Happy Tree

Things To Keep In Mind When Buying A New Home

2007-02-06T08:33:00.000-08:00

By Raynor James

We all like new things, from cars to gadgets to clothes. That being said, there are some things you need to keep in mind if you are considering buying a new home.

A new home is a glorious paradise. Don’t believe me? Well, just go look at a model in one of the new developments. It is heaven on earth. The carpets and furniture is tremendous. Did you see that kitchen? The yard would be fit for a Sultan. Man, where do I sign the purchase agreement? We have to buy before all of the homes are snatched up!

The above represents a developer’s dream, but isn’t necessarily a good scenario for you. First off, it is very important that you understand what a model home represents. It represents a sales pitch and nothing else. The developer stands to make millions off of the sales of tens or hundreds of homes in the development. How much money do you think he or she is willing to spend on the model home? A lot. While it looks like the Taj Mahal, you have show some discipline and try to picture your stuff in the home. Also, you might be surprised to learn that the marble counter top isn’t a standard feature in the homes for sale. Heck, your home may come with a dirt yard. In short, what you see is rarely what you get. Buyer beware!

Another thing to keep in mind when considering a new home is the cost. Unless the developer is really hurting, you are going to pay more per square foot than with a used home. Much like cars, this is true even when the new home is compared to one that is six months old. There is nothing wrong with paying a premium for something new, but you should be aware you are doing it.

Homes in new developments also can come with some high hidden costs. Many areas now require the developers to build amenities to support the new housing. This can range from new roads to schools for kids. Guess what the developer does with those costs. Yep, he or she passes them through to you in the form of fees and assessments. Examine the purchase agreement very closely because they are often given innocuous names, but can add hundreds or thousands to your monthly payment.

For many buyers, it is a new home or nothing. There is nothing wrong with this approach. Just make sure you educate yourself on the costs and have a realistic understanding of what you are getting compared to the model home.

Raynor James is with FSBOAmerica.org - get a free one month real estate listing.

2005-06-17T23:40:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I am going away. I will probably be back. But there is always the chance that I will not be coming back, ever. Maybe I will die, maybe I will live there now, maybe I will run out of money somewhere in between and get a job in some weird place and my life will be forever altered. I could stop into a little pastry shop for a coffee because I have plenty of time to kill before my train leaves. I would probably sketch some of the stuff outside, as is my custom at sidewalk cafes. They will be cramped for seating and the waiter will ask me if I mind very much to share my table with this beautiful young lady. I will graciously stab him in the eye and insult him in a very complicated and methodical way. He will shuffle back to the kitchen and the other kitchen staff will peer out of the cellar door at me. They will do it in a way that will appear as several heads stacked atop each other. I will then do some quick origami with napkins and then be on my way. But just as I am a few blocks down the way the manager will grab my shoulder and say, “EXCUSE ME SIR. Are you the man who stabbed my waiters eye just now?” I will admit to it at which time we will offer me a job. “I am looking for an eye stabber like you,” he will say. “We get a lot of rude customers and waiters also and I need someone who can give them a good stab in the eye. I have all sorts of pointy sticks you can use or if you like you can just use a fork. You see, it intimidates, I like that.”

2005-06-15T23:40:00.000-07:00

The Plot
Ok, here is the plot: I got a tub of frosting and also one of those frosting cans where the frosting comes out like whip cream. I bring them to work in a separate bag from my lunch. So then at lunchtime I get my bag of frosting out of the fridge in the break room and when “they” ask what I am having for lunch… “Frosting, that’s all I eat now is Frosting.” Then later after everyone else has already gotten their lunch I go back and get my real lunch. I keep using the same frosting every day. It is starting a real buzz of chatter and people saying things behind my back. I imagine that they are making me out to be some sort of frosting eating super hero, or humming bird. I like when people look at me from a distance and then later they attack me.

2005-06-14T23:41:00.000-07:00

Jail...Florida....
So I was thinking that maybe instead of working hard in life I should go to jail. I won’t do any of that work in jail stuff because that stuff is for guys who want to get out early. I will just live there. Make a career of not doing anything. They will pay my rent and cook for me etc. I suppose that I will need to get pretty good at fighting before I go but that shouldn’t be too hard. It will surely be a lot easier than regular living... I suppose that I could also go live in a resort. Maybe what I really want is to retire in Florida! Jail...Florida....Jail.....Florida it's just that the Florida one is so much more work.

2005-06-09T23:41:00.000-07:00

country clubs
It has recently been insinuated at work that I don’t belong to the ‘right’ “country clubs”. Well that’s true enough, I don’t belong to ANY country clubs. This statement was made to me using an odd enunciation and then confirmed by others with nods and sidelong glances. Just then I recieved an urgent message from my soul that read, “Get the hell out of here!” I decided to hold off on that against the pleading. Somehow I feel that they mean something more than just country clubs. I do think they mean I need to join big money country clubs, but I think they mean something more than just that. I’m not sure what though, but I am intrigued. Could they mean they have a secret club that meets in the back of a little known Russian Deli and practices putting on romantic puppet shows for kids with handicaps?

2005-06-07T23:41:00.000-07:00

So I have this friend who is getting married. I am not going to try to talk him out of it, but what a retard. I can’t imagine why after seeing all of the evidence against marriage being a good idea people still do it. It makes me feel like humans, as a group, have no control over themselves. I don’t know anyone who has been married for more than 5 years and is happy about it. People who have been doing it for 40 years are in a different category because divorce used to be looked down on a lot more harshly than it is now. Back then people just lived with their unhappiness and pretended to be happy. It is my opinion that that is the only way that what we know as marriage can work. But we don’t do that anymore, now we just get divorced.Let’s look at it another way. I have a product to sell you. It is VERY expensive and time consuming. It only works for half of the people who try it and even then it does not work all the time. It will be VERY difficult and expensive to get rid of and if you do manage to get rid of it you will be left with feelings of guilt and shame. On the off chance that it does work there may be brief periods of happiness as a result but they will be short-lived. In addition this product will make it difficult to do a lot of the things you want to do. Still interested? ….Sucker!

2005-05-26T23:35:00.000-07:00

It's a summer drink.
I am going to Central America next month. The health department warns that some of the areas I am going contain malaria-carrying mosquitoes. But since I don’t go to doctors I will not be vaccinated against malaria. I remembered hearing however that the British army used to give their soldiers (officers) who were stationed in Africa Gin and Tonics because the Quinine in tonic water fights malaria. So I started last night a drinking regime where I will have gin and tonics every day for a few weeks before I go and then a few weeks after I get back. Now the key here is to use good Gin, Tanqueray or Bombay Blue Sapphire are the ways to go. Tonic water must contain quinine (obviously). You want a tall glass, put 2 oz. Gin and 5 oz. Tonic plenty of ice and a little lime. Roses lime works great if you have no fresh lime. It's a summer drink. I feel compelled to wear a straw hat when I drink them.

2005-05-18T23:35:00.000-07:00

CHP
I went over to check out the CHP so they could “inspect” my new Jeep before I tear it apart. The inspection guy was pretty cool but the others were total cops. I overheard one say, “Wow I just wrote a ticket without even having to leave the parking lot.” The other three were having a passionate conversation about which wood to have cabinets made out of. Cherry was the favorite although they spend a good twenty minuets looking all around the room trying to find things that were a similar color to the finished wood. If they hadden’t all had guns I may have jumped over the counter and beat them all senseless.It ended up passing though and there was no need to resort to violence. I am once again reminded that I don’t understand how we have come to a place where things are so rigid. How can we tolerate these guys who have the last word? What is going on that makes people able to stand this nonsense that we are handed? I don’t know if many or any of you are familiar with the author Scott Carrier who wrote the book “Running after Antelope”. I am a fan of his and of that book.

2005-05-16T23:35:00.000-07:00

The Truth
Ok, I’m back at work. Needless to say I did not win the ten million. In fact I lost a few hundred. Looks like my gambling career will have to wait. That’s fine though now I think I won’t feel like going to Vegas every five minuets. I think I may have had unrealistic expectations about gambling due to an extremely lucky past history of gambling. I always won, whenever I went to Vegas and Laughlin I always came back ahead. That sort of made me feel like if I just kept going back they would just keep giving me money. I would see other people loose money and and think that they were idiots but now I have found out the truth: Some times you lose when you gamble.

2005-05-13T23:36:00.000-07:00

-------$--------
ALL RIGHT! I am going to go have another spin at the professional gambling career that has yet to get off of the ground for me. I really dug the Laughlin trip because not only was I gambling with my money but because I rode my motorcycle 600 miles I was also gambling with my life. This time though I am going to. It is just faster that way. I would like to win around ten million but I will settle for winning about five thousand dollars. That seems realistic.I am fascinated with the idea of gambling for a living. Sure it seems immoral but why? Money seems immoral to me anyway but we (society) has embraced it and for some reason decided that it is bad if it is free. I have this great fantasy all worked out where I go to Vegas a few times a year and win enough money to live for a while. It really is not that different from hunter-gatherers who would come upon a cache of berries or a large animal. They would take what they could and go live for a while and then come back when they needed more. It certainly seems more natural than sitting by yourself in an office all day where it is artificially cold so that you can stand to wear all of these clothes in hot weather. Staring at a bunch of bright lights that make up my computer screen. It seems so weird. It drives me insane to think that this is what we have come up with. We can build space ships and space stations and split atoms but this is the best that we have come up with for society? Bullshit! That is just bullshit!Anyway, I think it would be cool to not do these kinds of jobs anymore.

2005-05-10T23:37:00.000-07:00

the Metty
I remember now… there was this kid I went to elementary school with named Metty. Some people called him Mettsy by mistake but that was not his name, it was Mettsy. One day I heard form some other kid that Metty was going to kick my ass. “Huh? Who is this Metty kid and why is he mad at me?” Well it turned out that Metty was an angry boy and he often made threats to beat people up through third parties. I was not scared because I was bigger than him and I was pretty sure that if there were a fight I would win. But I was confused about why he had singled me out for his anger. I’m not sure that I ever really talked to him and there never was any violence. I just heard over the years that I attended elementary school that this kid Metty was going to kick my ass. It all seems so passive now. Like that series of events were on sedatives or something. The whole thing was slow motion. There was not a fight but I imagine that if there was it would be like a slow motion fight where there is no way anyone can get hit because it would be easy to get out of the way of the punches. I wonder if he still does that now at work. Telling some third party to go tell some other co-worker that he will kick their ass. Maybe he picked up that strategy from his grandfather who has been passing it down through the family. It was developed 300 years ago when his predecessor lived in the old country and would travel from town to town doing blacksmith work. When he got to town he would single someone out and have a third party tell them he was going to kick his ass. The third party was crucial because it provided an objective source the person he was going to get his ass kicked. Not only did Metty’s predecessor think it but the third party thought it too. Also if he just went up to the guy in person and told him the victim may just keep it to himself. The third party provided advertisement that Metty1 is in town and that he is an ass kicker. So watch out.

2005-05-09T23:38:00.000-07:00

20 Shots
Ok, so I stayed up all night last night. Watching for the oil thief from the cover of a hiding place. I brought with me:1 Thermos full of strong coffee (to keep up)1 Large bottle of Grey Goose vodka (to take the edge off)1 Bottle of Cran Raspberry juice (to mix with the vodka for the best drink EVER)1 Bottle of water (for when the dehydration sets in)1 Bottle of eye drops (for extended eye use)1 Notepad (to sketch a picture of the thief / draw while I waited)Here is my report:Between the hours of 3 and 8 pm a lot of people come home and stay there. Most of them arrive in cars though I did notice three people on foot.Drawing in the dark is hard.I like coffee.10 spoke wheels would look nice on my car.Between the hours of 8 and 11 pm it gets much colder outside.Drinking in the bushes is funny.When people see you they become uncomfortable and pretend they don’t see you.That is even funnier!Cats like to hang out under the cars at night.At eleven thirty plus or minus ten of fifteen min. people leave and them come back by around 12. They must be buying stuff for their own stakeouts… I should have tried to get one of them to bring me a snack because I am hungry.No one goes anywhere between 12:30 and 5 am.It gets even colder from 12 until 5 am.I am really tired.No one is stealing my oil.I am going to bed.In retrospect I have learned a valuable lesson: Don't stay up all night drinking if you have to work the next day. You may think that 20 shots of expresso will wake you up, and you are right, but we will see for how long.....

2005-05-09T23:37:00.000-07:00

That's not an ashtray you asshole.
There was this group of people in high school who would ash on the side of their shoe. They would cross their legs so that one shoe would be up in the air and the part of their shoe where the arch is would form sort of a makeshift ashtray. They would do this to feign consideration for whosever house they were in. However the true nature of this would present itself when it was time to leave at which time they would just stand up dumping all of the ashes and cigarette butts on the floor. I have seen this many times and I am fascinated by details and implications of it.

2005-05-04T23:38:00.000-07:00

engineering
A friend of mine and I have been pretending that we are engineers (not choo-choo engineers). We make lots of coffee and stay up real late solving engineering problems. We dress up in white button down shirts with short sleeves and imagine that we have short-cropped haircuts. Then one of us comes in and describes a situation that will require a safe solution at a reasonable construction cost and yet is pleasing to the eye. It is fun and totally pointless. A complete waste of time other than to take a vacation from ourselves for a few hours. Neither one of us would even want to be an engineer for a living and that is where the fun comes in. I realized some time ago that I don’t want to do anything that I really enjoy for a living. Insane? Maybe. I think that doing things that other people have to do is fun as long as no one expects me to do them. For example, I get to work really early and I like it. But if someone sad I had to I would be pissed. I like to make three dimensional models of objects in computers using polygons or NURBS surfaces. But when I did it for a living I hated it. It has taken me a while, but I now have a job that I don’t mind (most of the time). I don’t love it, but that’s cool, I don’t hate it either and I have ended up hating all of the jobs that were based on stuff I like doing.

2005-05-03T23:38:00.000-07:00

oil?
I think someone is stealing oil out of my Jeep. I put two and a half quarts into it on Thursday and then on Sunday the dipstick was dry again so I added another quart and a half. I looked at the ground and there is no more than a tablespoon worth of oil and it does not smoke when I drive it. I can’t figure out where the oil is going. There are only two possibilities I can think of. 1) The jeep is hiding it somewhere, like inside the tires or frame. 2) Someone is stealing it in the night. I am going to put a new engine in it soon so I hope that problem goes away. I might stay up all night and watch for oil stealers tonight. Too bad I am not tiny and or invisible.

2004-07-30T09:41:00.000-07:00

Claire
I need to speak with Claire please. Claire. C-L-A-I-R-E. In purchasing, Claire.I am calling to speak to Claire in purchasing. No Cl... Claire. Claire. In purchasing. C-L-A Claire. No in purchasing. Claire. No Claire. Claire. Thi th idth. Not Axle Rose, Claire. It's important that I speak with Claire. ...Recently. Yes. No Claire. CLAIRE

2004-07-19T23:27:00.000-07:00

Monte Cristo ~ Blue Bayou
This is the single best possible to eat. I have been saying it for years. Ever since M7 and I stumbled accross it compleatly by mistake. It was truly a magic sandwich and still is. It's so good that I have no problem with going to Disneyland just to eat one! Mind you I cant do it all that often because they are quite filling. Here is an LA Times quote:"...the [Blue Bayou in New Orlean's Square, Disneyland/Anaheim California] restaurant's Monte Cristo sandwich probably has been the most recognizable -- and demanded -- item on the menu since it first appeared in 1966. It hasn't changed since then," said Boll, "and it's become a standard. It's a very, very popular item. We serve about 160 to 200 of them every day. When the first one of the day comes out, everybody who sees it wants to order one. It comes close to the croque monsieur that originated in France." ---"Chef du Jour: Disney's counter of Monte Cristo," Los Angeles Times, July 15, 1993 (p. 36)

2004-07-15T23:29:00.000-07:00

SWG Wife Stealing Banter
As you may or may not know MMORPG (massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) players can get really involved and serious about it. MMORPGs offer an alternate reality to live in where you must work, and if you want even get married... I actually know someone who is getting married in real life to someone he met on an MMORPG.Check out this amusing bit of SWG wife stealing banter:I BANKY EDWARDS LEADER OF -PL- AND NOW FORMER EX-HUSBAND OF ADENN DO DECLARE WAR ON THE GUILD ASBESTOS! IF THEY ARE UP FOR THE WAR. YOU ALL THINK YOU CAN STEAL MY WIFE AND LIVE? ASB MUST DIE!!!!!!!!!!!OH AND 500K TO THE FIRST PERSON TO POST A SCREEN SHOT OF THEM GRIEFING THOMAS_NEFFEN_______________________________________________________and no doctored/photoshoped pics i must see a timestamp in the chat log also________________________________________________________in game name is Thomas Nuffan yes TRIPLE INCAP! I want full black bars on this guy. ________________________________________________________No Arica i just want him DEAD OVER AND OVER AGAIN!________________________________________________________make it 600k if he trys to GTEF me...wow cool theres wife stealing in this game i could think of a couple of wife i'd like to steal.________________________________________________________wow cool theres wife stealing in this game i could think of a couple of wife i'd like to steal.________________________________________________________ouch bud sorry to hear man if you feel like pulling some rebel arms out let me know.________________________________________________________Let me know too, Banky.________________________________________________________Well uh.. Have fun with that, Hawk. ________________________________________________________I prefer not to get involved li'dat but.. I'm here for counselling.. Or something, heh.________________________________________________________On Behalf of Asbestos. You will get your asses kicked! Adenn is ours now! Granted you'll have to take it up officailly w/ Pejasto and a few others.Oh...and btw Banky....your ex-wife really knows how to please a big purple lizzard....i mean....wow. Oh thats right!!! She's not yours anymore. She's the newest and most honored member of Asbestos!!WELCOME HOME ADENN!!!!________________________________________________________No we are coming to reclaim her or take the Melons whichever we can get to first!________________________________________________________Adenn you know i will always love you even if you have been corrupted by the promise of the pre nerf melons! -PL- is coming to save you and steal the melons! ________________________________________________________I walked by Banky last night and he was building a huge wooden horse. What's up?________________________________________________________Well there you have it.

2004-07-13T23:30:00.000-07:00

Ok, here it is.
I was upstairs at work in the blueprint room. It's cold and dark in there even on the hottest days, and there is a smell like engineers from the 50's (not choo-choo engineers). That's when most of the drawings in there were made, the forties through the sixties.Anyway, there I was and I was moving a chair around the room probably wasting time when two of my bosses came in. We ate this big rectangle pie. It was a strawberry pie but it had 4 cakes inside and also lime jello. Now these cakes were interesting because they were partially eaten already but someone had re-iced them white and decorated them with red accents and writing which if I am not mistaken made them a birthday cakes.All four cakes had been put in the big pie crust and then the lime jello was poured in. The strawberry filling was on top of that and there was whipped cream.I'm not sure who brought it but we started serving it like animals. We used out hands to scoop it onto fancy paper plates. Then we washed our hands and ate it with nice silver forks. We ate almost the whole thing. It was so much that we had to lay on the floor.Then when we had finished they both went on vacation to different destinations and I moved chairs around more.

2004-07-09T23:32:00.000-07:00

FRANCE
I am here to stand up for the French and for France. I am first and formost not French. Nor am I a US hater or a Bush hater. But I will say this. I went to France two years ago on vacation. I was there for 2 weeks. One week in Paris and one week in the South of France. I found the french to be nice people who did'nt care that I can't speak French. They almost all could speak English. I did'nt come across one person who was rude to me. On top of that the architecture was fantastic, the atmosphere is laid back, the food is good and there was all sorts of beautifull things to see. I have come to the conclusion that everyone is just jealous…

2004-07-08T23:33:00.000-07:00

Paranoid?
Well let's just say creeped out. I have been using this gmail account for a few weeks now and since I am too lazy to bookmark it I just search for it each time. It is always the first search result but I have been noticing another result a few results down called Gmail is too creepy. I finally got curious enough to check it out and that lead me to see the rest of Google Watch. They tell of the Google cookie and how it does not expire till 2038. They mention that Google hires ex-NSA (national security agency) and others with high security clearance. Basically what I see is that Google wants to "search" your (my) email and search terms that I use on the Google search engine and use them to profile me. Now I don't REALLY care all that much about being advertised to. Granted I really don't need to want more stuff as my current list of things I want could bankrupt a small country. But what about the OTHER stuff it could be used for? What about custom tailored insurance, what about sliding scale pricing based on how much YOU want things. Anyway I am a concerned about the direction this data mining is going and I will be keeping an eye on it...

2004-07-01T23:33:00.001-07:00

For the Record
For the record, this is the coolest car song right here.Tach it up, tach it upBuddy gonna shut you downIt happened on the strip where the road is wideTwo cool shorts standin' side by sideYeah, my fuel injected Stingray and a four-thirteenRevvin' up our engines and it sounds real meanTach it up, tach it up, tach it upBuddy gonna shut you downDeclinin' numbers at an even rateAt the count of one we both accelerateMy Stingray is light the slicks are startin' to spinBut the four-thirteen's really diggin' inGotta be cool now power shift here we goSuperstock Dodge is windin' out in lowBut my fuel injected Stingray's really startin' to goTo get the traction I'm ridin' the clutchMy pressure plate's burnin' that machineÕs too muchPedal's to the floor hear the dual quads drinkAnd now the four-thirteen's lead is startin' to shrinkHe's hot with ram induction but it's understoodI got a fuel injected engine sittin' under my hoodShut it off, shut it off buddy now I shut you down. This is the Dodge 413 with the dual quads they speak of!