I’ve managed to line up the inspectors. We’re using Brent Willet who has the wonderfully named website www.dontbuyituntiliinspectit.com. We’re going on the recommendation of a colleague at my library who also lives in Durham. Willet recommended a pest inspector, Patrick Holland. They charge $325 and $75, respectively, so we’ll be paying less than we anticipated for inspections. Brent tells me that in 16 years he has never seen radon in Durham (we’re over clay, not granite) so we’ll skip the $125 radon test. We’d also like to get the wood-burning fireplace and chimney inspected but we’ll probably wait on that.

We’ve decided to use the North Carolina State Employees’ Credit Union for our mortgage. They have very competitive rates, don’t sell mortgages, and all of my fellow librarians rave about it. We also considered Duke University Federal Credit Union, USAA, and Wachovia. Duke was the only real contender but I couldn’t face paying 3.5 points in closing. I put together a comparison page while we were shopping for a lender. Looks like the going rate is 6.25%.

I’ve also called Bullock Floor Sanding and Refinishing and Banks Flooring, but neither has returned my call. I expect the floor refinishing to cost $2.25 or so a square foot and, at circa 950 square feet of hardwood floors, that’s pretty expensive. I don’t have the time to do it myself. I’ve done it before but I don’t think it looked that great. Sorry Tom. Of course, if we don’t do them before we move in we won’t do refinish them at all. Living in the same house with that much floor refinishing isn’t meant to be.

Update: Brent was good. We’d use him again. We paid him extra to come out and reinspect following the alleged repairs and he seemed less invested, but it was subtle. Patrick was great. He inspired confidence in us. The Credit Union has been great to deal with. I wouldn’t deal with a commercial lender if I had a choice. The Credit Union also rarely (or never, not sure) sells loans, which is good.

Tags: Cascadilla, homebuying

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 29th, 2006 at 6:43 am and is filed under Cascadilla, Play. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.