As most of you know by now, we bought a house in Atlanta around March. Why?  Well when we moved to Atlanta November last year we started apartment hunting and I think we got spoiled with the water view in Florida, so we were in depression after two days of looking at apartments with parking lot views.  The rent was also higher than in Florida.  It was in the middle of winter and I think everything just looked dreary.  If we were looking for an apartment in summer, we would not have owned the house.  At that point we decided to move into the basement of friends, Gerhard and Adele, where we spent most of winter and Christmas.  The basement was quite big, bigger than most apartments with a fully equipped kitchen, a big bathroom, two huge rooms and a fire place.

Around February we contacted a realtor to look at townhouses (duplex in SA terms).  We got lucky and found a really nice guy, Jerry Newmark.  True to American standards he immediately wanted us to sign a stack of papers, some to protect him, some to protect us.  By signing all these papers we first promise not to buy a place he showed us, behind his back.  Jerry works for a realty firm called North-Side and to be able to show us places listed by North-Side somebody else in his office must act as the seller agent, Jerry can't be the buyer as well as the seller agent.  These are all standard procedures in the USA.

So we started looking, it was a rainy Sunday, but our hopes were high.  All the places we looked at were nice, but it was not love at first site.   We decided on a townhouse since I wanted to live in a penthouse with a view and Ben wanted a house so that he doesn't have to share walls with the neighbors.  We agreed to go down the middle and get a townhouse, it would also suit our lifestyle in terms of maintenance and our traveling schedule.  Atlanta doesn't offer a lot of townhouses, the average house size in the neighborhoods we were looking in, is five bedrooms.  Around the end of the day we had one or two places to seriously consider, but Ben knew it was not what I was looking for, so he asked the question that made the difference: "Do you know of anything with more of a loft feel?".  This was at the end of a long day, but Jerry decided to show us the complex he is living in, that is still busy expanding. The moment I saw it I was lost.  I just absolutely loved it, but it was quite a bit above the price range we anticipated (we were looking for something where the installment would more or less match the cost of rent).  All we could say was: "We love it, but can't afford it". That was the first of a series of sleepless nights.

The next weekend we went out again with the agent, nothing was as nice as the place we couldn't afford.  At the end of the day we asked to see it again.  The same chemistry as the first time. That week went by making all sorts of calculations, spreadsheets were flying between our email boxes. The next weekend we told Jerry that we want to take an option on the place, which means that they won't sell the place for 3 days and you're first on the list to buy the place. That Monday, 3 other prospective buyers added their names to the list.  We were nervous, we had 3 days to find out if we will be approved for such a big loan.  At the end of the 3 days you have to give the developer a rather huge sum of money, that will go towards your down-payment (deposit in SA), but if the sale should fall through, you lose the money.  This money more or less tells the seller that you are serious.  For the first time I felt real grown-up, lying awake at night because I am worrying. We were transferring money from overseas bank accounts, visiting different banks to get a loan and constantly questioning ourselves, " Should we do this?", "Are we taking too big a bite?", "Can we really afford this?".  By the end of the week we were wrecks and on the Friday we made out the check. Wow! Then we had to wait a two or so weeks for them to finish up the  place and for us the finalize the bank loan and get the rest of the money for the down-payment.  We were planning on a smaller amount and only a 5% down-payment, now were getting a much bigger loan and we had to give 10% down-payment for the bank to approve the loan.  This is a common problem foreigners experience, they want to make sure you put enough money in to not just run back to your home country without paying.  In the whole process we luckily learnt the following trick, otherwise we wouldn't have made it.  You can negotiate with the seller to include all lawyer and transfer fees in the price of the house (by pushing it up a little, of course), as long as the house can be appraised at the higher amount.  This means that you don't have to have all that money upfront, but it gets absorbed in your loan.  All these extras can add up to be almost as much as your down-payment.

Then the big signing day came. We went to the seller's lawyer's office. Normally on such an occasion the following people are present: the seller, the seller's lawyer, the seller's agent and then the same for the buyer. So in total, 6 representative people have to sign. We were 2 short, since we didn't  have a lawyer and the seller's agent wasn't there. Ben and I both had to sign because of the dual ownership.  We signed a stack of papers about 3 inches high.  You have writers-cramp by the end of it, can hardly breathe and are clenching a set of keys.  That was Friday.  We took the Monday off from work and moved-in.

The neighborhood is called Brookhaven, it was not at all where we were initially looking, but are really happy with it.  Atlanta has something called the Perimeter, this is a highway that circles the city. Normally, if you live inside the perimeter, its much more expensive than outside.  So we planned to buy something just north of the perimeter, but this place is just inside the perimeter, its an old neighborhood with a mixture of rundown little houses and spanking brand new ones.  It gives the area a lot of variety and color, snobs and rusty old cars.  The really funny part is that the place is basically next to the railroad tracks, if you cross the tracks and then 'Peachtree Industrial' road (which reminds me of Voortrekker road in Pretoria) then you get into a area with a nice golf course and houses with football field size lawns.  So we are really on the wrong side of the tracks and are humoring it.  The townhouses form a rectangle and in the middle, the developer are creating a huge garden area, on the entrance (street side) we also have a little park which just grows wild.  I just love it, and as I am typing I keep looking up to keep a watchful eye on the trees in the park.  The complex also got its name from the little park: Fernwood Park.