International relocation -- Part 2

This relocation took more effort and emotional stamina than I initially thought it would. Optimism? More likely self-willed ignorance. If I don't think about it, maybe that will be less stressful. (That is sometimes true.) 

This has been a long year. Then there was just all of the stuff of this year. There was Covid, working from home, and adjusting to the anti-social life. A long year without any vacation, so during quarantine I decided to give myself a break and allowed it to be a partial vacation. Staycation, really. Crocheting, reading, and generally not job searching were totally permitted without shame or guilt at not being more productive. 

Because it's been a ridiculously productive year. The only days Marcus and I took off this year were to visit family, and those visits are wonderful and yet decidedly not vacation. Important. But not R&R. Both family visits this year were surrounded by home purchasing and a lot of time was spent on both visits trying to sort through home buying complexities. 

Speaking of complexities...let's get back to that list. My attempts to categorize the moving complexities. (My word for 2020--clearly complexity.)

• Company coordination
• Immigration
• Property management
• Home maintenance/improvements
• Cars
• Bills, expenses, miscellaneous
• Work
• Friends and family

Only two down. Yikes. 🤦

Property management

There were some decisions we needed to make about what to do with the house. Would we leave the house empty (absolutely not), sell it (no), or rent it out? We had to consider all options, but renting it out was an easy decision to make. And how does one rent out one's home? The biggest stickler for us doing it ourselves was first, the administrative work needed to navigate renting out a home, but more importantly, how does one take care of maintenance items for other people living in their house when one doesn't know how to properly take care of maintenance things when they're living in the house themselves? Finding and working with tradesmen is not our strong suit. Best to leave it in the hands of professionals. Luckily we found and hired a local property management company without too much hassle.

Then there were the things we had to take care of in order to get the house ready for renters

• Arranging an annual contract with an oil company to service and top off the oil regularly.
• Getting pictures taken of the property for advertising.
• Understanding rental code then remedying any items that needed to be fixed (getting a new window added to the downstairs bedroom, adding more smoke alarms, etc.).
• Updating the home insurance policy.
• Cleaning out the garden beds and fixing up the yard.

That's probably it for property management. But related:

Home maintenance/improvements

Like all of the other homeowners during Covid, we undertook a number of home improvements, most of which we kicked off before we knew we were headed to Singapore, but most of which actually took place when we were in the midst of the transition. 

We stabilized the foundations of the house earlier in Covid. New cracks added to the house in the process. Awesome. This only took the workmen two days, but the experience of hearing our home crunched during those 15 hours may have left permanent damage. 

Next were the windows. We purchased the windows months before they were finally installed, which included widening the window in our downstairs bedroom so it could officially be counted as a bedroom per Seattle rental code. The windows were installed two weeks before we moved. That was cutting it a little closer than what we would have preferred, but it got done. 

After the windows were installed, we had to paint around the windows, inside and out, which required many trips to Home Depot, and an education in the white palette. There are an unfathomable number of shades of white, from coco malt (brown-ish off-white) to antique white (dirty tan), and dainty lace (peachy gray). 

All around the window installation, we also had more than five different plumbing companies out to the house to figure out why the kitchen sink was backing up. After some shoddy troubleshooting, we finally discovered that the pipe was broken and even worse than that, the pipe went over into an old septic tank in our neighbors' yard (a septic tank they didn't know was there). Luckily we finally found a great plumbing company (Seattle friends--Pioneer Plumbing) and they helped us find what the problem was and then figure out a good solution to fixing it, which required re-routing the pipe to the other side of the house. 

The plumbing was done the week before we moved. WAY too close. Also, after the plumbing was done, we had to hire a plasterer to come fix the holes in the wall. Then we had to do more white paint matching to cover the wall patches. Our painting was half-assed, but you can only tell if you're looking for it. Well, mostly. We also discovered how much half-assing the previous owners did that we hadn't noticed before. The joys of homeownership!

Cars

One of our other tasks was figuring out what to do with our two cars. They're not new or really worth putting in a garage for a few years, so we decided to part with them. We got them both detailed and ready for their new homes. 

The first went on to my mom down in Arizona, which involved figuring out how to ship a car (a two to three day roadtrip wasn't a good use of our time at this point). Transporting a car, another new process to figure out. Gathering quotes, talking to sales people, then biting the bullet and going with one (and even then it ends up costing more money than quoted). 

Luckily, that process went smoothly overall, even if the car did get to my mom a few days later than we were initially told. It did feel strange seeing our car driven away, though. It was our first major purchase when we moved to Seattle and it felt like a big chunk of our Seattle life was detaching. 

The other car we put up for sale just a week before we were due to leave. You know, we still needed to drive it and get around! We got a couple of bites on Craigslist, one of which seemed valid. We ended up selling it two days before we flew out, to a friend of a friend who bought it for her son in high school. Our cars are kind of perfect for high school kids. Cost-effective, efficient, and inexpensive (some of the reasons I loved them!). 

Then there was the paperwork, signing over the titles (and going to the DOL to purchase a new, expedited title for the Matrix because we couldn't find the title, hours before finding the "lost" title in the Corolla), ending the Good To Go passes, and canceling insurance.  

Bills, expenses, miscellaneous

There were also the bills to take care of--utilities, internet, cell phones, produce box, other subscriptions. Canceling one credit card and ordering a new one that doesn't charge international fees. Changing our address with various ongoing bills as well as with USPS (their new change of address service is awesome, btw). Asking my sister to be the recipient and manager of all our mail moving forward, knowing I should be paying for her services!

There were the random things like finally taking my wedding dress to the drycleaner to get it cleaned and preserved (which...I think just means they stick it in a box). Then asking a friend if they would please keep it in storage at their house since we don't actually know where our Seattle-based storage is!

There was also the letter from the IRS we received the week before we flew out, erroneously claiming we didn't pay our taxes. Not alarming at all. We have an amazing accountant who jumped right on it and hopped on the phone with the IRS to straighten it out. No idea why they hadn't registered that we'd paid our taxes for last year (and even paid in advance for some of our taxes this year). 

I should also mention that I was panic purchasing throughout all of this. Singapore is notoriously expensive, so I was trying to purchase what I thought we might need in advance. Not entirely necessary, but hey, that's the panic part. I bought a rug, an office chair, a daybed to serve as our outdoor furniture, hot weather workout clothes, period underwear, wireless ear buds, power adaptors, a bevy of crochet hooks, electrolytes... 

Enough? Is it enough yet? Jesus. I think there's going to be a part 3 to this.