« June 2004 | Main | August 2004 »
July 31, 2004
Starting over
On Wednesday, Adam and I saw a co-op in that I liked. Adam had some reservations so we went back to see it again on Thursday and, to my surprise, Adam agreed to bid on the place which the seller gladly accepted (the seller in charge was actually the father of the owner who just happened to be in town visiting and he was planning on leaving within a few days). He actually had a binder agreement prepared which we willingly signed and will hopefully ensure what happened with the last co-op won't happen with this one. Right now, we're just keeping our fingers crossed that the co-op gets appraised for what we agreed to buy it for and that we get approved for the mortgage. While we're happy we found a place, the feelings of elation that we got upon learning that our bid had been accepted by the last co-op we bid on didn't surface. The current co-op is nice but not as nice as the last co-op which was newly renovated, nicer, and had a lower asking price. On the other hand, judging from observation and a search on Chowhound, there are a lot more good restaurants near the current co-op than the last one, including a diner I'm dying to try. I guess there are trade-offs with any new abode and it's hard to predict what your future with the place will be.
Unfortunately, because of the honeymoon and now the expense of buying and closing on a co-op, there will be no major vacations until next year but Adam and I managed to take a short trip to Toronto a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, this was a case where my memories of a place clouded my judgement but as someone who loves non-mainstream music videos, I did find the fact that Canada's MTV, Much Music has a show devoted to punk videos pretty refreshing--that and the fact that another music video station aired music videos from Japan, including some videos by the lovable Puffy Ami Yumi.
Posted by Jennifer at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)
July 28, 2004
July 28
One of the projects I manage is Fort Totten, a historic army base in Northeast Queens which will be transferred from the federal government and become a public park shortly. I had to go out there today because the mayor was scheduled to make an appearance at the fort due to the anticipated transfer and while we were waiting for the mayor, I learned that a movie was being shot at the fort. The fort is large so I didn't see the film crew but, just as the mayor had arrived, I saw a car pull up to the fort and seated in the passenger seat was Laura Linney! I've loved Laura Linney ever since I saw You Can Count on Me so I was a little star struck. Judging from the expression on her face, she seemed pleasantly surprised to see Bloomberg across the street herself. Here's a news clip on today's event--click on the video segment link to see shots of the fort.
Posted by Jennifer at 08:03 PM | Comments (0)
July 26, 2004
And the luck continues..
We recieved two of our parent albums about a month ago, Fed Ex'd them a few weeks ago, and when I spoke to my grandmother last night, I asked if she'd recieve it. She said no, which definitely worried me so I asked Adam to follow up with Fed Ex today--they claimed it was delivered a few weeks ago and that it had been signed by someone with my last name. I asked my dad to follow up and he said he wasn't there the day they delivered it and neither was my uncle which means someone else signed for it and never gave it to my grandmother. I'm upset about this because she was a big part of our wedding and why the hell would someone take someone else's wedding album anyway? If it doesn't turn up, we'll have to place an order for another and wait another month. Grrr..
So we resumed looking at other co-ops and nothing within our price range has caught our attention. We saw a few co-ops in the neighborhood next to us and we really liked one of them but the price and maintenance fee is kind of out of our range. We saw two in Jackson Heights, both in the same building, one of which was huge but both had dead roaches in the bathtubs (NOT a good sign). We saw one yesterday which was big but blah and too far from the subway and got stood up by the real estate agent for our second appointment. We saw two today--the first one was in a beautiful building complex, one which I'd never seen the likes of before and secretly prayed that the co-op inside would be nice but it turned out to be small and they were asking for too much and as we walked to the subway, we discovered it was catty corner to a large housing project and the closest subway station was one which I'd live relatively close to before and had two bad experiences with. Then we saw two more co-ops in a building that was close to our apartment but on a not so great block (in fact, there was a homeless woman picking her feet right in front of the building) and the building and co-ops were so-so and the maintenance fees were really high. Our second round of searches has definitely been discouraging..
Posted by Jennifer at 08:54 PM | Comments (0)
July 20, 2004
July 20
Can we say depressed? After finding a co-op we really liked, making an offer, having the offer accepted, hiring a lawyer and mortgage broker, embarking on the long and stressful process of purchasing a co-op, and going so far as to meet with our lawyer yesterdat to sign the contract, we found out that the sellers had accepted another offer and were going to sell their co-op to the other buyer instead. We just got the news today and I am so depressed. To top it off, I got caught at work today looking at craiglist and I'm praying that my co-worker doesn't tell my supervisor about it..
Not that it makes me feel much better considering that she and her significant other can afford to go up in $100,000 increments, but I guess it's a noteworthy coincidence that Amy Sohn, a writer that I've followed for many years, shared her experiences on trying to buy an apartment as a newlywed in her most recent column.
My favorite bakery happens to be run by a group of women who are followers of Sri Chinmoy, a local spiritual guru who was born in Bangladesh. The bakery, Madal Bal Bakery, is located near the neighborhood where I grew up and my uncle used to take us and is not as close but within driving distance from our current apartment and I occasionally go there to buy brownies and cupcakes. Oddly enough, there was an article about Sri Chinmoy in the NY Times I just read (I take a while to catch up on my Times, otherwise I would link to the article) which mentioned that besides being a spiritual guru, Mr Chinmoy (who's in his 70's) is an avid weight lifter who claims he can lift objects as heavy as 2,300 pounds through the strength of god. The most bizarre part, however, is a scene described at the end of the article in which Mr Chinmoy prepares to lift Jeff Goldblum at a local tennis court:
"Lifting up the world," sang a chorus of disciples, "with a oneness of heart." With that, Mr Chinmoy rolled up his sleeves, winced and lifted Mr. Goldblum with his left arm. Mr. Goldblum brough the actress Illeana Douglas along and Mr. Chinmoy lifted her too. The reporter was also lifted. Each time, applause echoed the tennis court. .
Posted by Jennifer at 09:13 PM | Comments (2)
July 06, 2004
July 6
To add to our apartment woes, Adam heard mice noises in our kitchen a few nights ago and our fears were confirmed when two mice got caught in the traps he put out as a result. But, there is a potential silver lining in all this--as I mentioned in my last post, we started getting more serious about our co-op/condo search after the flooding incident and saw a spate of places last week. Most of them required too much down or didn't fit the bill as far as what we were looking for. But, on Friday, we saw a co-op that we really liked and the down payment was within our range. We made an offer the following morning--our first, in fact, and I jumped up and down excitedly when we were told by the real estate service we used that there was a good chance the co-op owners were going to accept our offer, that they just wanted to make sure we secured a mortgage first. We hadn't gotten pre-qualified for one at that point yet and quickly proceeded to do so but by the time the real estate service called the co-op owners back, they had already left and we were told we would probably have to wait until Monday to hear the outcome.
One of my big weaknesses is patience and having to wait until Monday seemed almost like a cruel exercise to me but I knew it was a holiday weekend and that there was nothing we could do about it. Monday finally rolled around and both Adam and I placed calls in to see if there was any news but the real estate service said they still hadn't heard back from the owners yet. We phoned in several times again today and the only information I recieved when this evening was that two other offers had been placed. Now I was really worried. What if we had been out-bid? What if the co-op owners decided they wanted to continue showing the co-op and hold out for a better offer? The real estate market in NYC is extremely competitive and, unfortunately, Adam and I are low on the totem pole of prospective buyers. As 8:00 inched closer (the closing time for the real estate office), I was beginning to resign myself to having to wait another day when my phone rang and we got the good news--the co-op owners had accepted our offer. I'm excited, of course, but this is just the first in many steps of purchasing and becoming the owner of a new home so no bubbly just yet--wish us luck..
Posted by Jennifer at 08:59 PM | Comments (1)