I guess it's real now

Just as two of my friends are writing extolling the financial savvy of renting forever, we got our first "please to be sending the mortgage check on June 1, kthxbye*" _{[*'no really, please please send the check, we really need it']} letter from Bank of America.

So it's official ... we own now. Eeek/yay! I have economically stimulated half of Brooklyn's homewares shops, much to Amex's glee. We celebrated coughing up five figures at the closing table by immediately dropping almost as much again buying a couch, terrace table, chairs, groceries, and enough laundry detergent to last us eons, because I am celebrating having a washing machine for the first time in my adult life by doing approximately fourteen loads of laundry a day.

At some point the giddy euphoria will wear off and I will return to talking sensibly about finances. In fact, I'm gonna go take the edge off right now by wrapping up some day-job work and delving into corporate tax filings.

While listening to the background noise of my whirring washing machine.

$48,986.93

... is what it costs to transfer one piece of residential real estate, the apartment David and I are buying tomorrow (if, *fingers crossed fingers crossed* the close doesn't get delayed again).

None of that sum is the down payment, or any piece of the actual sale price. It consists entirely of title costs, attorney fees, broker commissions, taxes, and every other bit of this transaction that some third-party is managing to carve a piece off. I knew going in that this was going to be pricey, but damn. I'm impressed. And boggled.

Happily, we're not on the hook for all of that cost (merely the vast bulk of it), and some we financed into the mortgage loan. But still. This is not some Donald Trumpian multimillion-dollar real estate deal. It's a standard-issue, six-figure home loan, one in which I fought hard at every step against junk fees and avoidable "extras" we could opt out of (I now speak fluent GFE, HUD-1, RESPA and TIRSA Rate Manual).

That is an impressive amount of price padding from what you see on the sticker.