We Buy a House

2007 January 26

We Buy a House

After searching on and off for over 3 years we have finally purchased a nice little 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom home with 1062 square feet of living space on a large 6,299 square foot lot. It was built in 1946 and has a good layout, hardwood floors, and a new roof.

Dividing the price by the square footage, you can see that the house was quite expensive, however, it met our most important criteria, namely that is was NOT a starter house that we would want to move out of in several years. At some point, hopefully in the near future, we will build an addition, but for now, we are very happy here to the extent that we tell our friends we plan to die in this house.

We obtained our mortgage from Derek Kam of Bank of America at 1001 Page Mill Road in Palo Alto, California and recommend him with out hesitation despite never meeting him in person. He gave us the rate he quoted us (6.25% with no fees and no points) and was a truly a refreshing experience after dealing with some shady brokers that other friends recommended. The other brokers quoted us great rates at our initial meetings but then always raised the percentages when it actually came time to submit bids. Derek can be reached at 510.676.8883. Note that we have no financial incentive in any future loans made by Derek.