Z/Web

Of course everything in this house-buying process is nerve-wracking and terrifying. There are so many possible mistakes to make. It’s a huge commitment, the financial burdens are immense, and it seems like every day there’s a twist that could ruin all the careful planning. One of these occurred to me over the weekend when I suddenly realized that I might have made a mistake. You see, when I negotiated the sale of my place here, the company buying it told me that due to cash flow issues they couldn’t come up with the full price in 30 days. At first I thought the deal was over and I wouldn’t be able to buy the house in Oregon. Then I realized that as long as I had enough cash in 30 days to cover the down payment and moving expenses, we could still make the deal work. So we agreed on a split payment deal where the buyer pays me some money in 30 days and the balance in 90. That sounded good to me until someone pointed out that there ought to be an interest penalty or something if they didn’t pay me that second installment on time. That’s when I realized that there’d be little to stop the company from delaying that payment or even paying it at all: it’d cost a fortune for me to take them to court to force payment and by that time I’d already be moved to Oregon in my new place and I’d have relinguished all rights to my current place. This made me nervous, so nervous that I actually visited a lawyer to get some advice. He agreed with my thinking: I basically am extending the company an unsecured loan. He advised I talk to them about securing the loan, perhaps attaching it to the property in some way so that they couldn’t sell it without paying me off first. So that’s the plan there.

I’d originally planned to open a storage locker today and start packing, but it was pouring rain so I scrapped that idea.