The House Buying Saga Continues

Well, the house we were trying to buy didn't work out.

We had it inspected and learned that it needs serious foundation work, as well as a lot of electrical work and some plumbing. We had hoped to fix it up with a 203k loan, but that won't cover foundation work, and with all the problems the house has, we wouldn't have anything left for cosmetic work or appliances. On top of that, Citibank, which owns the house (a foreclosure) was fighting us every step of the way (asking for much more than the standard amount of earnest money, not giving us much time for inspections, etc.). We think they were hoping to sell to an investor who would pay cash and not have to deal with all the complications of people who need a loan and actually care about the place being livable in the long term. After a few weeks of alternating between stress and excitement we finally decided it was best to walk away.

We were really disappointed when we began to realize that fixing up this cute 1904 house on a corner lot was a pipe dream, but just as we were coming to a decision we found another house in the neighborhood for sale in our price range. It's a bit more expensive and on a less desirable lot, but it's in a better location (closer in and in easier walking distance of a lot of businesses). We made an offer the day we viewed it and it's been accepted! We're having it inspected this evening.

We know it will need some work, but nothing like what the last one needed. We'll probably use the 203k loan to get some new floors and windows and perhaps some more efficient appliances. Then we'll do some other work ourselves (interior painting, for example), but with the exception of a hole in the basement wall, which the owner has agreed to repair before closing, we expect it to be pretty much up to code.

In the long term we'd like to do more to it (maybe put an addition where the back deck is, so we can have a bigger kitchen and have basement access from inside the house; maybe eventually finish the attic), but with just some minor work it will be a very livable space for us.

We're hoping to close before the end of July and be moved in by the beginning of August.

I can't wait to start putting work into a place where I'll actually get to stay and enjoy the fruits of my labor. I'm very excited about finally getting to have a garden that we plan from start to finish. We plan on doing away with all or most of the lawn (such a waist of energy). We're hoping to attend the FoPo Garden Tour in a couple of weeks, which I'm sure will help us to get some ideas about where to start.

In the mean time, we're focusing our energy on living as cheaply as possible while we scrape together our down payment, and getting our belongings pared down and organized.

Progress on the Home-buying Front

Well, the house we were trying to buy didn't work out.

We had it inspected and learned that it needs serious foundation work, as well as a lot of electrical work and some plumbing. We had hoped to fix it up with a 203k loan, but that won't cover foundation work, and with all the problems the house has, we wouldn't have anything left for cosmetic work or appliances. On top of that, Citibank, which owns the house (a foreclosure) was fighting us every step of the way (asking for much more than the standard amount of earnest money, not giving us much time for inspections, etc.). After a few weeks of alternating between stress and excitement we finally decided it was best to walk away.

We were really disappointed when we began to realize that fixing up this cute 1904 house on a corner lot was a pipe dream, but just as we were coming to a decision we found another house in the neighborhood for sale in our price range. It's a bit more expensive and on a less desirable lot, but it's in a better location (closer in and in easier walking distance of a lot of businesses). We made an offer the day we viewed it and it's been accepted!

We had it inspected last weekend and it will need some work, but nothing like what the last one needed. The 203k loan will cover new windows, roof repairs, exterior paint, and some electrical work. Our biggest worry is that the root of a tree made a hole in one of the walls of the basement. The owner agreed to repair it before closing, but it's looking like the repairs may cost more than the estimate he had gotten, which may mean we'll have to renegotiate. We should be hearing back about the cost sometime today. Some other people have made offers on the house, so we're nervous about the outcome.

If we do get the house we'd like to do more to it in the long term (floors, maybe put an extension where the back deck is, so we can have a bigger kitchen and have basement access from inside the house; maybe eventually finish the attic), but with just some minor work it could be a very livable space for us.

The other piece of the puzzle is coming up with some more money for the down payment. We've spent hundreds of dollars on inspections in the past month, so we're a little shorter than we expected to be at this stage. We've been very good about not eating out or buying anything unnecessary, but it's still been tough to save. Fortunately summer is the busy season for both of our jobs, so we should be able to manage.

We're hoping to close before the end of July and be moved in by the beginning of August.

We've both decided that we really like the neighborhood and will continue looking around there if this house doesn't work out.

My aunt and uncle who've been giving us lots of advice and moral support bought us brunch at Bar Carlo a couple of times. While we were there we ran into a friend of my cousin's who lives nearby and is about to open a new bar on Foster, as well. We've also gotten a good vibe from the neighbors we've met.

My commute to work will still be an easy bus ride (just slightly longer than the ride from our home in Kerns). It will be a big change for Robert, though. We currently live just a mile from where he works, so he can easily walk or ride his bike when the weather's nice on days when he doesn't have to get across town for evening classes. From Fo-Po it's about 4 miles, which he'll have to travel at rush hour. The fastest bus ride is 45 minutes. I don't see him getting up early enough to do that on a regular basis. I think we'll both need to get better bikes if we're going to ride longer distances to work, and that won't be in the budget any time soon.

Could Foster-Powell Be Our New Home?

A couple of weeks ago we made an offer on a house in Montavilla, but the listing agent seems to be pretty disorganized and hasn't been able to tell us if anyone's even looked at it yet. We know that there were a couple of offers ahead of ours, so we're more-or-less giving up on that one.

Over the weekend we viewed a house we liked in Foster-Powell and have decided to make an offer on it.

We had not given much thought to moving to that neighborhood, but a few houses in our price range had popped up in our searches and we decided we should at least check some out. I wrote down a couple of addresses and debated whether or not to include a third that was further southeast. I decided we might as well give it a chance, because it was bigger than most things in our price range, and it turned out to have a lot of potential. It's definitely a fixer, but much cheaper than many of the places we've looked at and on a very nice lot. It will definitely need new floors and windows, and we will want to do some major renovations in the finished attic and turn the unfinished basement into a usable space. It would be a lot of work, but we're excited about the prospect of getting to shape it into the kind of home we want. I was relieved to discover that I can still get downtown on just one bus, too!

Last night I was reading about the neighborhood online and learned that the Foster-Powell Neighborhood Association had its May meeting today, so I decided it was the perfect opportunity for me to go learn more about the area and meet some community members and find out if it was a place I could really imagine living in comfortably.

While there are a lot of charming houses and some nice parks in the area, I couldn't help wondering whether the area still sometimes referred to as "felony flats" had transformed into a vibrant community, and if it had, whether it was a place where a young childless couple would fit in or if we would feel isolated and find the neighborhood boring.

Upon arriving at Sweetness Bakery I was pleasantly surprised to see how many people had turned out to attend the meeting (I'd say around 25). Everyone was friendly and welcoming and I was relieved to see a wide age range, including a few people who I'm pretty sure were younger than myself.

It quickly became apparent that while the neighborhood is certainly not as hip as Kerns (where we currently rent a house) and lacks some things that we desire in a neighborhood, that the residents are actively working towards making Foster-Powell a more lively, walkable, safe, and attractive part of town.

Like the house we hope to soon call our home, Foster-Powell needs some work, but is full of potential. I am pleased to know that the first and perhaps most difficult step, establishing a group of people committed to working towards a common goal, has already been achieved.

Cutting Down on Eating Out

Though we're pretty good about not blowing money on things we don't need, Robert and I both have a bad habit of eating out more often than we should. Working in areas of Portland that are heavily saturated with restaurants doesn't make resistance easy. We like to support the local businesses we love and enjoy having the opportunity to sit down and relax while someone else does the cooking.

I wouldn't want to give up eating out all-together. Why live in a city like Portland if you're not going to enjoy what it has to offer? We definitely need to cut down, though.

We have no savings. Literally none. Of course I'm not making much money right now and we have a lot of expenses (my student loans,Robert's tuition, credit card payments, a car payment, health insurance, medical bills, etc) but we could be saving a chunk each month if we were more disciplined about little things.

Our lease is up in July and we are hoping to get out of this house, which needs a lot of work that the property managers seemingly aren't willing or able to deal with. After doing a little research we determined that buying a modest house with an FHA loan (Robert's been pre-approved) is plausible and probably makes more sense than moving into another rental. Robert's mom is willing to help us with a down payment, but we will need to come up with about two thousand dollars, by our estimates.

After looking at a house and crunching some numbers we agreed that we would eat out no more than once a week and keep track of all our purchases. Having just looked at my debit card statements for March and April I can say that this will definitely make a significant difference. It's amazing how much a few meals and a couple of cups of coffee each week add up.

Yesterday I spent $20.50 on a week's worth of Trimet passes. Robert spent a couple bucks on coffee so that he could study for a test at a coffee shop after work (he gets distracted too easily at home). He packed his lunch the last two days. I got free pizza for lunch at work yesterday and ate at home today. I made a big batch of quinoa and lentils with tomatoes, spinach, onion, fennel, and garlic, which should provide us with leftovers for at least a couple of days.

This is going to take some planning and a lot of discipline, but I think it will be good for us. In addition to saving money, I know this will be better for our health and will also create less waste.

Junk (or) Food?

A few days ago while perusing Facebook I came across a New York Times piece about a blogger who lost her high paying job and now dumpster dives to feed her family. I was reminded of my young starving artist friends in Columbus, Ohio who did this a decade ago, even before the recession hit.

One guy knew some employees at a local bagel shop who double bagged all the store's day old bagels in clear trash bags and tossed them in the dumpster. If he got there in time he could score dozens of free bagels.

Some others would go to the dumpster at World Market where they could find things like gourmet chocolates, just past their sell-by date, the box still wrapped in cellophane.

I never got my own food that way (though I certainly partook in the offerings of my resourceful friends on occasion), but my first apartment was furnished with a wide variety of slightly damaged items that my roommate and I found abandoned in our back ally. Among these treasures was a fuzzy-sounding, but functional antique record console. I had only a few records, but my roommate had a fantastic collection. It was in our eclectically decorated living room that I first fell in love with Hank Williams, Sr. and Stevie Wonder. There was nothing more exciting for us than discovering a new treasure that some neighbor had discarded. What we didn't scavenge from the street we got as hand-me-downs from friends and family or bought at our neighborhood Volunteers of America thrift store for next to nothing.

Portland is a city with a real appreciation for things old and used. I think far less goes to waste here than in many other cities. The downside is that it's more challenging to find such items for free and the thrift stores, while plentiful, are pricier and more picked over.

But even in Portland's ultra-green culture there is a stigma surrounding this kind of living. Many people would rather buy cheap, poorly constructed, new consumer goods than used ones, much less pull them out of a dumpster. I think this clip from Portlandia expresses what the general populace thinks about dumpster diving O

While this is meant to be satire, most things on the show are only a slight exaggeration of Portland culture. I can't help but worry that poking fun in this way may only serve to perpetuate the cultural divide between those who reuse/upcycle and those who think doing so is icky.

Everyone I've known who gathered the discarded goods of others was pretty conscious of sanitation. Certainly there are people who eat food straight out of the trash, but I do think this is an area in which one's standards are usually relative to one's level of desperation. Most environmental activists wouldn't go so far as to eat something they found that might be unsafe to eat for the sake of avoiding waste.

I often wonder at what most people are willing to put in their bodies without a second thought ("foods" made from genetically modified crops and artificial substances and riddled with pesticides and antibiotics) while maintaining the notion that it's unsafe and disgusting to eat something that someone else didn't want and tossed in a bin simply to get it out of the way.

I am fortunate to be financially stable enough to be on the throwing away side of the equation, but not to such an extent that I can afford to throw away much.

Ever since I moved out of my parents' home I've cringed at the thought of letting food go to waste. When I spent two years as an unemployed student in Eugene scraping by on student loans and whatever I could get for selling my books, clothes, and plasma, I gained a deeper appreciation for having enough to eat.

I learned a lot about avoiding waste during the years I spent as a line cook at small independent restaurants in my early to mid twenties. I don't always do it as much as I should, but I try to remember to save my vegetable scraps to make stock for soup, to use up older ingredients before opening new ones, to make substitutions in recipes in order to use what I have available instead of buying extra items that I am unlikely to use again, to label and date food containers so that I know what I have and how old it is. In addition to creating less waste, this saves money. It's something that I am trying to be more consistent about.

It's mind-boggling how much perfectly good food goes to waste in this country between corporate policies (an old roommate of mine was written up by one of his managers at Wild Oats for eating soup that was going to be thrown away) and thoughtless or absent-minded consumers (myself included). A 2008 New York Times article sites a government study that shows that 27 percent of America's food available for consumption is thrown away. Of course a lot of that is perishable items that weren't used in time (something that can be prevented with better planning), but certainly a significant portion is discarded long before it becomes unsafe to eat.

It's daunting to imagine how much space in landfills is taken up by the day old bagels that went un-salvaged.

Getting Around

As the weather has turned drearier and the days have become shorter, my bike-riding motivation has dwindled. Last week I didn't ride at all, which I can blame partially on the fact that I was house sitting in a different neighborhood. I rode only one day a week for the two weeks before that. I'm trying to make a point of riding on days when the weather is particularly bearable, but these are becoming fewer and farther between. I need to work on this. I can feel the lack of exercise slowly eating away at my energy level. Ugh. Vicious circle.

I have, at least, continued to get to work by public transit the vast majority of the time.

House sitting near MLK and Alberta last week afforded me the opportunity to try out some different commuting routes. I took the MAX home one day, not remembering how far Interstate is from MLK over there. It was about a 15 minute walk, which is certainly doable, but not always ideal. After that I took the 6 to and from work, which only takes 5 minutes longer than my commute from home in Kerns. In the past I had only taken the 6 north from inner SE or NE, and hadn't even realized that it went across the river to the heart of downtown. Good to know! I also got to explore the neighborhood a bit on foot. I bought some groceries (produce, fresh bagels, and Cafe Mam beans) at the Alberta Co-op and got coffee (in a completely compostable cup) at Extracto.

Tonight I took the 20 further east than I ever have to attend a GRE study group at the Midland Library on SE 122nd. I rarely go out to that area and think of it as being far away, but it was only a 20 minute bus ride. The 20 runs frequently enough, even in the evening, that it was quite easy and convenient to get there and back from my neighborhood.

The more I use Trimet the more impressed I am with how easy it is to get around, even outside of the downtown area. Now, if only I could count on the buses not passing my stops before their scheduled times, commuting would be very low stress for me most of the time!

Tomorrow I have a new challenge. I work at 4am, but the earliest Trimet could get me to work is after 5. The chances of my motivating myself to ride my bike to work in the rain at 3:30 am are slim. I was thinking about walking, but am not sure how wise it would be to go for a 45 minute walk by myself in the middle of the night. Robert expressed concern about the idea and offered to drop me off if I wake him up when it's time to go. I am still debating whether or not to take him up on it. I probably won't decide until morning.

Trouble with Trimet

This I had my first really bad Trimet commuting experience.

There were a lot of issues this evening (most notably the MAX stopping service during President Obama's arrival at the Oregon Convention Center), but my trouble was long before that came into play.

This morning I used Trimet's Trip Planner, as I often do, to determine which bus I would take to work. There were a 12 and a 19 (about equidistant from me) at the same time. I decided to catch the 19 because it would get me to my destination a few minutes earlier than the 12 would. That is, it would have if I had succeeded in catching it.

I began the two block walk 3 minutes before the bus was due, expecting the it to arrive at my stop about a minute after I got there. When I was a block away I saw the bus blow by the stop on Glisan two minutes before the Trip Planner told me it would arrive, according to the time on my cell phone.

I ran down the residential street of which I had reached the corner, hoping I might be able to beat it to the next stop, but I was not so lucky. I immediately called the Trimet info line (503-238-7433) to find out when the next 19 would arrive at my stop. It was supposed to come in 20 minutes. So much for getting to work early!

As the minutes passed a few more riders arrived at the stop. One man periodically stepped out into the street to watch for our bus. As the scheduled arrival time drew near I wondered if this one would be early like the last, and peered down the street. I could see the previous stop and there was no bus in sight. Two 19s going the other way had already gone by.

After a few more minutes the bus still had not appeared. I called the info line again and it now listed the time of the next bus. I hung up and called back, entering the code for service alerts this time, but the recording informed me that there were no service alerts for my bus line. I could tell the other people at the stop were beginning to become agitated, too.

I called the number one more time and this time entered the code for customer service. After a minute or so on hold I got to talk to a person. I explained to her that my bus had been early and that the next one was now 12 minutes late. She said she didn't know of any delays, but said that she would check. It turned out, she informed me, that the overdue bus had never left the garage!

She was able to tell me the expected arrival time of the next bus and also answered my questions about nearby lines and even offered to call or email my employer to explain why I would be late. I must say I was impressed with the customer service I received from the line (I have not yet gotten a reply from Trimet's Twitter account).

I finally reached my destination nearly an hour later than expected.

I expect public transit to have issues from time to time. I know that some delays are unavoidable. I have, however, noticed that buses, especially in the Kerns neighborhood, often leave (or pass) stops a minute or two early. My roommate, who also frequently commutes by bus, has had the same trouble.

Also, Trimet's failure to put information about the bus that never came on their info line resulted in a number of riders (at least 5 at my stop alone) from finding alternative transportation. I could have gotten where I was going much sooner if I'd known the 19 wasn't coming and had walked a couple of blocks to catch the 12.

I don't mind doing the extra planning it takes to commute without a car, but if I can't get accurate information about when buses are arriving, planning is futile.

I think Trimet is far superior to the public transit in many other cities, but there are some things it really needs to work on.

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Update 10/21 (the next day):

Trimet responded to my tweets this morning. They requested details from me and confirmed that the first bus was, by their clock, 1 minute early, and the second was out of service.