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http://www.mysunsetmortgage.com

Thanks for the words of encouragement. Not only do things move in cycles, but it’s also very interesting how different things are depending on where you live.

In the Seattle/Tacoma area for example many residents have told me that the real estate market really hasn’t been too affected by the mortgage meltdown. It’s growing like crazy so there have been plenty of buyers to keep things from dropping out.

Who knows though, I guess I just hope Seattle/Tacoma isn’t hit hard since I just bought a house here, haha!

I’ll be honest, the thought has never crossed my mind. But, now I’m curious so I’m going to try to find out what the deal is. Thanks for highlighting this.

@ Mike,

I completely agree, having the right agent can make things so much easier…and a bad one, just the opposite. We just bought our first house this year and our real estate agent was amazing. She even mowed our lawn before we got here! Made the whole process so easy.

Good advice, thank you!

We were fortunate, when we were looking the first time, to hook up with a young guy who was very organized and very responsive to our needs. And he was terrific at explaining what we needed to know. We were impressed enough to ask him to be our selling agent 3 years later (in March of this year), and he sold our house in 4 days (making us a tidy profit).

When we moved, however, our buying agent made a mess of things. She forgot to keep in mind that we were a young family who was rolling the money we made from the first purchase into the down payment of the second house, and she did not check all the appropriate boxes on the forms we filled out. The upshot was that we had to promise to liquidate assets to cover the down payment if the sale of our first house fell through. We shouldn’t have noticed the mistake and fixted the document, but she has an obligation to double-check as well, and has enough experience that she should have caught the mistake. We were amateurs, but she acted like one. It ended up not being a big deal but caused and incredible amount of anger and stress for both my wife and I. So, yeah, know who you’re working with and make sure you trust them. And read everything closely!

I actually thought about you when writing this post. I remembered you saying that you would be eagerly awaiting a real estate post, sorry I was a little late, haha! Are you happy with your new place?

@ Andrew,

So glad you liked it and got something out of it! I agree that these terms and ideas are essential to know, yet talked about very little or none at all in school. It’s really a shame.

You can know the periodic table of elements cold and have your state capitols memorized, but if you go bankrupt due to poor financial decisions, it won’t help much!

I settled on an apt about a 1/4 of what I pay now, but still…I’m gonna hold a grudge till the next awesome post.