Democracy India and US

For the first time in my life I got to participate in the democratic process, aka voting. Yes I do regret I never got to vote in my home country. That said, now lets focus on some interesting aspects of democratic process, more importantly difference between the 2 great democracies USA (my adopted country) and India (home country). 

The big difference between the 2 countries that every one knows is that in one we vote for the president and the other we vote for the president directly and in other we vote for the member of parliaments, who then elect the prime minister. 

This much is known to all but the thing that caught me by surprise was the fact that in India, the elected PM and his party has the choice of cabinet members to work with but in USA the president gets to select his cabinet members but almost all other than his chief of staff has to go through senate hearing and need to be confirmed by the senate, albeit simple majority is probably sufficient. Another key difference is the number of cabinet positions are fixed from president to president unlike India where we expand and contract (mostly always expand) based on how many parties are huddled in the coalition.  

In short, the elected leader cannot appoint his own people to work with unless both the senate and house are in control of the president's party. 

If anyone had asked me about the elections in USA before 2020, I would have said 2 things. USA votes for president directly and it is determined by electoral votes and not popular votes, vote in 1 election cycle and I know all the nooks and crannies including what the term Gerrymandering mean :).   

Home sales and economy

Recently we bought a house here in Austin, after evaluating the options of “getting the house built” with “buying an existing house”, we ended up with the latter than the former. In the process what stuck me was the number of people that I directly interacted with in the process of home buying/selling.

Realtors: 1 for each buyer and seller. One thing I realized was that it is virtually impossible to buy an existing house in Austin without the help of the realtor. There are websites like Redfin which help with the listings in the neighborhood and providing  comparative market analysis but wouldn’t give you a way of contacting the sellers realtor without going through them. Apart from this, the agility with which the paper work needs to be done and the paper work itself makes you hire a good realtor.

Finance: There are 2 options here, option 1 is to go with the existing big bank like Bank of America or Chase. Option 2 is to go through a middle man called the loan officer who will work with different banks and get you the rate. I went with the latter option. There was a loan officer to whom I spoke first and then her assistant who worked with me to get my loan through.  

Appraisal: The bank sends the appraisal person but I had to cough up the fees for the same.

Inspection: Are there hidden problems in the house that one should be aware of before going through the sale. This one is for my own peace of mind and not a mandated one. But again nobody buys a house without going through this step. 

Survey: This comes with the house when built and I believe provided by the builder but if there are modifications to the house like a covered porch or a pool. Need to hire a survey guy to do a survey of the property (seller does this).     

Title company: This is the company who acts as meditators between the buyers and seller parties and takes responsibility for transferring the money from buyers bank to sellers bank. They also issue the title insurance quoting that they will stand behind the documents of the house we are buying. They have a ton of lawyers and the Escrow officers and their assistants. 

Warranty and Insurance company: I have listed them together but are actually 2 different ones. One provides warranty for the appliances in the house and can be rejected if not interested (usually good to take it for seller is paying for most of it). The other one is mandatory and no escaping out.

If my count is right, apart from the buyer and seller there were 11 people directly involved to complete the transaction, I am sure there were a few more that I didn’t directly interacted with.

It appears that the sale of existing homes is an industry in itself. Now I understand why the sale of existing homes bears such an impact on the economy.