Idiomatic Expression

Over the past three weeks I have been working with Virginia Commerce Bank to refinance our house. We were able to take advantage of the new conforming loan rate and the increase in value of our house to get into a 30 year fixed-rate primary loan and a small 15 year fixed-rate secondary loan.

This is the second time that I have used Virginia Commerce Bank, at Mike’s recommendation, both times the process has been relatively painless I worked with the same person both times and surprisingly he remembered me when I called him earlier in the month. I didn’t think a lot about this until I started talking to some of my friends and everyone else had complaints about their mortgage application process including their mortgage brokers forgetting their names (in the midst of the financing process), forgetting what paper work had been submitted, losing paper work, and screwing them with undisclosed closing costs. At both of my closings, conservative estimates were made, and we ended up walking out having paid slightly less than estimated in closing costs.

If you are buying or refinancing a home, I would definitely suggest giving Virginia Commerce Bank a call.

We used Synergy Title & Escrow this time, and the person assisting us wasn’t very professional or knowledgeable, but they did successfully transmit the funds to the appropriate places.

This Monday, we dressed Murray up as a Bumblebee and Katherine carved a pumpkin to celebrate Halloween. After talking with the neigbors we were expecting between 50 and 100 kids. We had 5 lbs of candy and I rationed it carefully to the first couple of kids. Of course with all of that preparation we only had 15-20 kids, so if anyone wants some candy we still have plenty. More pictures can be found in the gallery.

This weekend we went to an open house three houses down, and chated with one of our neighbors about how much we enjoy the neighborhood, and the sturdiness of our 1970’s homes. Then she let me in on the following rumor that had been being passed from neighbor to neighbor for the past 8-9 years. The story goes something like this:

Chris the former owner of our house only paid $55K for the house because the sellers were very motivated and wanted to unload it is as quickly as possible. When Chris moved in there was a gross black stain on the carpet, so she had it replaced. After a year or so the black stain returned, and couldn’t be cleaned away. She then found out that one of the previous owners had died in that spot (perhaps by foul play).

I don’t believe it, and know for a fact that Chris paid more than 55K for the house. However, I am interested enough to dig up the names of previous owners and do a bit of research.