Author: jessieknadler

In an indirect way, you could say that none other than Thomas Jefferson brought Sahar Batmanghelidj and Sam Miotke together.

Sahar, 28, is Iranian. Her father, a longtime admirer and student of Thomas Jefferson, fled his native country after the overthrow of the Shah in 1979.  After settling with his family in Northern Virginia, he made a point of bringing his family to Monticello every Independence Day to partake in the celebrations.

They were thrilled when Sahar eventually chose the University of Virginia for college.

Sam, also 28, grew up in Michigan. His mother was also a longtime admirer of the nation’s third president. It was she who first encouraged Sam, who is currently pursuing a medical degree at Georgetown University, to apply to UVA for college.

Sam and Sahar met their first year in the laundry room of their dorm. The first thing Sahar noticed about her future husband—aside from what she jokingly describes as his “boyish good looks”—was how abysmally he folded his clothes. “He just threw them in a pile,” the D.C.-based financial advisor recalls. “This bothered me.”

“She taught me to care about my clothes,” says Sam.

Pretty soon Sam was popping by Sahar’s dorm room to borrow her microwave, ostensibly. They began walking to and from class together…just as friends. Toward the end of freshman year during one of their friendly strolls to Sahar’s jazz history class, Sam reached for Sahar’s hand. They walked hand-in-hand in silence, each aware the moment marked a new beginning.

They fell in love. Four years went by. Then six. Then eight. They’d been together so long, Sahar’s father started calling Sam the “fiancé” even though they weren’t technically engaged.

But Sam was biding his time (and finishing up grad school in Oregon). He wanted a proposal to be perfect, so set about having a ring designed for Sahar—one that paid homage to her Iranian roots.

Sam’s grandmother gave him diamonds from one of her cherished rings, which he combined with stones given to him by Sahar’s mother. He then gave the stones to Sahar’s cousin to take back to Iran to have made into a ring.
 
But there was a glitch: Sahar’s cousin had difficulty returning to the States. Her travel plans were consistently postponed. “I thought I’d get the ring back in a month or two,” says Sam. “It ended up taking an entire year.”

By the time he had the ring in hand—nearly nine years after they started dating —he was so anxious to present it to Sahar, he ended up proposing to her…while she slept.

“I was taking a nap, and I could faintly hear Sam saying, ‘Sahar, Sahar, I think we should get married. Sahar!’” she says. “At first I was angry because I thought he was fooling around. But he held up this beautiful ring, and asked, ‘Well, well?’ I said, ‘of course!’”

The couple wed on July 11 in Keswick in a beautiful Persian ceremony that culminated with Sam and Sahar feeding each other honey. At one point during the ceremony, the bride was asked three times if she accepted the groom’s proposal, a Persian tradition meant to signify that it is the man who is anxious to marry, not the other way around.

Given Sam’s ring-making travails—not to mention their lengthy 10-year courtship—that part of the ceremony was decidedly apropos.

If one were a cynic, one could say that the romance between Leslie Brady and Nate Kenser didn’t have the most auspicious of beginnings. But like all great love affairs, theirs evolved dramatically over time.

Exhibit A of their bumpy start: The couple met in 2003 while on-shift at Chili’s, the chain Mexican restaurant perhaps known for spawning more hookups than lasting bonds among its predominately young, single staff.

Nate, who was 21 at the time, wasn’t looking for love. He was looking for a roommate. Leslie, 18, desperately needed a place to live. 

Enter exhibit B. No sooner had 5’2” Leslie unpacked her toaster did she begin to develop feelings for her 6’2” roommate. “He was always making jokes and making me laugh,” she says. “I liked him a lot, so I made it very obvious how I felt.”

Nate—ever the gentleman—spurned her advances, though he was secretly captivated by her smile. “I knew I didn’t want to have a relationship with a roommate because if it goes bad it affects your whole life,” he says.

One evening, as Leslie was goofing off in front of Nate, she tripped over his gym-bag, and fell face first to the floor. She didn’t move. “At first I thought she was being dramatic,” says Nate. When he reached down to help her up, he felt oozing liquid on his hand. He rolled her over, and saw that Leslie had busted her nose open, having cracked her face against a bookcase on the way down. She was out cold.

Nate helped to revive her, then carried her into the bathroom to clean her face. When she caught sight of her reflection, she started crying hysterically. “I thought I’d been mutilated,” she says. “This wasn’t how I envisioned our relationship unfolding.”

Nate carried her into the car and drove her to the emergency room, where “he held my hand the entire time,” says Leslie.

For the next two months, Leslie had to face her crush with two unflattering stitches down the middle of her nose. Her usually playful demeanor became a tad more sheepish. For some hot-and-heavy roommates, a similar situation would have translated into “Exhibit C.”

But for Leslie and Nate, that’s precisely when goofy infatuation blossomed to genuine feeling. Soon enough, the roommates became a couple. All was right with the world. (They didn’t even have to look for a place to live.)

Then, less than a year after they started dating, Nate got deployed to Afghanistan, forcing the couple apart for a year and a half.

“It was so hard,” says Leslie of their time apart. “But it allowed us got to know each other in a different, deeper way, through phone calls and letters.”

When Nate finally returned to Virginia on July 4, 2005, they’d decided to wed. Nate dropped out of the army and, after having been accepted into law school at UVA, which begins this fall, moved with Leslie to Charlottesville.

To commemorate Nate’s homecoming, the couple wed at UVA Chapel on July 4, a day that marks the transition from their iffy beginnings to rock-solid togetherness. And as Leslie points out, “Because it’s a national holiday, we’re always guaranteed a day off on our anniversary.”

The biggest real estate kerfuffle of the summer—lowball appraisals.
 
Many Charlottesville homeowners have had to shelve or cancel plans to refinance or sell their homes due to appraisals coming in much lower—sometimes as much as 12 to 15 percent—than expected.

Why is this happening? Two reasons, explains Bill Hamrick, vice president and branch manager of C&F Mortgage Charlottesville, who sees lowball appraisals as a growing concern among Charlottesville homeowners.

Number one, government-sponsored mortgage investors Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae put new, highly abstemious appraisal rules into effect nationwide on May 1. The new rules are designed to curtail laissez-faire lending practices and freewheeling home valuations that fueled the housing market crash.
 
Number two, “Many appraisals conducted during the boom were inflated to begin with,” says Hamrick. “So a lot of these ‘lowball appraisals’ people are talking about may actually be a more accurate reflection of a home’s real value.”
 
Under the old rules, a homeowner seeking to sell or refinance a home would tell his real estate agent or lender what he thought the house is worth—say, $300,000. The agent or lender would run this number by an appraiser, the inference being this was the target number needed for the sale or loan to go through. If an appraiser came back with a valuation of $270,000—less than the target—the parties involved would obviously want to reconsider doing future business with this person. So it was in the appraiser’s self-interest to manipulate the numbers to better coincide with the target valuation. Not surprisingly, values became inflated. Enter the mortgage meltdown.

The new rules—outlined in a document called Home Valuation Code of Conduct which can be found at freddiemac.com—seek to eliminate the cozy relationship that existed between sellers, mortgage brokers and appraisers.
 
No longer are mortgage brokers allowed to order an appraisal or influence an appraisal report. Indeed, the new code prohibits mortgage brokers and real estate agents from taking any part in the selection of appraisers at all. Critics charge this has led to lenders outsourcing the selection of appraisers to independent appraisal-management companies, who assign appraisers with little to no knowledge of neighborhoods in question.
 
What’s more, appraisers are using short sales, foreclosures and other distressed properties as “comparables,” which distorts property values further. “Banks have suffered huge losses, so they’re leaning on appraisers to be more cautious,” says Hamrack.

What to do if an appraisal comes back less than expected? Unfortunately, right now, not much, says Hamrick.

Last week, the National Association of Realtors urged Congress to pass a bill that would impose an 18-month moratorium on the new appraisal guidelines. The issue is still being debated in Washington.
 
In the meantime, Freddie Mac issued another round of guidelines for lenders (and homeowners) aimed to encourage fair and accurate appraisals. Among their recommendations: utilizing only appraisers who are state licensed and show adequate knowledge of a neighborhood in question.