We just closed on our new place yesterday.

I haven’t written about our new home because (a) I didn’t want to jinx it, and (b) I didn’t want to sit here and reveal how much I love my new place while there were still little issues to work out with the seller.  Nothing undermines whatever bargaining position you might like to maintain than a public blog that explains how much you love the new place and will pay ANYTHING to get into it.

So now that we’ve closed, I can talk about the process.  The first thing you need to know, if you don’t already know it, is that I’m in the real estate business. I’m one of the owners of Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty, one of the largest real estate companies in New York City’s northern suburbs.  It’s a family company, started by my mother Marsha about 25 years ago, and now owned by Marsha, me, and two of my brothers (Greg and Matt).  In fact, the reason I’m moving from the city is that I’ve been commuting to our offices for the past 9 years, and I’m finally tired of it. As much as I love living in the city, when you work 10 hours a day and commute for 2, it doesn’t leave a lot of time to enjoy what the city has to offer.

So in moving to the suburbs, I was really going home.  Going home to the area that I grew up in, that I lived in until I went off to Georgetown for college and law school. And going home to the area where I’ve worked — IN REAL ESTATE — every day for the past nine years.  (Okay, not exactly every day, or even every work day, since I took any excuse to stay in the city and work from home whenever I could).

The second thing you need to know is that I was pretty much locked into Rockland County, the smallest county in New York, on the Western side of the Tappan Zee bridge.  It’s where most of my family lives, where our headquarters is, and where I’m most familiar.  In retrospect, I probably could have spent more time looking in Westchester, but the types of places I wanted were a little out of my budget in Westchester.

All that is by way of saying that I had a bit of an advantage in buying in the suburbs: I knew the area, knew local real estate, and had about 800 agents that would help me buy a home if I asked. My mother is a Realtor, my brothers are all Realtors, I’m a Realtor, and my wife is a Realtor.

And it was still a pain in the ass.  Physician, heal thyself.  No matter how much you know about real estate, it’s still tough buying a house for yourself.

We had certain ideas about what we wanted.  We wanted to be within 30 minutes of Manhattan, since my wife will still be commuting to her job in the city.  And we wanted something interesting.  If that seems vague, it’s because it is.  We really just wanted some sort of home that would be distinctive, that when we brought people out from the city they would nod their heads and say, “ahh, I can see why you moved from your place in the city.

So what were the kinds of things we thought were “interesting”:

• We loved this house on a cliff in Upper Grandview, this great architecturally interesting house with amazing panoramic views of the Hudson River.  We went to see it about eight or nine times, driving my friend and colleague Margo Bohlin, the top agent in our company and the region, crazy. But ultimately, our friends with kids, knowing that we’d like to have kids someday, explained the fundamental concerns about owning a home on a cliff.
• I loved a house in Valley Cottage, this big giant huge enormous house with 10,000 square feet, 25 acres, a pool, and a full basement that I would have turned into essentially a commercial pub complete with the DirecTV football package. I loved it, but my wife was concerned with moving into a house on the top of a mountain, surrounded by 25 empty acres, in an area where she knows no one except me.  She thought it would be isolating.
• My wife loved this house in Sparkill that was big, comfy, beautifully done up, and only about 15 minutes from the GW Bridge.  I liked the house too, particularly that it was about 5 minutes from a private golf course I play on, but didn’t love the lot. Or the price.

We saw lots of other houses, most of them nice but not interesting, or interesting but not practical.

Then something funny happened.  We had looked exclusively at houses, houses on big lots. Then my mother, who has had a real estate license for about 35 years and was known as an absolutely killer buyer agent before she opened up her own brokerage, suggested we look at this condo in Nyack.  Nyack is this charming old village on the Hudson River, the one really walkable community in Rockland County. It’s got restaurants, bars, shops, all in a very small compact area.  People sometimes say it’s “city-like,” but that’s not it.  What it mostly reminds me of is my old neighborhood in Noe Valley, San Francisco — charming, cute old buildings, a strong but small commercial district, and a couple of hills.

We hadn’t really looked in Nyack, mostly because the houses were outside our price range.  But my mother knew about this condo in a complex right on the water, two blocks from the Nyack downtown. It had been on the market for three or four years, chasing the market down on price for most of that time.  It also had a lot of trouble selling because (1) the taxes are outrageous (I’m not even going to tell you what they are, and (2) the place was done up a bit in a very specific style, which a lot of people can’t see through.  So it had been on the market for a while.

A condo, but 4,000 square feet, four or five bedrooms, and unbelievable views of the river. With a lot of great touches: three refrigerators, two giant wine fridges, six or seven terraces, high end sound system, etc.
I was resistant to looking at a condo at first, but she made me go look at it.  And when I saw it, I realized that it was the right place for us.  My wife was concerned about moving to an area where she didn’t know anyone, so moving into a condo complex with other people, and two blocks from the one true downtown in Rockland, made sense.  We both wanted something interesting, and what’s more interesting than the biggest and coolest condo in the region.  Plus, I don’t need to learn how to cut grass.

So we made our offer, worked it out, and got into contract. Closed yesterday. It’s ours.

Our first night in the place, there was a massive thunderstorm that came through the Hudson Valley.  We stood at the windows with the lights out drinking wine watching the lightning strike the Hudson River, outlining the Tappan Zee Bridge in silhouette.  Very cool.