My Inspiration at the Moment

My appraisal came back today; thankfully, there was no major hiccups in the appraisal. The market came back as ' stable market' therefore there will be no need to throw an extra 5% into the down payment. There were a couple interesting things that the appraisal noted:
-My unit is #907, I'm on the 9th floor of an 11 story building
-There are 95 units, of which 10 are rented, and 27 are owner occupied, the rest are owned by the developer. The rule of thumb is that property values are higher when more units are owner occupied.
-Unit #807, exactly 1 floor below me, sold for $4,950 more than my unit. #1007 (one floor above) is listed for $5,000 more than my unit. This makes me feel good, as I got a good view and paid less for it than the guys immediately above and below me. Suckas.

I did receive a bit of bad news, it appears my loan won't be ready on Friday as anticipated, therefore the new closing date will be next Wednesday. Ugh! The delay kills me.

Without further delay, my inspiration for the week

"A Bigger Splash" by David Hockney. This is a great pop art painting, note the contrasting lateral blues punctuated by the diving board and the rectangular mid-century style house. I'm thinking that this concept (color/ shape contrast) can be applied to my unit. I'll discuss this further at a later date.

"Composition with Red, Blue, Yellow" by Piet Mondrain. Mondrain was one of the founders of 'De Stijl' (Dutch for 'The Style'). Which, of course, was one of the precursors of Modernism. I enjoy the contrast of white space/ heavy black lines/ primary colors, it's as simple as you can get.

"Counter-Composition V" by Theo Van Doesberg, this is one of the 'Hard Edged' painting from the 50's and 60's, a distinctly California based style. It's a more interesting take on Mondrain's work.

"L'Oiseau Dans L'espace" by Constantin Brancusi. Bird in Space is *by far* by favorite sculpture (you can actually go see it at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena). The purity of the form of the bird is amazing; it's as if Brancusi took a bird and stripped it of all it's unnecessary and extraneous shapes. The bird looks like it is in the midst of some lighting take off, effortless, sprezzatura! The picture doesn't do the sculpture justice, the real thing is 6' tall on a 4' pedestal set in the middle of an ocular room, thus giving it even more of an effortless purity.    

The Walk-Through

Tomorrow I'm supposed to meet the agent at my unit to complete the final walk through. The walk-through is supposed to happen a few days prior to the close of escrow so that the buyer can see that there has been no adverse change to the unit before the purchase is completed. The agents provide the buyer with a checklist and they check off to ensure that everything is repaired and meets the buyer standards.

The only thing that I need to 'check off' will be the floors and the room divider, per my 'upgrade' package I got when I purchased the unit, the developer is to polish the concrete floors and build a room divider between the sleeping area and the living room.

This is the view facing the sleeping area of the loft, hopefully, by this time tomorrow the floors will be polished there will be a divider built on the wall by the second pillar. I tend to think that the room divider will make unit appear bigger than it appears with nothing there. At 670 sq feet, this unit is pretty small, so I was thinking of building an office in one of the two closets to the right of the picture. I would put my computer and office items into a built structure in the closet. This would solve two problems, the lack of space for my current desk and I wouldn't have to move my current desk.

I hate moving. The less stuff I have to move, the better. I'm hoping this will be the last time I have to move for a long time.

Collateral Damage

My LO told me that the appraisal for my unit would be completed by Monday. It's now Thursday and STILL no appraisal.

Please upgrade the Threat Status from Blue to Green.

I'm not worried, yet.

As I mentioned before, the appraisal is the last step in completing the full underwriting file for a loan (the last 'C' in the CCC of underwriting). It should be noted that appraisals are historically late, so this shouldn't be a surprise to me.

Follow up

Please, please include your business unit partners when proposing million dollar settlements to your clients. As a follow up to yesterday, when I arrived this morning there were, no less than, 20 e mails from our sales group about our bomb shell settlement proposal, Sales was less than pleased, on top of that we're supposed to have our first settlement discussion tomorrow. I can't wait...

Out of the blue today one of my woman colleagues told me she could tell I had been working out because 'your back is muscular and you have wide shoulders and a narrow waist' *for added effect, imagine that sentence with in a Bulgarian accent* irregardless, I thanked her for her kind words. Awkward city.

How NOT to present a settlement

It was a pretty busy day at work, which was perfect for me, as it helped keep my mind off how I was so tired and hung over from the weekend. Near the end of the day my VP calls me into her office to discuss how to present a settlement offer to one of my clients.

This client is a big account for Bank of America, they're a direct mortgage banker who does a lot of good business, unfortunately for them, they originated a ton of 80%-20% loans in Arizona and Nevada and these loans took a bath when the market collapsed.

So we talked how to present this huge settlement on 10 loans to the client, my VP told me explicitly to get them on phone tomorrow no excuses. Ok, I said, should we inform our Sales team we'll be presenting a settlement, you know, since, like we've been sitting on it for 5 months? No, she said. Just set up the call.

I write up that e mail, cc the bosses and the Sales team, since it's the end of the day I go wash my plates and come back to my desk, in all I was away for 5 minutes. There are 10 e mails from the Sales team with headers such as "SERIOUSLY! No Head's Up?", and "When were you going to tell us?" along with such gems as "Call me, now!"

Luckily it was 4pm, so I log off the computer and swing by my VP's office to see if she needs anything, she looked absolutely chagrined. I couldn't get out of the office fast enough. I don't get paid enough to deal with irate Sales guys.

How to be Human

I went to see 'The Cave of Forgotten Dreams' this afternoon with Pancho. I was impressed by the film. For those of you who don't know, 'The Cave of Forgotten Dreams' is a documentary of the cave paintings on the Chauvet cave, the paintings are so old they are measured in geological time. The Chauvet caves are over 30,000 years old, the film noted one panel of horses which have over lapping pictures which were created 5,000 years apart, we can't even fathom this huge expanse of time. I am reminded of what Picasso said he first visited the Lascaux caves, "they've invented everything." Their art is near perfect.

The immensity of the time scales involved in these pictures makes me feel like a child staring at the night sky. Such an immense amount of time makes me question the permanence of our society, conversely, even 30,000 couldn't change the soul of man. We still have hopes, dreams, visions and nightmares.

Upon leaving the Cinerama Dome I was jolted from my day dream and confronted the realities of twenty first century America, where a trip to the movies ends up costing you $25 dollars (tickets, a $5 soda, and paying for parking). Maybe the Cavemen had it better.

Is Los Angeles the most hated city in America?

On Thursday, my buddy Andrew Kurtz and I hung out for a bit before going to watch the movie Thor (!). I had just got done watching the new music video from Death Cab for Cutie which was filmed entirely in Echo Park.

The video can be found here:
http://echopark.patch.com/articles/sheperd-fairey#youtube_video-6114435

As a soon to be card carrying hipster [wouldn't be so, like, ironic if hipsters gave out cards to denote membership in something?] Death Cab is one of my favorite bands, I told Andrew that my sister went to see them back in 2005. She said that Ben Gibbard (the lead singer) got on stage, said something to the effect of "We hate Los Angeles" and then proceeded to play the entire "Plans" album from start to finish with absolutely no energy. Telling Andrew that story reminded me of when I went to San Diego to visit my buddy Andrew Matey and see The Hold Steady. Two songs into the set Craig Finn shouted "You guys are so much cooler than Los Angeles!"

Smearing Los Angeles in pop songs is nothing new, some examples that come to mind are the Decemberists "Los Angeles, I'm Yours", Tool's "Hooker with a Penis" and Strung Out's "Cemetery." Calling Los Angeles vapid is like having the kettle telling the pot that it's black, it's pretty damned obvious some times. Andrew brought up the point that people move to Los Angeles for all the wrong reasons, actors 'trying to make it' get my goat. Once, I met a girl at a bar and I learned that she was an 'Actress' I then asked her where she waits tables. The girl didn't take my question very well and stormed out of the bar (Derek, I'm still not sorry for ruining your game that night). As a native of this city, I tend to see actors as people who don't want to get educated, and don't want to work. To me, and many others, they are people who simply want to be famous and have money. They are the tinsel in tinsel town (this very euphemism denotes the falseness of Hollywood 'glamour').

Los Angeles occupies such a central part of America pop culture that it is nearly impossible to divorce the Los Angeles of fiction from the actual, living, breathing, city. Even the most sensational murder in Los Angeles' history was named after a movie (the Black Dahlia murder was named after the movie the Blue Dahlia which was playing in theaters when Elizabeth Short's body was found)! It's this falseness which is the real core of the disgust of LA.

I tend to believe that as the city grows up and undoes the mistakes of the past (i.e. putting in a reliable mass transportation system) that this disgust of LA will vanish. Until that time, we'll have to deal with tinsel town and all it's falseness. When you choice to live some where you must accept all its faults along with its beauty, I hope others can come to appreciate the city and it's history. But until then, forget it, Nick. It's Los Angeles.

The End of Escrow

I got an e mail from my loan officer (LO for short) today, he said my loan *should* close 'on time'. This means that my Credit and Capacity have been been fully analyzed and found to be satisfactory. The only thing that remains is to order the appraisal and have the Collateral reviewed. The LO stated that barring anything unforeseen we should be able to close on time (like, ah, the first week of June, which means could be any day between June 1 and 5, not that it matters or anything). The inability of some one in escrow to give me a hard date to close is frustrating, but like many things in this experience, to be expected. It's not unusual to not have a closing escrow date until a you're a couple days away from it.

The only hiccup I could occur is that the appraisal comes back stating that the neighborhood is a 'Soft Market', which means that there are too many distressed properties (distressed as being in foreclosure, or bank owned) in the neighborhood. Current GSE guidelines require an additional 5% down if this is the case, which means I would have to throw down an additional $9,700, something that wouldn't cripple me, but it would be something I would like to avoid.

If that happens; I don't think it will because the unit (from my meandering experience) is priced exactly right for the market, then I could break escrow and cancel the transaction. The possibility exists for people to back out of real estate transactions if the terms of financing change. I don't expect this to happen.  

Underwriting and Self Doubt

When I returned home from work today the fully executed purchase contract was waiting in the mail for me (finally). This means that the underwriting of my loan has begun.

For those of you not in the mortgage business, allow me to explain underwriting for a minute:
Underwriting is simply the process by which a processor obtains all the relevant financial information from the prospective borrower in order to make a 'risk' decision to lend the money for the purchase or not. Ultimately, the underwriter is looking for the 3 C's: Capacity (can they afford the payments?), Credit (will they pay you back?), Collateral (is the property worth lending against?).

Capacity is the biggest of the three; an underwriter takes your gross total monthly expenses (projected housing expenses as well) and divides that number by your total gross monthly income, this is called 'DTI' or a Debt-to-income ratio (expressed as a percentage). A 30 year conforming mortgage has a hard cap of a DTI at 50% meaning your total regular month expenses can not exceed 50% of your monthly income (however, borrowers with shitty credit scores have a much lower allowed DTI).

At times I have an incredible amount of self doubt, I think this may be a hold over from the tribulations of my youth. I told my older co worker how I was "excited and terrified" at the prospect of this purchase he opined that when he was young and purchased his first house he felt the same. I believe this sensation of terror is a by product of committing to a very long financial relationship with a piece of property in a certain neighborhood. For renters, this sensation is the same as that which was felt by the sailors of Columbus' voyage, they are leaving known surroundings for a vast ocean of unknowns. Ultimately it's a journey that we all must take at some point (that is if Congress doesn't destroy the Secondary Mortgage Market) it will be important in the coming weeks and months to control this doubt and prepare for a new stage of life.

After all, wouldn't be funny in ten years to look back at this post and think "I don't know why I ever thought this wouldn't work out?"

First Post!

Friends;
A couple of days ago I signed a purchase contract for a small loft in Downtown Los Angeles. And since I'm leaving the 'safety' of the Westside of Los Angeles to live by myself (for the first time) in a 'box in the sky' that I bought. I figured I would use this opportunity to create my own blog to chronicle my mis-adventures in Real Estate ownership.

I want this blog to do two things for me; allow me to express my interest in 1. Interior Design 2. Architectural Design 3. Mortgage Finance 4. Writing.
My mother was a trained artist and I picked up much of my tastes and interests from her. It's important to me to practice creating interiors that reflect some form of art. Additionally, I work for a Bank and I have a very esoteric position in the Bank (Risk Operations in Correspondent Lending, Loss Mitigation Division) thus mortgage finance is my 9 to 5 job (and I like what I do). Last but not least, I hope this 'exercise' in writing and expressing ideas allows me to improve my non verbal communication.

I hope you will join me on this journey for self discovery, together learn from my mistakes and profit from my successes. As I gain more experience using Blogger I will try to design the thing to look professional. But, for now, it will have to remain not much difference than a High School Student's blog.

I leave you with a image from Unit #907, my soon to be loft: