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My next music purchase: a house


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Maybe it's OT, but honestly, a space where we can play music to our heart's content is one of the reasons we want to do it. Wish us luck. If all goes according to plan, we're putting in an offer tonight. I'm all aflutter.

 

If we get it, I promise I will use this thread to share studio photos (of course there's a studio space), and a picture of the spot where my wife suggested we one day put a baby grand piano. :keys2:

 

I've lived in a number of apartments in Northern and Southern California and owning an acoustic upright has brought many cops to my door over the years. Aside from a few speeding tickets here and there, %95 of my law enforcement encounters are piano related! Once I graduated, I was able to buy my very first house. My first priority was a house that would let me be a musician without having to worry about noise complaints. Buying the right house either solves that problem, or gives you a number of opportunities to come up with a solution. At least that's how it's been for me, myself and Chico the dog.

 

Samual, I'm rooting for you and hopefully we'll hear some good news soon.

 

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I built a 2300 sq.ft. studio on the lot next to my house - I had to call it a "guest house" to get it past the county permit office.

 

That's a huge guest house. ;) I recently converted my 2 car garage. It's almost done. I just have to clean up the mess. Inspections kills a lot of time in Arcadia/Pasadena. Not sure how bad it is in other places. I thought about doing a guest house but due to the size of my back yard, they would only grant a permit for a 'shed'.

 

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Maybe it's OT, but honestly, a space where we can play music to our heart's content is one of the reasons we want to do it. Wish us luck. If all goes according to plan, we're putting in an offer tonight. I'm all aflutter.

 

If we get it, I promise I will use this thread to share studio photos (of course there's a studio space), and a picture of the spot where my wife suggested we one day put a baby grand piano. :keys2:

 

That's really cool. We purchased a house in the high desert near Joshua Tree National Park in California, a place that we intend to move to after we stop working in a few years, and I am really excited about this. While the house is no architectural marvel, it is comfortable and peaceful and sits on a lot of land. And having a space where you can play and record music is so amazing. I will also be doing a ton of night photography, and in fact can see the Milky Way in the back yard.

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Thanks for the well-wishes and encouragement, everyone.

 

By Saturday afternoon, it was really looking like it wasn't going to happen with this one... it's an estate, and the sellers seemed determined to hold out as long as they could to get as much money as possible for the house. Then this morning, things turned around very rapidly, and we're now under contract. If all goes well with the inspection tomorrow (!), I'll share some photos (and my unbridled enthusiasm).

 

And just to clarify, since a few people were talking about having houses dedicated to *only* music, this will be the primary living space for me and my wife... it just happens to have a space we will dedicate to music rehearsing/recording/teaching (and, as mentioned, space for a piano in the living room area :wink:).

 

 

Samuel B. Lupowitz

Musician. Songwriter. Food Enthusiast. Bad Pun Aficionado.

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Wow, congrats! My wife and I just paid off our mortgage (30 year, paid it off in 20) last week, so we are celebrating as well! It's really a different feeling when the space you live in is truly yours.

 

For most of the last 20 years, I ran my studio/music production business out of a spare bedroom, and m,mixed dozens of albums, a ton of audiobooks and many miscellaneous projects there. We couldn't do band rehearsals at our house, though. 2 years ago, I moved to a new studio space that was already built out as a recording studio, with a large live room, control room and several smaller iso rooms, and I'm ultimately happy that I did. My bands rehearse there as well, and their rental covers a good portion of the rent. I can have my full (and, admittedly) pretty ridiculous keyboard/synth setup there wired up and ready to play all the time, at my house, most of my collection lived in the garage, and I'd rotate pieces through my bedroom studio.

Turn up the speaker

Hop, flop, squawk

It's a keeper

-Captain Beefheart, Ice Cream for Crow

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Okay, contracts are signed, inspection went great, attorney review is looking good, and we're working on the full mortgage application. It's not all buttoned up yet, but we're in motion. I kind of can't believe this is happening, but I'm very excited, and happy to share with you all what I've been looking at after the sellers' 180 on our offer, and the madness of the last three days.

 

So, here's the house. 1966 bilevel ranch on about an acre and a half of land -- a lot of that land is moss and woods (with a little pond!), so we get the space without a massive amount of lawncare. The house is in desperate need of some paint and various other minor exterior fixes, but it's solid (and my wife would want to change the aesthetic of pretty much any house we wound up in anyway).

 

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More on that big bay window momentarily. What you might not quite notice in that picture is that there's another door just to the left of the front entrance, hidden behind that evergreen. That is a dedicated entrance to the studio space. Other than the driveway-level door, there's also an entrance from the garage. As someone who has been carting keyboards and amps up and down hills and stairs and across apartments for years now, this is a godsend. Let's take a look in there:

 

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Dig all the built-in shelving? Perfect for our massive collection of books and vinyl, which will also cut WAY down on the amount of acoustic treatment we'll need for the walls. Note the many outlets running around the room, too. Eight-and-a-half foot ceilings, which (while not exactly Capitol Studios) is just high enough that I won't want to die when eventually using the space to record a drum set. Lord knows I've made records in more challenging spaces. Eventually the carpet will go, and we'll do additional sound treatment (my wife is pretty handy, and she wants to build some acoustic panels and cover them with artwork), and any other electrical and physical adjustments we want to make to improve it as a space for playing and recording amplified music, but it's already a better rehearsal space than anywhere else my bands congregate.

 

The non-shelf wall with the driveway door is probably going to be keyboard land, with our upright piano, the Wurlitzer, and eventually a Hammond/Leslie. This room will also be my wife's voice studio, so her students don't have to go through the rest of the house for their lessons.

 

I won't go through the whole house with you here, but I do want to show you the main open living area:

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There's that bay window, where one day we hope to put a baby grand. Also a great spot for a Christmas tree, and general gazing out upon our domain.

 

We're going to be very busy come spring when we move in, and the first big project is going to be the kitchen, which, while functional, is heavily sequestered from the rest of the spaces, has a bizarre layout, and contains ancient appliances (including a tiny oven that looks like the TV my parents had in the early 90s). Fine, fine, homeowner stuff. But in the meantime, four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a lovely den area with a fireplace, and we got a terrific deal on it, one that actually makes the aesthetic updates we need to make reasonable. I'm sure I'm in for plenty of horrible surprises like anyone about to buy their first home, but for now I'm just trying to look forward to what the future holds!

 

I'll update you all again once we actually start getting settled in in a few months...

Samuel B. Lupowitz

Musician. Songwriter. Food Enthusiast. Bad Pun Aficionado.

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That's awesome, Samuel! I know you're going to have fun fixing up the place as well as using it. :keynana:

 

(What's with the Sams getting new studio space around here lately? I should change my name. ;):D )

"I'm so crazy, I don't know this is impossible! Hoo hoo!" - Daffy Duck

 

"The good news is that once you start piano you never have to worry about getting laid again. More time to practice!" - MOI

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That"s hardly a dusting of snow. Are you sure you"re in Ithaca in February?

 

that photo was taken in July :Python:

Dave beat me to it with a funnier response, of course. :wink:

 

In all seriousness, though, those photos are from when the house went on the market in November.

 

Attached, find a picture of the house from the inspection this past Tuesday, apparently in Silent Hill.

 

 

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Samuel B. Lupowitz

Musician. Songwriter. Food Enthusiast. Bad Pun Aficionado.

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I don't have all the furniture moved in but I moved a B-3 in when my fiance was at work in the back room.

Shouldn't be a problem. She probably won't even notice.

 

JK - there's nothing subtle about a B3

 

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

-Mark Twain

 

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  • 2 months later...

Just need to vent -- may delete this post later, but I need some confirmation from outside of my bubble that I'm not losing my mind here.

 

Obviously the onset of Covid has delayed closing on our house, but all things considered it hasn't been too bad -- the wheels were in motion before things got really serious, so it's just slowing down the process.

 

But our friggin' mortgage loan officer has screwed up at every turn. We went with this bank -- our bank -- because we have a good relationship with them, and more importantly, my father-in-law has a good relationship with them. My wife and I are but humble working musicians with day jobs, but my wife's father (believe it or not, one of my favorite people in the world) is a big-shot bankruptcy attorney, so the bank wants to make him happy, and consequently wants to make us happy, and that's been hunky dory except for this moron who keeps screwing up basic stuff at every turn and we don't find out about it until weeks later. The two most recent examples are that two weeks ago, a week before our planned closing date he casually told us we needed to come up with a bunch of cash reserves to make the underwriters happy, something we could have prepared for if he'd just said so when we started this in February, but because he screwed up it became a BIG PROBLEM because of the current financial situation. Today -- when we were about to finally be given a closing date -- we found out that he never informed the attorneys that my wife is supposed to be on the DEED TO THE HOUSE -- which, by the way, we had discussed *at length* and he had confirmed in writing over a month ago he had taken care of.

 

Aside from his ineptitude, closing in the pandemic is no fun. My wife has a history of respiratory illness that makes all of the covid stuff really scary. We've avoided going into public if at all possible. Now if we want to close on this house before this virus shit is behind us (and who knows when THAT will be), we're going to have to suit up and go to a notary.

 

Look, I know this is all going to be fine in the end, and in the grand scheme of things, our problems could be WAY worse. But I could do without more unnecessary unpleasant surprises right now. End rant. Thanks for reading. Hopefully soon I'll have some good news about the house and we'll be able to gradually start moving in...

 

P.S. For those of you keeping track, we woke up in Ithaca to a covering of snow today!

Samuel B. Lupowitz

Musician. Songwriter. Food Enthusiast. Bad Pun Aficionado.

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In my experience, mortgage people are amongst the most important cog in the process of buying house, and one which many overlook and most don't consider. Buyers often focus on the agent, but once the agent gets an acceptance of the offer they check out. It's the mortgage broker who's in the trenches getting the deal closed. Another important cog is the escrow person as well.

 

Often banks try to get the mortgage business, but staff at most banks these days are often young, inexperienced and poorly trained in the various things that can come up in a home purchase. And at least in my area, they often do other things in addition to mortgage loans. I have seen deals blow up because of inept mortgage people, and deals saved by mortgage people who know what they're doing and know when to kick a little ass to get things done.

 

Hang in there....it will get done, and you will likely go through the process again and learn what to look for when you choose the people in the process the next time. Most deals have hang ups like this....when it's your first, they seem bigger than they will the next time they might come up in another transaction.

 

I've had a real estate brokers license here in CA for a long time, and I continue to be amazed at how many people bordering on incompetence work in all facets of real estate. There are some great folks too, but they can be hard to find sometimes...

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I need some confirmation from outside of my bubble that I'm not losing my mind here.

 

The sorts of things you're going through are not uncommon in my experience. After you're settled in the pain will fade.

 

That's a nice studio space you have there.

 

True on both counts! All the best.

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My last mortgage experience was a nightmare. I would refinance again now that interest rates are down but I am snake bitten.

 

They spent MONTHS at the end of the underwriting process demanding written explanations for every crummy funds transfer I made between accounts. Why? To maximize my inconvenience and stress, to make me feel like they thought I was a drug smuggler, and so they could sell their crummy loan to some other institution as soon as possible.

 

May all underwriters roast in a special hell.

Moe

---

 

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Just need to vent -- may delete this post later, but I need some confirmation from outside of my bubble that I'm not losing my mind here.

 

Obviously the onset of Covid has delayed closing on our house, but all things considered it hasn't been too bad -- the wheels were in motion before things got really serious, so it's just slowing down the process.

 

 

We closed today on our rental house sale. Less of a nightmare for us but the buyer had one bank pull out of the deal at the last minute. They were able to secure financing and it only put us back an additional two weeks. A really scary two weeks. Our realtor met us outside the title company to thank us for the work and the closer was by herself inside the office. My wife and I were in masks and sat at one end of a small boardroom table. She shoved the documents to us and we shoved them back.

 

And we still can't exhale. The buyers close tomorrow and then we await the wire transfer. If it's too late in the day it'll be Monday before we're paid. There are worse problems. I can't imagine what it was like on the buyer's end. It couldn't have been pleasant.

 

Best wishes, Samuel.

9 Moog things, 3 Roland things, 2 Hammond things and a computer with stuff on it

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey, thanks everyone for hanging in there with me... I needed that space to vent.

 

Thrilled to announce that we're officially closed and that house is ours. We're going to start painting the studio tomorrow. :grin:

 

The moving process is going to have to be gradual, at least until we're able to maybe hire some movers... the upright piano won't fit in my car. :wink: But we're looking forward to having some time to get the new place ready before we dump all of our stuff there anyway.

 

I'll happily raise a glass with any of you who can join the KC Virtual Happy Hour tomorrow!

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Samuel B. Lupowitz

Musician. Songwriter. Food Enthusiast. Bad Pun Aficionado.

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