Our House(s), Part Five: Via Aguila, San Clemente, CA.

2155 Via Aguila, San Clemente, CA.  Keep in mind that in true real estate sales fashion, the picture was taken with a wide-angle lens.  In reality, it is not that grand, and the front “yard” is just big enough for the dogs to use as a toilet…  But we love it!  

When our little grandchild John Patrick was born in 2021, that pretty much changed everything.  We had loosely planned to stay in Irvine forever, but we were doing a fair amount of driving from Irvine down to San Clemente to babysit little John, which was a 35-40 minute drive one way, and that got pretty old pretty fast.  Also, Kathy and I had been dreaming of a home with a view for more than a decade, so in the spring of 2021 made the decision to look for a home in San Clemente so that we could be closer to little John, and also looking for a view home.  As far as real estate goes, 2021 was crazy; interest rates were really low (less than 2%), and consequently the real estate market was really hot, with properties increasing in value by the month, and buyers engaging in bidding wars, all to the enjoyment of the realtors.  So, again we contacted my good friend Jeff Marandi, and with the help of financing from US bank, we started to look for a place in San Clemente in earnest.  Jeff started to show us a few properties in San Clemente, Dana Point and Capistrano Beach, but none of them filled all of our requirements (which were really only two; a home with a view, sitting on a street with sidewalks for our dog walks.  Note that many of the older areas in San Clemente, Dana Point and Capistrano Beach don’t have sidewalks…).  We found Via Aguila just by chance; on a Saturday we were out looking, and we just happened to drive by and we saw an open house sign.  We took Jeff to the property, and he was really impressed by all the outside upgrades, but I was just interested in the view; I spent about 20 minutes up on the deck just looking out over the Pacific…  So, we put in an initial bid which was rejected; we upped our bid a little bit and it was accepted.  So, we bought Via Aguila in September of 2021, before we had actually sold our house in Irvine.  This allowed us to start to move stuff from Soaring Hawk down to Via Aguila, while Soaring Hawk was still for sale.  We had initially talked about doing a big one-time move using a moving company, but instead on several occasions we rented Home Depot moving vans, and in addition I packed my pickup truck full, and made a bunch of trips back and forth.  

When we bought Via Aguila it finally seemed like all the real estate stars were all aligned just right; we were the only ones interested in Via Aguila, while we had a bidding war over our Soaring Hawk house.  This meant that we paid a little under the asking price for Via Aguila, while at the same time we got over the asking price for Soaring Hawk.  Also, with the interest rates being historically very low, we were able to borrow more, and pay less, which usually don't happen very often!  And to top it off, we finally got our view home, something we had dreamt about for over a decade.  Even so, I don't attribute all of it to luck; much of it had to do with having a house in Irvine that was (through a 15-year mortgage, as opposed to the usual 30-year loan), almost paid off, and also having a great real estate agent in my friend Jeff.  Nevertheless, the market was in our favor, and that's something we never have any control over, you just have to go along for the ride.                     

The financing was very interesting; since Soaring Hawk house was valued at a million bucks, in late spring of 2021 we took a home equity loan for $500,000 at a really low initial interest rate.  Out of that $500,000, the first thing we did was to pay off the loan at Soaring Hawk, which amounted to some $135,000.  That left us with $365,000, which we used as a down payment for the house at Via Aguila.  Now, that left us with an initial mortgage of over a million at Via Aguila, which at the time amounted to a monthly payment of over $4,000.  We immediately put Soaring Hawk up to sale, and in October of 2021 with Jeff’s help we sold it.  We took those proceeds and did two things; first we paid off the $500,000 home equity loan; secondly, we took the rest and paid down our loan on Via Aguila, which left us with a much more manageable mortgage and monthly payment.  So, by October 2021, we had bought Via Aguila, sold Soaring Hawk, and we were fully moved into San Clemente, and we ended up being just seven minutes away from little John.  Life is GOOD! 

Initially, we “just” replaced all the old dark carpeting, and Kathy painted pretty much all the rooms.  We also contracted to have the back deck refurbished, and we installed a spiral staircase from the back patio leading up to the back deck. 

Our spiral staircase leading up to the back deck.  We were still waiting for the replacement glass on the upper right of the deck.

 But, we knew that the whole downstairs needed to be refurbished; however, before we did all the planned work on the downstairs (which is well documented on this blog), we also had the roof replaced, and we also contracted to bypass all the old copper plumbing and re-pipe the house with PEX plastic tubing.  Getting the roof done and the re-piping done was not necessarily fun (or even visible), but we wanted to do things in the right order, before we replaced the downstairs flooring.  

So, in December of 2024, we started in on finally getting a new kitchen, downstairs flooring, and we also installed new cabinets in the two upstairs bedrooms.  If you are interested, you can check out the whole remodel saga on this little blog; check out “Kathy and Peter’s Kitchen Remodel, Parts One through Five”.  Enjoy!