I mentioned yesterday I put in an offer and then upped the escalation clause after learning of three other offers. Well, the hammer will come tonight when the seller’s agent and the seller get together and ratify one of the contracts. My agent’s excited because it’s my friend and I’ll be her first sale. One of my other friends said I should be owed a couple steak dinners or a phatty house-warming gift, so I’ll be looking in the mail for some soggy envelopes filled with steaks.

Anyway, in the waiting, I’ve come to discover the various free services showing home listings just aren’t real-time enough for me (or anyone really). My girlfriend looked up some homes via Washingtonpost.com and by the time I emailed my agent-friend, all but one (of perhaps 8 or 9) were already sold. That means I was looking at stale data. Does that mean the real estate market is sizzling hot here or are all of these realtor sites or Homesdatabase.com sites just slow?

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I received an email notification from DHL two days ago that my iPod Shuffle was on its way and today, I saw a package eagerly waiting me to rip open when I returned home from work. My shiny new iPod in it’s shiny new green packaging was ready for me to tear apart and enjoy. My account was approved for trading on 4/5/05, when I executed my first trade, and thirteen days later, a new iPod Shuffle sits in my hands. On 10/5/05, I’ll be giving them a call to get my $500 back. All told, it’s a $99 return on a $500 investment for 6 months.

[ Related Ex24 Posts]

On Sunday, after coming back from my school’s Spring Carnival (which was a weekend of drinking, revelry, and catching up with old friends) four hours away, I went on my second house-hunting trip. This time though, we saw two (three, but one of them was identical to the other one) places that we liked out of five total. One (and it’s twin) was $312k ($315k) and one was $290k. The $290 was in Columbia near a Safeway, nice area, very convenient access to major roads and the home’s layout was great. It had three bedrooms, two full and two half baths, a partially finished basement (finished except for the storage room where the boiler was), and a nice deck and lawn outside.

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The theory behind a credit union is that it’s working for you (and every other member) whenever it operates. That means that as an account holder you get favorable returns on your savings, checking, and money market accounts as well as good interest rates on your loans. The company I work for has a credit union and I opened an account within the first week of working because I knew somewhere down the road I might turn to them for a mortgage. Well, I poked around with LendingTree and two other mortgage-finding services (still only one response!) and it’s about time I talked to my credit union.

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This is a very disturbing trend, yet another announcement by a major retailer that the credit data was once again exposed. In an AP article, data was stolen from Polo Ralph Lauren Inc. and HSBC North America is starting to notify holders of their General Motors-branded MasterCards that their credit card information may have been compromised. It now looks like thieves aren’t trying to steal data as it’s being transmitted (the nature of encryption makes that impossible if you’re actually encrypting the data), they’re picking it off data at the destination…

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As I mentioned earlier, I submitted a request to LendingTree at about lunch time today and around 1:30pm, Diane from LendingTree’s “Incubation Department” gave me a call to introduce herself and give me an idea of how LendingTree’s process works. Essentially, she will be the interface/middlewoman between myself and twenty-seven lenders (her number). I don’t know if there will be a premium put on the interest rate for this great service, but that’s what the competing offers from LoanWeb and MonsterMoving (where they don’t get involved, they just give out information) are for.

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I’m going out with realtor today (it’s a friend of mine who is testing for it and a fully licensed Century 21 agent) to look at a few more houses; I’ll report back my findings. One thing I’ve already learned so far is the types of homes I’m interested in are snatched up usually within a week of listing. What that means is that I should get myself pre-approved for a mortgage as soon as possible. If I find my dream house at the dream price and I need to go out and find a loan, it’ll be gone faster than a fat kid going after free cake. So I began my search online for a solid rate and some help on what kind of loan I’ll need.

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