Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Friends all around the world
Some of my best friends live in Arkansas, Canada, India, Germany, Denmark, Washington and Sweden. I love having friends all around the world!!! But it also means that I miss my friends all the time!
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Swimming in the ocean in September
While in Halmstad on September 20th, William and I took a dip in the ocean. It was surprisingly warm. I would guesstimate the water temperature was close to 20 degrees Celsius.
Hello darling!
Where have you been? It's been way too long! Cleaned and about to take this baby for a test drive after 8 years in storage.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
From the bottom of the sea
This weekend we picked up our stuff that we had stored at a relative's house since we moved to the US in 2005. It was a handmade book case (from my dad's side of the family), a chest that my grandpa (morfar) made, my grandma's (mormor) make-up table, macramé shelves Chris's dad made, a mosaic coffee table, my sewing machine, 3 rugs my grandma (farmor) have made and 4 boxes. The chest was filled with kitchenware that I didn't even remember we kept and I don't know what is in the boxes. Since everything is already neatly packed, I don't want to unpack until we move in to our new house in less than 2 months. Plus we don't have room for the stuff in our current house. I don't know if I will be able to wait that long though... I might just have to take a peek.
Friday, August 30, 2013
Buying a house in Sweden - Part 1: Bidding war
Only nine months after moving to Sweden we are under contract, buying our "forever" home. I say "forever" home, since this is the first time we will live somewhere that is not temporary. Finally we can put our heart and soul (and money) into it to make it exactly the way we want it. Closing date is set to November 29th, one year and 15 days after arriving in Linköping. We are beyond excited. There are still a few hurdles to get over, but I really think the "bidding war" was the biggest hurdle, and we managed to win that one. You might ask what that is all about. Partaking in one ourselves, we now know how it works. So let me tell you about our experience.
A house enters the market, being listed by a realtor and entered into Hemnet. Hemnet is the site that has all the home listings in Sweden, and is by my guesstimate almost as popular as Facebook. In the listing, two scheduled open houses are announced, usually the first being on a weekend and the second being a week night the week after. Our house had it's first open house on Sunday August 18th and the second on Tuesday August 20th. The open houses are only scheduled for 30 minutes and are usually jam packed. There were 40+ families at the first and 20+ families at the second open house of our house. This was busier than any of the other 4 open houses we had been to.
Usually on the day after the second open house, the bidding starts. For our house, there was already one bid at the starting price that was given at the second open house. First thing the next morning, I called in our first bid and we were assigned the ID "Bidder #2". Immediately the bidding took off. The bidding is open, meaning all bidders, and really anyone who cares to look, can see the current highest bid and all the bid history online. Anyone who left their phone number at the open house, get text messages for each new bid that comes in. In some cases the actual bids are placed by text message, but our realtor wanted you to actually call him, when placing a bid. By 3pm on the first day of bidding, there were 6 bidders, a total of 20 bids placed and the price was up over 33%. Shortly after that the bidding started to slow down. We had the highest bid over the first night, and thought that maybe, maybe this was it.
Sure enough, the next morning, the bidding continued. Not quite as aggressively, and it seemed like there were only 3 bidders left in the game. Throughout the day, the bidding crawled. The other bidders seemed to take their time... this is a sign of them having to think over/scavenge for more money, for every bid. Our strategy however, was to be aggressive. Always up the last bid as fast as we could, and with the same amount. Making it seem like we were nowhere near our limit and they might as well give up.
Day three of bidding was just one other bidder and us. Bids in the morning were placed fast, but then it got quiet. After a few hours of silence, we thought we had won. I called the realtor around 3 pm to ask what was going on. He told me the other bidder were needing to think, but they were going to place another bid. Apparently, they were already over their limit, but still wanted the house so bad. This made us nervous, since at this point we were very close to our limit. And then the bid came in. We raised ours. They raised theirs. Their new bid was the limit that we had set. However, we figured this was probably their limit too. What gave it away, was that they had raised their bid twice as much this time. We decided to place one final bid, just to see if they actually had reached their limit. Silence. And then the realtor called. The other bidder had asked to think over the weekend. The realtor had told them, we had agreed on getting this over with that day. They had to give up.
After 35 bids and 52% increase in price, we won the bidding war. I have to add that this was quite extreme. Most houses on the market has 2 to 4 bidders and the price increases about 30%. In our case, the starting price was set way too low. This is a common technique to draw a lot of interest. We could tell that the house was severely under priced and were expecting the price that we ended up winning it for.
The whole bidding experience was very stressful and is not something we wish to go through again. The fact is, you never know from a house listing, if you will be able to afford the house. It all depends on the bidders in a sellers market.
A house enters the market, being listed by a realtor and entered into Hemnet. Hemnet is the site that has all the home listings in Sweden, and is by my guesstimate almost as popular as Facebook. In the listing, two scheduled open houses are announced, usually the first being on a weekend and the second being a week night the week after. Our house had it's first open house on Sunday August 18th and the second on Tuesday August 20th. The open houses are only scheduled for 30 minutes and are usually jam packed. There were 40+ families at the first and 20+ families at the second open house of our house. This was busier than any of the other 4 open houses we had been to.
Usually on the day after the second open house, the bidding starts. For our house, there was already one bid at the starting price that was given at the second open house. First thing the next morning, I called in our first bid and we were assigned the ID "Bidder #2". Immediately the bidding took off. The bidding is open, meaning all bidders, and really anyone who cares to look, can see the current highest bid and all the bid history online. Anyone who left their phone number at the open house, get text messages for each new bid that comes in. In some cases the actual bids are placed by text message, but our realtor wanted you to actually call him, when placing a bid. By 3pm on the first day of bidding, there were 6 bidders, a total of 20 bids placed and the price was up over 33%. Shortly after that the bidding started to slow down. We had the highest bid over the first night, and thought that maybe, maybe this was it.
Sure enough, the next morning, the bidding continued. Not quite as aggressively, and it seemed like there were only 3 bidders left in the game. Throughout the day, the bidding crawled. The other bidders seemed to take their time... this is a sign of them having to think over/scavenge for more money, for every bid. Our strategy however, was to be aggressive. Always up the last bid as fast as we could, and with the same amount. Making it seem like we were nowhere near our limit and they might as well give up.
Day three of bidding was just one other bidder and us. Bids in the morning were placed fast, but then it got quiet. After a few hours of silence, we thought we had won. I called the realtor around 3 pm to ask what was going on. He told me the other bidder were needing to think, but they were going to place another bid. Apparently, they were already over their limit, but still wanted the house so bad. This made us nervous, since at this point we were very close to our limit. And then the bid came in. We raised ours. They raised theirs. Their new bid was the limit that we had set. However, we figured this was probably their limit too. What gave it away, was that they had raised their bid twice as much this time. We decided to place one final bid, just to see if they actually had reached their limit. Silence. And then the realtor called. The other bidder had asked to think over the weekend. The realtor had told them, we had agreed on getting this over with that day. They had to give up.
After 35 bids and 52% increase in price, we won the bidding war. I have to add that this was quite extreme. Most houses on the market has 2 to 4 bidders and the price increases about 30%. In our case, the starting price was set way too low. This is a common technique to draw a lot of interest. We could tell that the house was severely under priced and were expecting the price that we ended up winning it for.
The whole bidding experience was very stressful and is not something we wish to go through again. The fact is, you never know from a house listing, if you will be able to afford the house. It all depends on the bidders in a sellers market.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Summer vacation Part 2
So the summer vacation came and went. Being off for 7 weeks was great, but somehow it went by too fast anyway. Some of the highlights were showing Sini Linköping by bike, visiting Anna-Lisa and Niklas and getting to meet their baby Elise, taking William and niece Ella to Astrid Lindgren's world, running with my big brother Leif, running with my little brother Janne, taking William fishing with my dad and Janne, boat ride to Luleå archipelago, shopping with my mom, kid-free
lunch date with my husband and running along the old railroad tracks in Tornedalen.
lunch date with my husband and running along the old railroad tracks in Tornedalen.
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Summer vacation Part 1
We are 2 weeks into my 7 week vacation. It's not actually 7 weeks of vacation, but 4 weeks of vacation and then 3 weeks of maternity leave. To me, it's still the same thing. It means I am off work and get to spend every day with my family.
These first 2 weeks we have taken day by day. The weather has been great and we have gone on several day trips to local parks, playgrounds, rivers, downtown, skate parks and yesterday we went to the popular Zoo Kolmården that is less than an hour away. There we got to go on a sky lift ride over the safari park and see bears, lions, giraffes and lots of other animals.
We also took William on his very first roller coaster ride. It was much more extreme than I had imagined and I thought he would be totally shook up and cry afterwards, but the first thing he said was "I wanna do it again!", so we did it 2 more times. He loved it!
I am really enjoying time off! Next week my friend Sini will visit and then my brother with family. Then in 2 weeks, we are flying up to Luleå to spend time with my parents. And after that we still have time to relax at home before I start working again. Yay for vacation! So glad I am not in the US or my vacation would be over now, after 2 weeks.
These first 2 weeks we have taken day by day. The weather has been great and we have gone on several day trips to local parks, playgrounds, rivers, downtown, skate parks and yesterday we went to the popular Zoo Kolmården that is less than an hour away. There we got to go on a sky lift ride over the safari park and see bears, lions, giraffes and lots of other animals.
We also took William on his very first roller coaster ride. It was much more extreme than I had imagined and I thought he would be totally shook up and cry afterwards, but the first thing he said was "I wanna do it again!", so we did it 2 more times. He loved it!
I am really enjoying time off! Next week my friend Sini will visit and then my brother with family. Then in 2 weeks, we are flying up to Luleå to spend time with my parents. And after that we still have time to relax at home before I start working again. Yay for vacation! So glad I am not in the US or my vacation would be over now, after 2 weeks.
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