Your Exceptional Life

I saw this on the Mortgage Cicerone this morning.  It’s actually not an April Fools joke, it’s pretty well thought out.

I was sitting in a bond closing a couple of months ago and the guys were playing with maps.live.com.  Most of them were high powered attorneys and had never seen it.  It’s something their paralegals probably all know about, but they didn’t.  So as the closing was winding down the guys are pulling up their houses and pointing them out to each other.  In bond closings the attorneys are from all over the country.  One guy was from Newport Beach and he was pointing out his house and it’s proximity to Nicolas Cage’s place.  Another was a young gal and she lived in a planned development in Orange County.  Another guy lived around the corner from Warren Buffett.  He told us a story about how he would have his driver take him down on Sunday mornings to pick up the paper, sometimes in his pajamas.  That kind of made him a little Doris Duke-ish to me.  Anyway, if he’s picking up WFB and the like, we’d better be paying attention.  There’s a reason why he’s as wealthy as he is.  And Berkshire Hathaway is trading at $133,400 per share.

I sold a house in downtown Concord in December of 2006.  When I listed it my realtor said “Why would you want to sell now?”  To me the answer was simple.  The market was in decline and if I sold in December 2006, what I picked up next would cost me even less.  As it turned out, I sold a downtown 1253 sq ft. 3/2 in a transitional neighborhood with a pool that was completely remodeled for $555k.  I waited six months and picked up a 1376 sq ft 3/2 in an established neighborhood on a 1/4 acre for $489k and remodeled it for around $25k.  A year earlier this place would have cost me $620k.  I saved on transfer tax, mortgage cost and property taxes.  The answer was “I would sell now because the next place will cost me even less.”  I was right.