The color of infinity inside an empty glass

I am so glad the move is basically over. OK, yes, we still have to finish unpacking and putting stuff away and such, but.. I am so glad that we made it, we're here.

( Moving thoughts. )

It's been a while since I posted any life updated here, huh?

Well, the wife and I looked at townhouses two weekends ago and found one we really liked, but the owner was less than thrilled when we dated to say that we wanted to move in at the end of October, not the beginning (Hello?!?! Two weeks from now!) and so, as far as we can tell, never took our application seriously. We just got word a few days later that they weren't interesting.

Ironically, this house has been on the market since June.

I'm willing to bet it's still on the market, but whatever! It forced us to go out and keep looking. We found a much nicer three floor/two bedroom place this last weekend, which we applied for. It's gorgeous in there! This time, the company is taking the application seriously. We know that they tried to contact K's boss to verify employment. They probably contacted mine as well.

Meanwhile, we've begun to systematically disassemble our household. Er.. I mean pack! There really is a limited amount of stuff we can pack up right now, but we're doing what we can to make it easier when it's crunch time later on. It's also giving us a chance to go through things and get rid of stuff we simply just don't need anymore. (We found K's old cable modem from when she left rochester. It's now gone.)

And that's what's going on over here. Hopefully we hear soon that we've got the townhouse we want and don't have to go back out this weekend.

So, after making about 100 phone calls, we finally figured out what was going on.

In short, it's not the Bank's fault and it's not REALLY my fault, it's the credit reporter's fault.

When I first moved to the DC area, I had alot of debt to take care of and wasn't making enough to live in this area and pay off my debts. I did my best working with everyone involved, but long story short, a couple of my student loans ended up going default.

About three years ago, we got a nasty surprise when we got a letter from a company telling me I was default on a bunch of loans and I had to pay $50,000 RIGHT NOW. Needless to say, I didn't have that, but we worked out a payment plan and began rehabilitating my loans. Two years ago, the loans were officially rehabilitated and I got a chance to consolidate all my loans into one loan that I've been faithfully paying for two years.

When the loan was finally rehabilitated, the department of education sent a letter to Equifax letting them know that the loan wasw not in default and remove this from my credit report. Equifax failed to do that. I've lodged an appeal of this debt from Equifax (and when I spoke to the Department of Educaiton, they also lodged an appeal saying, basically "Hey we told you guys in December of 2006 that this loan is no longer in default and remove this from the credit rating.") but it will take them 30-45 days to fix it, according to their website and all the people K and I spoke to yesterday, including our real estate agent and the mortgage banker we were sent to.

If part of the plan wasn't to close on a house by November 30 and get $8,000 back on our taxes, we probably COULD have still bought a house, but time is short and talking to everyone, it's incredibly unlikely at this juncture that Equifax will fix the error in a timely manner.

So... now we're back in the realm of renting, at least for a year (Keep in mind K is having a baby in six months, so there's no point in trying to do it sooner). Possibly renting a house, possibly an apartment, depending on cost and travel time, mostly. Our real estate agent is looking at houses for rent right now and we'll go out the weekend after labor day to start loooking at them, says she.

Our hopes are that Obama decides to resign the.. I'm not sure what.. that is offering the $8,000 tax refund if we are a first time home buyer. In that case, we can start the paperwork much earlier, begin looking earlier, etc.

So.. that's where we stand. One way or the other, we still feel like we HAVE to move, that this two bedroom apartment is not enough room. So... stay tuned, I guess.

OK, folks, I need your knowledge.

Kristen and I are moving (within the DC Metro Area - Wherever it goes, it needs to be relatively close to a Metro Station, so that one or both of us can get to work) and we NEED to know which areas we should be conentrating on finding an apartment in. We want to know what neighborhoods are worthwhile and which are not.
At the moment, we've only looked at Silver Spring. I've been told to check out Fairfax. And Alexandria is an obvious place for me to check.
Other suggestions?

Our rent threshold is approximately $1,400.

This post is public. Please feel free to redirect people.

Thank you!