Monday, November 06, 2006

Drew's First Down Payment

One thing I forgot to mention in my post about our not-yet-finished house: Drew wanted to help contribute to the down payment.

It was the last item of business after an hour and a half of paperwork in triplicate. Mark got out the checkbook and made the first part of our down payment. Meanwhile, Drew was playing in my purse, taking great delight in dumping everything out and putting things back in bit by bit according to his own sense of structure and organization.

So it happened that a few seconds after Mark placed the check on the saleswoman's desk, Drew reached up and plunked down two bucks right beside it.

It really wouldn't do much to improve our monthly payments, so I took the dollars back. But we appreciated Drew's helpful thought all the same.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The reality is the "It is A Lousy Time to Buy or Sell a Home". It is a lousy time to buy as prices are falling - at an annualized rate of 10% for new homes - and they will be falling another 20 to 30% in the next two-three years as the glut of housing and the bust in the housing market unravels: which fool would buy a home now when a 20% down-payment and the entire equity in such down-payment will be altogether wiped out by a fall in home prices in the next few years? Anyone buying today at the still stratospheric prices will destroy his/her home equity in short order.

http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini

Perhaps the most pessimistic of all the economists, short of the MRE, gold and guns crowd, and probably wrong about the country as a whole but from July CNN/Money article on specific local real estate valuations (http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/25/real_estate/housing_market_values/index.htm?section=money_mostpopular):

Phoenix-Mesa AZ $244.1 $195.7 25% Overpriced

Again, not at all conclusive, and I'm sure your family finance numbers line up excellently so you're not at risk. But love is a better reason for a marriage than for your largest financial investment thusfar.

Anonymous said...

See? You've done an excellant job with him, if he's already pitching in for family finances. *-* Think of all the parents who have to fight to get their kids to help!

Kellie said...

Andi, I'm sure this was a one-time deal so he could get out of any future obligations. :)

And hello again, Eeyore. Of all the things about which I ever anticipated getting anonymous comments, the housing market was not one of them. You get points for clarity in this comment, but lose more for being off-topic and assuming you know our situation well enough to criticize it. I'll let you try one more time before I delete any future comments from you and/or ban you altogether. Here's a hint: you get a good deal of bonus points for stepping out of the cloak of anonymity.