Markus’ Blog

It’s been a couple of busy weeks, but now everything is finally done. The old condo has been emptied (finally), the keys handed over, we are settled Downtown (for a month and a half now), our storage locker is full to the brim (and there’s still tons of stuff cluttering our lovely downtown dwelling :-)), the old mortgage has been paid off, the cheque of the proceeds has been received and deposited.

I think time has come to take a big breath and relax for a bit. Three more weeks till I go on vacation, which will be even nicer.

If (or hopefully when) they clean our apartment windows, I’ll post a few Downtown views. Right now, they are too dusty and spotty to make for good photo taking.

Yep, a week from now, our condo on Fraser Street will be pretty empty. The movers are scheduled to come at 9am next Saturday. And they’ll take everything that’s still left (other than our clothes) and take it to our storage locker. We’ve already taken quite a bit of stuff ourselves, but we’ll have to get a bigger locker to fit our furniture. Hopefully they’ll have a 10×10 locker available in the same building that we are in now. It wouldn’t be too much fun having to lug everything across their driveway / yard into the other building. We shall see. In fact, we should find out today, if they do or not.

Looks like we’ll be having an unplanned brunch out, today, before lugging around more boxes. I worked hard to convince my dear wife to go to Crave for brunch. Gotta go places while we still live close to them. — Besides, it wasn’t that difficult at all to put my plan into action.

A month from today, the buyer of our condo will take possession. That’s pretty darn soon.

On the other hand, we’ll be moving out of the condo even sooner! Moving day is August 2. That’s three weeks and a few days. We are — sort of — trying to take advantage of the long weekend. We’ll “lose” one day of it due to the move, but there will still be two more days off after that. Days to relax and chill out. Besides, August 2 already counts as “mid month” as far as mover’s rates go, which is always good.

We’ll be staying Downtown for the following not-quite two months (till September 27). That’s when it’ll be time to move to our new house in New Westminster!

Exciting times and a “first” for either one of us. Brigette’s first time living Downtown and a first for both of us living in our own house, on property that we actually own.

This is starting to get lame. Here we are, trying to look at temporary accommodation for August and September, and it doesn’t seem to want to work out.

On Wednesday, we had an appointment at 6pm to see a condo one block east of Beatty, between Georgia and Dunsmuir (in those new high rises above Costco). The guy owning it asked us to call him when we were on our way. We did, but it turned out that (a) his phone went to voice mail and (b) that his voice mail was full. So, we couldn’t get in touch with him, nor could we leave him a message. His buzzer went to the same, full mail box, as well. The guy didn’t show up either, even though we had already agreed to meet there at 6pm (it hadn’t been an issue getting a hold of him earlier in the day). Eventually we left and went for dinner. Thankfully, there was at least yummy sushi to be had after this experience, otherwise I would have trekked from Burnaby to Downtown for no reason whatsoever.

The second installment of this story happened this morning. Another appointment, originally set up for 1pm, but then moved to 10am for our convenience. 977 Mainland. We got there five minutes early, waited for the owner. Nobody showed up. We phoned the owner. It went straight to voice mail. No ringing. At least the mail box was not full and we could leave a message. Not that that did us any good. 20 minutes and a second message later, we left. Can you say déjà vu?

And the “best” thing of all: guy #1 did not reply to the e-mail sent to him after the fact, and guy #2 did not phone back despite having received two voice mails and clearly being aware that he stood us up.

What is it with people?! Obviously, they are not very eager to rent out their places. And these things go between $2000 and $2500/month! What really pisses me off, though, is that there’s probably enough demand, that they don’t have to take appointments seriously. They can afford to be asses. If they manage to remember every 5th appointment they make and actually show up, it probably results in a signed deal, which is good enough for them and that’s all they care about.

It’s been almost a week — yes, I am slow updating the blog — since we got the good news from our real estate agent. Our first buyer (see previous post) removed her conditions, which means that our place is now officially SOLD!!!!. That is Cool Stuff^TM, because it’s one less thing for us to worry about. Yay! She even wants some of our old furniture, which we wanted to get rid of anyway, so that’s an added bonus.

Now we have to find a temporary place (likely Downtown) for us and the Kitteh. We’ll look at one apartment tomorrow and at another one on Saturday. Should be exciting times. Luckily, even though we are moving twice, we only have to pack and unpack once. So we won’t have to repeat the nastiest part of moving two times in a row.

The new owner of our condo wants to take possession on August 9, so we are planning on renting our temporary place at the beginning of August and move some time between August 1 and August 9.

We’ll be there till the end of September. We get our house on September 26, which means that we’ll be moving in, most likely, between September 27 and September 30.

…means exciting times. But also stressful and anxious times. Currently, we are going through the latter. It’s also a bit like playing poker. With a lot of money.

We got another offer today and just put in a counter. Unlike the first offer (the seller just walked away in the end before even an inspection was conducted), this time asking price and offer are quite far apart (and our asking price is already lower). Our realtor is confident, though, that there is room on the buyer’s side to better their offer. We’re sure hoping so.

Now it’s the waiting game. And that’s the most stressful part. Sitting there, waiting, not being able to do anything anymore. Just hoping.

Another showing is scheduled for tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes.

It’s been a “fun” couple of weeks and it’s not quite over yet.

In order to put our condo on the market, we’ve had some minor upgrades/fixes done to it over the last little while. New light fixtures were mounted, new wooden base boards in the bathroom (the plastic ones that were there before were just hideous) were installed, and our curtain rods finally went up.

Today we’re getting a couch (sofa bed) for our second bedroom. The couch is later to be re-used in the “library” of our new house. For now, the plan is to allow potential buyers to envision our second-bedroom-turned-office as actual bedroom more easily. I am waiting for the delivery guys at this very moment.

Tomorrow we’ll try for the second time to exchange our ugly, old light fixture in the bathroom. The first attempt revealed a big cut in the drywall that was not covered by our new fixture. So, we had to get a different one.

Then, there’s some painting that needs to get done. Some more tidying. Well, a lot more tidying. Curtains need to be hung. Then pictures need to be taken and papers need to be signed. And then, finally, a buyer needs to be found.

I hope all these steps go over fairly smoothly.

Real fun stuff, I have to say. — I guess it could be so much worse (as in apartment trashed and tenants becoming violent), but it’s still annoying as hell.

My condo in Austria has been rented out since February 2006. The first year, during which it was rented to a middle-aged married couple, things went pretty well. The tenant tended to pay rent approximately a week late every month. Due to long weekends and holidays this sometimes lead to me not getting the rent till the 11^th or 12^th of the month. Getting it around the 6^th was “normal”. Not something you could get away with for very long in Canada, but laws are different in Austria. They are much more protective of the tenant, not the landlord, since the former is considered the “poorer” of the two while the latter is the “richer”. It’s stressing the social aspect of society. — Makes sense, I guess, in some ways, since people are not renting out the basements of their homes there to recover part of the mortgage cost, like they do here. So, somebody renting out is usually someone who can afford to own two places (one to live in, one to rent out) or is a commercial landlord. Plus it’s all about consumer protection and the tenant is, in this case, the “consumer equivalent” while the landlord is the “business owner”.

I was a little annoyed by his always paying late, but given the law and the fact that I am almost 9,000 km away, I just sucked it up.

Then that couple got divorced, in May 2007 or so. And the husband couldn’t afford the rent anymore on his own. Of course, he didn’t contact my mom ahead of time, letting her know what was going on. In June, he just stopped paying rent altogether without saying anything. Not good. My mom had to phone him up and find to what the hell was going on.

In the end, with the help of the realtor lady who had helped us find the renter, it was agreed that he would be moving out after two months and that the rent for these two months would come from his security deposit. The law requires three months of security deposit (not half a month as it is here). So, we kept two months of the deposit (as rent for June and July) and returned the third month to the tenant when he moved out.

The good parts about this story: the condo was in very good condition, not trashed in the least (it’s fully furnished), the guy was nice and understanding and didn’t try to put up a stink — which I am sure he could have to some extent, had he tried.

He was out by July 31, 2007, and our trusty realtor lady had already found a new tenant by that point. A young German business man who travels lots and was sick of staying in hotels. The furnished apartment was perfect for him.

He moved in the middle of August. So far, so good. There were a few hiccups getting the three months worth of security deposit from him (he obviously hadn’t done his research and didn’t know he’d need that much money up front), but in the end it worked out. It delayed his move into the condo by about two weeks, though.

However, it now looks like the fun hadn’t even started till that point yet. As unbelievable as it may sound, he has never paid his rent on time since moving in. Yes, NEVER. Not only did he not pay on time, it took several phone calls from my mom and meeting him in person each time to receive the rent — in cash. Afterwards, my mom had to go to the bank herself to deposit it.

He keeps promising that he’ll set up an Austrian bank account and create an automatic monthly transfer to take care of the rent, but this has not happened to date. How hard is it again to open a bank account? Not very. It took me about three weeks (if that) after coming to Canada to open a chequings and a savings account. Besides, the European Monetary Union ensures that it is possible to transfer funds within the EU free of charge, meaning he could even pay the rent from his German account just fine.

He seems to be a nice, friendly, reliable guy, and he has always been very respectful and forthcoming when my mom phoned him (and met him in person), which I appreciate — but come on. I know you are lying to her, dude. If you really wanted to set up an automatic bank transfer, like you claim, you had plenty of time to do so by now. Since the middle of August, to be precise. It’s not that hard. Yes, you are traveling lots, but still. And there’s always web-banking.

I have now invoked the help of our trusty realtor lady. She seems pretty confident that she can talk some sense into him. I hope she’s right, but she has never let us down. If she can’t do it, then nobody can and my current tenant is a real stupid MOFO (for not listening to her) and I’d like to have him out of the condo today rather than tomorrow.

Oh, and did I mention that he hasn’t paid his rent for November yet? Well, I guess, that didn’t really come as a surprise now, did it.

We did it, followed through on what I said in my last post. We went to London Drugs yesterday evening and bought a portable air conditioner, 12,000 BTU, so quite powerful.

Here it is in all its glory.

We set it up in our 2^nd bedroom (office), venting it out the only window that we can open (the 2^nd window we have we can’t open because of the kitty, who might decide to try and jump out it).

Since it’s not a sliding window, it’s not ideal, but it still seems to be working well enough.

The next few days will tell how efficient it is and if it’ll make staying in our condo more bearable. It seems to work quite well in the office itself. I’m not breaking out in sweat sitting in front of the computer. The master bedroom only improved slightly, so far. But it did improve.

It’ll certainly be better than not having it at all. And with a little luck we’ll find out how to improve the set up to get more efficiency out of it.

We are having a general meeting tonight with our strata to select one of the options to have our roof repaired. That means that some $$$$ will have to go towards that from anybody who owns a condo in the building. When we bought, we expected that the roof would last for at least another two years. Apparently, that’s not the case.

• A full new roof (pretty expensive)
• Use a new technology to seal and protect the current roof (about half the price of the above)

The more expensive version uses proven technology and should result in a roof that lasts about 30+ years. The more affordable variant uses new technology and is supposed to last about 15 years. The only problem: it hasn’t been around for 15 years yet, so nobody knows for sure.

We’ll see what happens tonight.

Update: Looks like the “cheaper” roof type has been around for more than 15 years. The decision was unanimous: we are going with this variant.