Case Closed

Whew! Yesterday marked the end of a remarkable chapter in the life of our home. We finally closed the refinance of our construction loan. Normally this type of thing wouldn't result in a blog entry; I'm bad enough as it is with posts lately. But our refinance is a tale of deception, a local version of the banking crisis, and extremely good fortune (Providence?).

The front of the house nearly one year after we started work

Nearly one year ago, when we were still relatively on schedule with our renovations, I put down a deposit at Stellar One bank to refinance out of our construction loan (redflag #1 - most refis don't require deposits). Towards the middle of November 2009 it became clear our contractor wasn't going to finish on schedule due to a window placement issue. No big deal (to some degree); we canceled our refi and the bank said they were going to hold the deposit until we initiated the refi process again (redflag #2); who was I to argue. Admittedly, I wasn't super excited about this 'requirement' for them to keep our deposit, but at that point I had not reason to think things wouldn't work out down the road.

Fast forward 3 months. Towards the end of February, when the contractor finished the family room addition, I contacted Stellar One again to initiate the refinance. The original loan officer, who structured the construction loan and subsequent refinance was "no longer with the company" (we have heard through various channels: "fired"; redflag #3). A new loan officer had been assigned to the refi. And without going into all the bloody details over the subsequent six months we were strung with promise after promise to close the loan. Each time they didn't close it they refused to return our deposit because, so they said, they should be able to close it through some other loan process (redflag #4). By contract, we were required to refinance out of our construction loan one year after we started construction; i.e. by 9/1/10. However "new mortgage regulations", a lack of understanding of our file by subsequent loan officers (we had three new officers over 6 months), and, we later learned, some very incorrect dealings by the original loan officer resulted in us going nowhere by September.

The front of the house from another angle

Finally by mid-September I demanded (against the advice of my lawyer) that Stellar One return my original (and on their part bogus), several thousand dollar deposit so that I could pursue a refinance through another lender. Apparently the demand--directed to Stellar One's director of retail mortgage--was enough to cause them to finally return the deposit.

Throughout the course of the drama I nervously watched rates and prayed the local real estate market held firm long enough for our re-appraisal to stay high. If rates rose dramatically, especially as I expected after the end of the Fed's purchase of mortgage backed securities in March, we may not have been able to afford the new payments. If the local marked tanked, our appraisal may have came in with us showing less than 20% equity even though our original down payment and cash put into renovations put us well over that figure. Fortunately rates fell over those 6 months, netting us hundreds of dollars per month of interest savings. Had we refi'd back last fall, our rate would have been over a full point higher than where we are at today. And our final appraisal came in much higher than we expected, thanks to a slow but price-stable local market. Thus, the 'happy ending' yesterday at the lawyers office where Emili and I signed the paperwork for our permanent loan. Now if only we could get all the painting done...

Em and I out front of the homestead after trashing her wedding 

dress. More fun photos at: http://tinyurl.com/2010trashdress

From the Archives: Ode to Los Angeles

A year ago last week Emili and I ended our seven year sojourn in Los Angeles and moved back to our historical roots on the East Coast. As I sat in a coffee shop in West LA last February, between beating rush-hour traffic out of downtown and waiting to arrive at my last construction site visit, I wrote the following in my journal:

The last three months have been incredibly hectic. Since taking the Structural Engineering Exam in late October I finally decided to return one last time to academia, selected a school, found a new job, gave notice at another. Today is my last day at that job--Structural Focus. As this day has approached I've often wondered whether we are making the right move. I love my job, my co-workers, Los Angeles... Right now Charlottesville feels very provincial by comparison.

In many ways I've learned most of my engineering skills--career related ones anyway--while at Structural Focus. I'm extremely thankful to have worked there these last 2-1/2 years. I'll truly miss the friendships I've formed with my coworkers. And I'll probably never find a work environment with the same mix of professionalism and freedom--relaxed professionalism--ever again. 

Beyond leaving my current job, moving out of Los Angeles is the end of an era. Shortly after getting married Emili and I moved to a city that was 2500 miles from our closest family members. We moved with many friends to a city that none of us knew. In our seven years here many of our friends have moved on, moved up, moved away, left the bonds of fellowship. Now is our time to move.

Last week while driving to Big Bear to go snowboarding with my coworkers we drove by the hotel where Emili and I spent our second anniversary, past two different campsites where we spent weekends with friends from kairos, past scores of burned acres from our first close up encounter with wildfires in 2003.

 I definitely miss having a mountain like Big Bear so close to home.

Emili and I had dinner recently with Amy Murphy and Michael Maltzan, a fantastic couple who have shaped our story  in so many ways... We also shared a few hours with Gary and Pam Hilliard, who took the daring step into homeownership in Southern California with us and who re-taught me the joy of trail running... We had a meal wtih Ben and Lauren Thompson--a couple we have grown up with individually and together for 12 years. And tomorrow we'll share our final meal on the West Coast with Kevin, Annie and their son Luke for his 2nd birthday. Our sons will say goodbye and probably never remember this best friendship they had for two years. 

 Photo from an annual Kings Canyon trek. This is at the 'summit' of Glen

Pass, 2008. Relatively close to Los Angeles, a bit further from Virginia.

So many times I've second guessed. Not completely, but deeply second guessed whether moving "home" is what will make us happy. Obviously no place will completely make us happy; our choice to move East is what we want for our family. We have wonderful friends who have already gone East before us and are hoping to reconnect with them. But its impossible to live somewhere this long and not put down roots. I assume we're going to feel uprooted and unstable for months to come...[] For now reality calls me back to my last site visit on this my last day of work--to look at the nearly completed construction of a house I started designing my first month at Structural Focus.

We've been in Virginia a year now. Roots are starting to grow. This second year will hopefully see the inauguration of annual traditions. And while Los Angeles and California now feel worlds away, on occasion there is a strong call to return and "Go West...", again.

Rootedness

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. It is also one of the hardest to define. - Simone Weil, Europe 1943

When I first read Simone Weil's The Need for Roots in 2005 I knew I had stumbled upon one of those rare gems of human wisdom. Three years earlier I had moved to Los Angeles after spending five years in Blacksburg Virginia and growing up in Herkimer New York. The combined populations of these two rural counties totals 150,000; Los Angeles's population is close to 10,000,000. In addition to the dramatic difference in numbers of people there were cultural, philosophical, and environmental distinctions between LA and my two former East Coast habitats. These differences frequently led to a sense of rootlessness during my early years there.

Tree roots common in Southern California.
Photo courtesy of Carla Kimball, 2009

Complicating my absorption into the Los Angeles soil was my own sense of a less than full commitment to California. On one hand, as our years living in LA grew in number, my wife and I felt increasingly at home. At the same time there was always a gnawing sense that we were not and would never feel completely at home there. This sense was particularly strong because of the close ties we enjoy to both our families. And our two final years in LA living with small children ultimately compelled us to fulfill our need for roots back on the East Coast.

After living six months back in Virginia we just recently moved into a 'permanent' home (more on that as we renovate it in the coming weeks). It is the first time we have owned a house in over three years and the first time in our married life of seven years that we feel truly committed to a place. I am excited to see what the next few years feel like as we participate in the community in Central Virginia. At the same time I also have occasional reservations (uneasiness?) about my role in creating a sense of home, rootedness, and place for my own rapidly growing children. Perhaps this is due to the the difficulty Weil says we have with defining rootedness; perhaps it is because my own long term sense of root-less-ness leaves me without a clear sense of how to help someone else feel rooted.

A human being has roots by virtue of his or her real, active, and natural participation in the life of a community which preserves in living shape certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future. - Simone Weil

Home is where?

Growing up we had a needlepoint hanging on the wall that read: "Home is Where Your Heart Is". My grandmother had a similar one at her house:

No Matter What
No Matter Where
Its Always Home
If Your Heart Is There

I recently returned from a family reunion in Cape Cod. It was the first time in 6 years we didn't have to fly from California to attend a reunion; we instead drove up from our new home in Virginia. Before heading out to the Cape we spent a day in my hometown, Herkimer NY. While sitting in my parents living room I realized that I hadn't been "home" during the summer season since 2002. It was a strange realization and one that brought back questions I have turned over in my mind for the last 5 years, in brief: What and where is home?


In his book Home: A Short History of an Idea Witold Rybczynski traces the history of the concept of "home" back to 14th century townhomes in Europe. Bourgeouis townhomes provided one of the first senses of domestic comfort and differed dramatically from the contemporaneous castle of the aristrocrat, monastery of the cleric, and hovel of the serf. However medieval homes also stand in stark contrast to 21st century concepts of the idea: people rarely (though increasingly) live where they work; few in our rootless society remain in one place for their entire lives; and our complex food distribution systems leave us disconnected to the location where crops are produced. If the "home" in the 14th century was a permanent residence where people engaged in their trade, slept, and prepared meals from crops that surrounded their town, what is the meaning of "home" today? Definitions abound.

As this is an ongoing question and one on which I've spilled a lot of ink over years (including several research papers while at Fuller and a course proposal to USC), I'll probably devote several future posts to new questions I'm encountering regarding "home". Looking back: In what ways did Los Angeles feel like home during our seven years there? At present: How long will we live in Virginia until it feels like home? Looking forward: How do we create a sense of home for our children, even if we relocate houses or towns down the road? Perhaps home is simply where your heart is, but knowing the location of one's heart is equally perplexing!