from my mother and sister. My dad lives in San Diego and I don't get to see him and my stepmom nearly as often as I'd like. So to fill the void, we do a lot of traveling. I take him on mini-vacations all the time to places like Palm Springs and Las Vegas, and last summer I took myself to Utah for a week of hiking bliss at a gorgeous resort. We also both like toys - he the train/truck/videogame kind, and me the laptop/camera/iphone kind. So we live very comfortably and I have to say that there is something to be said for that. It is a trade-off; I could have a fatter nest egg right now, but I have done what I felt I needed to do to slog through an otherwise unspeakably lonely time in my life.
It has been a lot of fun being part of the IHB community. It has been especially fun for me knowing that, through pure good luck I managed to be one of the founders even though compared to the others (zovall, ocfliptrack/effenheimer, evalseraphim, graphrix, and of course IR, just to name a few) I am a very weak contributor indeed! I have to admit, I do miss the good old days of our original blog software, when the Forums were unorganized and new postings just kept piling on every time you stepped away from the computer. I am sure it's just perception and not accurate, but it feels like our participation radically changed from that point. For example, I think LawyerLiz just couldn't handle the change! Having gone to college in Miami, I always enjoyed hearing her Florida perspective.
Cheers to IHB for providing me with ongoing entertainment, education, and companionship over these years. Thank you all!
