Took a break from blogging to concentrate on the ending stages of house buying. Finally became official on May 15, with a mad rush to move by the the 19th. The wife & I may be physically achy, but we and our three dogs are settling in nicely.
I must say this. From our personal experience here in southern California - from our initial searches on our own last summer, through our official searches via an awesome real estate agent, the ridiculously poor conditions of most of the houses we saw, the long, frustrating, bureaucratic nonsense of the process, the hoops required to jump through from the banks on both sides of the table, the vast number of short sales, foreclosures, and REOs still choking the market, and the idiocy, incompetence, arrogance and laziness of the selling agents still in the business - this housing mess has a LOOOOOONG way to go before it gets back to normal (pre-1998, before this whole sordid mess started, normal).
I'll be back in the near future with regular posting. For now, more ibuprofen, arnica, rest, and unpacking.
:-)
