And… Breathe Out

You may be thinking I’d fallen off the face of the earth.  I didn’t — but we did find a house and life has been a bit of a whirlwind ever since.

While M was in Britain, I noticed a new property on the market that looked interesting — good room sizes, good neighbourhood, excellent school district, and it also looked to have the elements that have been deal breakers for so many houses before: the kind of garage, driveway, and basement that M would love.  I had the estate agent take me round it last Thursday and, it turned out, it was interesting — really very interesting.   I immediately arranged to go back with M on Saturday morning.

On Friday night, I got a phone call from the estate agent: the buyer already had an offer.  Apparently, he had had been about to accept it, but had agreed to wait until we’d seen it as well.  He had to reply to the first offer by Sunday, so the pressure was now firmly on.  If we were going to have to make this decision quickly, I decided to ask my dad to join us, and to bring his best friend (who happens to be a builder) so they could cast their expert eyes over it as well.

That night, E2 couldn’t breath for a blocked up nose, and she kept me up all night.  At 5.30am, I’d had 90 minutes of sleep.  M got up with her and so I managed to catch two more hours before I had to get up as well.  My head was pounding — three and a half hours sleep is not enough to get up on, and certainly not enough to make house-buying decisions on.  This did not bode well.

Then, as I was getting dressed, I suddenly realised I was about to view a house in the company of four men, all of whom would be looking at it strictly in terms of pipes and bricks and money, and none of whom would be thinking of whether this house would really work for a mother with two little kids.  So at the last minute, I asked my mother to come too (which, of course, meant the girls would have to tag along as well).  Mum’s face lit up — she had been secretly hating the fact that she wasn’t going to get a look-in on a house that might be such a serious contender.  So, an hour later, we pitch up outside the house  …all eight of us.  The owner was still there but, fortunately, didn’t seem much fazed by the sea of faces on his doorstep.  He opened the door wide for us before descretely slipping out for a spot of early-Saturday gardening.

Then, just as the door closed behind us, disaster struck: M’s work phone went off.  He was on call that weekend and they needed him for an emergency now.  Everyone else was looking around the room and talking excitedly, but my eyes were focused on him as he tried to beg off enough time to at least give the place a quick walk-through.  Finally, he hung up and flashed me a tense smile: he’d got them to agree, but we’d have to be quick and there’d be little time for discussion. This was not how we wanted to view a house, let alone make a decision.

I marched everyone through in double-quick time, but that didn’t dampen the effect.  They all liked the house.  Most importantly, M did, and I liked it more on second viewing than I had on first.  It’s a surprising house — a Cape Cod with an odd split-level addition on one side — that is spread over five different levels and just seems to go on and on as you discover each one.  The living room, dining room, and kitchen are on the small side, but they have scope for easy expansion.  The family room will work perfectly for both the girls toys and my fibre stash, and M was really chuffed to discover a big, dry, inviting basement for his drums and his weights.  Upstairs, it has three bedrooms — one of them of them set apart by a half-set of stairs, which would be perfect for E2, officially the World’s Lightest Sleeper.  My dad and his friend approved the overall condition of the house and were particularly pleased to discover it has a brand-new roof.

“I have to go,”  M said suddenly, looking at his watch.

“Ok, ok…”  I stammered.  “Let’s talk about the house for a minute…”

“No, I have to go now.”  M is very conscious not to push his chances with this second job.  He glanced up at the house.  “I like it,” he announced.  “Let’s buy it.”

The realtor spotted that M was trying to leave and rushed over.  We had to make an offer today, he said, before the owner had to make his decision on the other offer — and probably before M got back from his call-out.  But he’s a clever clogs, our realtor, and he pulled out a blank contract he’d brought with him — M could sign it now, and then the realtor and I could go back to the office and write all the details into it afterward.  It seemed like a plan, and there was no time to discuss it further.  M and I hastily agreed on our offer price, he signed on the dotted line, and jumped in the car.  Two seconds later, he was gone, and I stood on the driveway looking at this house — this house that we were going to buy.  The decision was made, just like that.

Back in the realtor’s office, we did everything we could to make the offer more attractive than what we reckoned the other buyers had offered.  We made the closing date match the owner’s preference, we were flexible about survey options, and…  we offered ever-so-slightly more than we’d originally hoped to.  The estate agent turned to me with a confident look, “It’s a good offer.  It’s very attractive.  I think we have a good chance of getting it.”

I nodded.  “It’s an honest offer.  We’ve made it as attractive as we can.”  I was surprised by how calm I was feeling.  “I think we have a good chance too.  But, the thing is, if we don’t get it, I am not going to beat myself up about it, because I know we did the best, most honest offer we could.  It’s out of our hands now — it will be what it will be.”  He pushed the last page over to me, and I scribbled my name under M’s.  It was done.

Sunday morning the phone rang while I was feeding the baby. I could hear the muffled sound of M’s voice through the wall, but it gave nothing away.  After a few minutes, he opened the door, his face blank and unreadable.

“He put our offer in yesterday afternoon.  The other buyers made a counter offer but…  the seller has chosen ours.”  He took a deep breath.  “We’ve bought a house.”  And, for just a moment, my heart forgot to beat.

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Househunting …Sensibly.

I have changed my househunting priorities. It took some doing to get me to this point — six months of fruitless searching and some rather pointedly straight talk from family and a few friends — but I have finally got it through my thick head that what I am looking for doesn’t exist in this area. Or at least, if it does, we don’t have time to look for that needle in a haystack anymore. We need to find a house and soon, and I need to keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be our forever-house.

This breaks my heart a little… a lot… We made this move mostly because we simply couldn’t afford to live in Britain anymore — we were sinking into the red month on month — but also partly because there was no way we could get on the property ladder in the UK. In my late 30s, with a young family and a growing need to get on with the business of settling down, I wanted a house of our own so badly… We left friends, family, and children, the life we knew, and nearly all our possessions in order to make that happen. We turned everything upside-down. And after all that, I am finding it a bit of a mental leap to think of buying a house with the intention of moving out of it again in a few years — living in this limbo for a few years more. I’ve been doing that for so long… I just want to settle.

But reality is what it is and time is running out, so I have changed my priorities. I am no longer searching for a house I like — I am now looking simply for a house that will be practically workable for our family, is in decent shape, in a safe area with decent schools, and is in our budget. I’ve thrown out every other personal preference (except one: no ranches (bungalows) — I do want the bedrooms to be upstairs). These new priorities take the househunt out of this walkable town that we like so much, and into the neighbouring areas where it’s necessary to use a car to get to anything. I ran the searches again in these neighbourhoods based on the new criteria and came up with a list of 17 houses to send to the real estate agent for starters. My mother was impressed, “Wow! You’re suddenly finding a lot of houses you’re interested in!” I pointed out that if you take out of the equation the matter of whether or not you like a house, then there will always be a lot more houses to look at.

The estate agent lined up eight of my new houses on Monday and off we went, him with an air of complete surprise at the list I’d given him and me with a newly opened mind. Eight houses fell flat on their faces — some because they were simply too small to be workable, one because it was a money-pit, a couple because the layout wouldn’t work (bedrooms in the basement)… But in every case, it was practical reasons that let them down, not one because of personal preferences. I had told myself I was going to find the house today and, as we headed home, I was bitterly disappointed.

As we drove back into the area that M and I like, the real estate agent suggested we stop by one more which he’d come across and thought might be worth a look. “Ok,” I said, unable to muster any more enthusiasm than that. But when he finally got the key to work and opened the front door, we both drew in our breath. It was beautiful. The hardwood floors were so shiny that he stopped to check they were dry before we stepped on them. The rest of the detailing was perfect: the crown-molding lovely, the walls spotless, the fixtures chic. The kitchen was brand-new and so striking, with granite surfaces and stainless steel appliances. The house was clearly a flip, and it had been executed beautifully. I went upstairs… and the bedrooms were twice the size of the houses we’d been looking at all day. I came over giddy and lent against the wall to steady myself.

It is priced right at the top of our range — perhaps a little more affordable than the one we decided against a couple of weeks ago, but still a scary stretch for us. Oh, I hadn’t want to be in this position again, liking so much a house I wasn’t sure we could afford! Still, it wasn’t my decision alone… I rang M and asked him to come round after work.

He doesn’t like it. Well, he does like the house, but he doesn’t like the way it is situated, and so therefore he doesn’t like it. That’s it — ixnayed. There is a small part of me that is relieved, because I was wary of the financial stretch it would require, but there is another, much bigger part of me that desperately wants to cry foul that, on a day when I toured a host of houses that I wasn’t allowed to reject simply because I didn’t like them, he rejected the only house I did like because he didn’t care for one aspect of it.

Never mind, I tell myself. It’s a blessing in disguise. Now is not the economically-wise time to be making big stretches to buy real estate. Prudence is the sensible path to follow. And so, next week, the estate agent and I will again pick up that new list of houses, and begin the hunt afresh…

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Blind-sided!

I’ve been looking forward to househunting for so long that I think I really ought to be enjoying, but it is proving to be exhausting. I feel absolutely drained! We went out last night and saw five houses — two that looked promising, two unknowns, and one we had very high hopes for — and came back with very muddled heads.

Two of the five we could eliminate completely: they were awful, ugly, damaged houses that would take months of work and tens of the thousands of dollars to put right. We backed out of them slowly and got back in the car. Two of them were good… quite good… mmm, yes, very nice indeed… but both are slightly above our price range and we are feeling uncomfortable about making that stretch. And the last one — the one we’d really had high hopes for — well, it looked absolutely wonderful as we walked through it. I loved the living room, kitchen, and dining room. M was chuffed with the basement, the driveway, and garage (these are his key areas, believe it or not). The garden was big and fenced in. The bathroom was kitsch in a chic way and the first two bedrooms were a nice size with hardwood floors. And then we got to the third bedroom. Bedroom? Office perhaps? Coat cupboard more like, and even that was generous. It was wholly unworkable as a bedroom and it instantly turned what was supposed to be a three-bed family home into a two-bed professional couple’s house. We trouped back to the car, disappointment written across our slumping shoulders.

I wrestled with those two over-the-budget houses all day today. I crunched numbers, I made spreadsheets, I rebudgeted with a creative flair — but I was unable to quell the nagging doubts in the pit of my stomach. At about 5pm, I checked the estate agents’ websites again, as I do nearly every day. There was new house.

It was so new, there were no pictures of it yet, so I googled the address and found it on another estate agent’s site. It was beautiful, just beautiful — very English-looking, in fact. I checked the details and it ticked every single one of our boxes. And the location was absolutely perfect — it was on a street I’ve often thought would be the ideal location for us. And… and… it was bang smack on budget.

I sent M out in the car to drive by it as I picked up the phone to ring the agent to see if we could go — now — and see it. The agent looked it up and said it was marked as under contract. No no, I said, it’s only just appeared on the listings today! It must have been under contract but then the deal fell through… He agreed to ring the listing agent and call back.

M got back and was swooning — swooning. I hopped in the car to go look myself. The agent rang back and told M he couldn’t get through to the listing agent, but he’d keep trying — if we didn’t hear back tonight, it would only be because he hadn’t yet got hold of him. I got back from my drive-by and gleefully agreed with M. It looked perfect. The agent rang back — he still couldn’t get a hold of the listing agent, but he would continue to try…

After several hours of not hearing back, I went back online and googled the address again. I came across the listing agent’s own website and there was the house, in all its loveliness. I looked at the price, hardly believing it was in our price-range. And then I spotted the words written next to the numbers: “Sold in One Day.” It would appear that in this market, where houses are sitting stagnant for months and months without selling, we lost the perfect house on the very day we found it.

Only two houses in the past six months have really made my heart flutter. We are back to square one. And I feel absolutely and completely gutted. Househunting is exhausting work.

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Hunting on the Edge of Impossible

When the realtor and I finished our hot and humid day of househunting, and I poured myself a cold glass of water and sat down alone in the quiet house, I felt so disheartened and down that when M got home and immediately asked me what was the matter, I couldn’t put it into words and only shrugged my shoulders instead. The matter is that I clearly have not managed to express to the realtor what it is I want in a house and that he comes from such a different (that is, American) cultural perspective that what is instinctively appealing to him is all wrong to me. He had worked hard to find the right houses and it had all been a waste of time.

I want what I am used to, but which doesn’t exist here: I want a house within walking distance of the (functioning) Main Street of a small self-contained and self-sustaining town located out in the country. This is what I am used to, it is what I knew growing up, and it is what I sought out when I lived in Britain. Now that I am back in the US, it is what I am hoping for again, but I cannot find it, and no one seems to get what I am looking for.

What I find instead around here is that I have three choices: either to live near into the city where there are walkable shops and cafes, or to live way out in the countryside where all the towns are essentially dead and you have to drive to everything, or to live in the suburbs where you have neither the advantage of walkability nor the space of the countryside and so live right next to your neighbours but still have to drive to everything. If I can’t have both countryside and walkability, then my second choice is an option that has one or the other. But it is the suburbs — which have neither — that seem to appeal to most people here and I am finding it very difficult to get people to understand that they are truly not to my taste. Unsidewalked streets of tidy house after tidy house as far as the eye can see, each with its driveway and a grassy yard backing onto its neighbour, but with nowhere to walk to and the nearest shops a strip mall which always includes a supermarket, a Hallmark store, and a McDonald’s at one end… These neighbourhoods and the houses in them do absolutely nothing for me. Nothing. Nada. I know they are exactly what most people want, but they just don’t work for me.

The town we are in at the moment is an old suburb of the city, which means it is close in, quite urban. The houses are all about 75 years old and so have old-fashioned layouts to them: no powder-room (downstairs toilet), small bedrooms, smaller kitchens, odd (or no) garaging arrangements. They are built back to back to back with not much space between them — front, back, or sides. But this area is one of the posher urban neighbourhoods — much sought after and pricey, with really top-ranking schools, safe streets and low crime figures, and a wonderful Main Street filled with cafes and art galleries and restaurants. Walking into town on a weekend night is such a buzz, the whole street alive with happy people tripping in and out of the bars, or eating at tables set out on the sidewalk, talking and chatting and laughing… This town doesn’t have the rural aspect that I am looking for, but the walkability and lively Main Street are a good trade-off. We’d both be happy to buy here, if only we can find a workable house in our price-range.

When I emailed the realtor with a list of houses that I’d like to see, he said that we’d get more house for our money in some neighbouring boroughs and suggested we look there instead. I agreed reluctantly, guessing that — while he was undoubtedly right about the value of the houses — these other suburbs probably wouldn’t appeal to my peculiar tastes. We trouped doggedly through eight houses — a couple of gems, two complete horrors, and the rest neither here nor there. He waxed lyrical about the neighbourhoods: weren’t they just so nice? Look at the mature trees. And the big yards! The houses all so tidy, the streets so pleasant and respectable. Oh, weren’t they lovely neighbourhoods?!?

Indeed they were. Lovely. And completely and utterly not for me. As I explained to my mother, every house I saw felt like nothing more inspiring than someplace to put our furniture so it didn’t get wet when it rains. She pulled a pitying face, “Awww… I’m sorry. But you know, those areas are very near to here — you could just pop the girls in the car and drive over here anytime you wanted to walk along the Main Street!” She doesn’t get it. The realtor doesn’t get it. I feel like a naive fool for wanting something so obviously impossible. And the whole day seemed like an utter waste of time.

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Gratitude 22

Today I am grateful for:

1. That when the realtor and I ran back out of a house that I had chosen to view without realising it was a foreclosure, after having been completely freaked out by the blood red walls and ceiling in the living room, the incredibly rancid smell, and the canopy of cobwebs that hung low and dusty and alive with spiders across the entire room, and then both stood shivering in the driveway the way you do when you feel like you are covered in bugs, he didn’t hit me over the head with his flashlight for making him go in there.
2. Trader Joe’s frozen pizza in the icebox — easy, soy-free food when we’re both too tired to think after a long day.
3. The fact that when the best and most violent thunderstorm of the summer-so-far began this evening, my daughters were not frightened or clingy, but instead squealed with joy and clapped their hands at the spectacle. Atta girls!

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Nearly The One… But Not Quite

Finding a house to buy is exhausting and emotionally-draining work but, really, it ought to be dead easy for us. Coming from the UK, we should be bowled over by the sheer size of the houses and gardens here, delighted by the amenities (closets! garbage disposals! air-conditioning!), and ecstatic at the prices. It should be easy as pie.

But we’ve discovered that it’s really quite difficult, more difficult than I suspect it is for the natives, precisely because our mindset — and more the the point, our expectations — are so very British. Our eyes are not acclimatised to American house styles. After a lifetime (for M) and years ( for me) of living in a place where almost all the buildings are constructed of stone or brick, the little clapboard houses that look so sweet and appealing to Americans appear alarmingly flimsy to us. Seeing something akin to fabric on the roof, instead of slate or tile, seems very odd. M is repeatedly surprised by closely-built neighbourhoods with no fences, so the gardens run into each other. He deeply distrusts septic tanks and well-water. We both instinctively look for Main Streets, not strip malls. And I just don’t like bungalows (ranch-styles) which, unfortunately, appears to rule out 75% of the houses on offer. After seeing nearly 20 houses with no real winners, we are slowly driving the poor estate agent (realtor) round the twist.

And we switch back and forth between wanting to be out in the country and wanting to be in the city. In truth, we are trying to find what we had in the UK — a small town, complete with functioning Main Street, which is located out in the countryside — but that does not exist here as far as we can tell. Though neither of us want to be in the city, certain areas of the inner suburbs do offer real functioning Main Streets, complete with independent shops, coffee houses, post offices, and green grocers — and that really appeals to both of us — but, at the same time, it comes with that claustrophobic, houses-backing-onto-houses layout that we both recoil from. And yet, every time we venture out in the countryside — suddenly relieved to see open spaces and feeling so much more at home — we find no towns to speak of, only collections of houses and the occasional gas station, and the reality that we would need to use the car for everything. We find the surroundings we like out in the country, but the amenities we want much closer into the city and, unable to decide which is more important to us, we each flip back and forth between the two daily.

I thought we’d found it on Thursday. The realtor and I viewed a house that was so far out in the sticks, he was muttering at the GPS — he is actually based in the city, catering to a city-clientèle, and is perplexed by our attraction to houses in the back of beyond. I liked the house. I really liked the house. I liked the shape of it, I like the layout, I like the potential for expansion, I liked the floors. The kitchen needed work, but it was do-able — almost exciting — not overwhelming. And the location was absolutely perfect — out in the countryside, on a huge lot that ran down to a forest on one side, and on a quiet dead-end road with views across sweeping green countryside, and yet within walking distance of a… well, not a Main Street as such, but small gathering of buildings encompassing a pizza parlour, diner, bar, post office, corner shop, hair dressers, and antique shop, all strung out along a state-route and yet all walkable from the house. I felt waves of relief roll over me as I realised that it was possible for me to find a house I liked here in this foreign land (I had begun to wonder), and I rang M and asked him to come straight over as soon as he finished work. “I think we’ve found it! I think we’ve found THE house!” I stood in the living room and waited, mentally arranging the furniture and starting to feel quite giddy. I wanted to live here. I wanted this house.

When he arrived, he was tired after a particularly hard day, dirty in his work clothes and hot in the pre-storm humidity. He was instantly hesitant about the siding (“Mmmm… I’d rather it were brick…”), though he was quite taken with the garage and, upon inspection, liked the layout of the house itself well enough. But he was not happy with its having well-water and a septic tank, and even less impressed when he found the water had left the sinks and loos with a heavy iron-brown stain. He went outside to inspect the septic tank. “But listen,” I said, marching along behind him, “Listen to the stillness… look at the view! There are cows… We’d have deer!” He looked at the surveyor’s report instead, and found that basement needed dampproofing, and its walls needed stabalising, and the radon count was off the scale. The estimates were $20,000 just for that essential work alone, even before I’d started treating myself to a new kitchen and building the extension I’d been conjuring in my mind. The asking price was not low enough to compensate for that, and the owners, apparently, are in no rush to sell. Even the realtor agreed it was not the house for us. I began to feel like a balloon deflating slowly.

So, it is back to the hunt: put our criteria into the computer and see what possibilities it spits out, schedule a day with the realtor, and go and have a look. It should be fine. It should be easy. There are so many houses for sale…

But it’s been four days now, the computer has produced nothing else that piques my fancy, and I cannot stop thinking about that house.

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The Countdown Begins

When I got the girls up this morning, I spotted a man messing about in the front garden. I held E1 as we watched him walk around, looking down at the grass, and then he went back to his van and started moving things around in the back. He came back with some tools and bulky piece of wood, and then dug a small hole, sunk the wood in the ground, and hung a colourful sign on it. Our rental of this house has always been on a casual basis — it belongs to a friend of my mother’s who wanted someone living in it over the coldest months, which suited us as a starting point — and was never destined to last long. I knew this day would come: the “For Sale” sign has gone up.

I had planned to have something sorted by now, but it’s been harder than I expected. I had hoped to buy — I’m fed up with renting — but I don’t know this area at all and it’s difficult to househunt in a place you are completely unfamiliar with. As well as that, I am not used to being in such an urban area — everything packed so close together, on street after street after street, no open space in sight — and I’m finding it hard to see these city-houses as possible homes. Everything feels so strange, foreign and unfamiliar.

But those are just a matters of taste, which could all be overcome. The real problem is that my husband had no US credit rating. His excellent British credit score counts for nothing here in the US and, as I am not working, my excellent US score is redundant. We are working with several banks and mortgage specialists, and hope to overcome the problem, but it necessarily causes delay.

But time is not on our side. The realtor rang tonight, friendly in a smarmy way: she’s lined up two viewings for tomorrow, at 5.30 and 6.30 — right in the middle of dinnertime for girls. She’d rather we made ourselves scarce, if we’d be so kind, but that just isn’t practical with a two-year-old and a one-year-old who are expecting to be fed — we will just have to be here, uncomfortable as that will be, while other people tour the house and decide if they want to buy it. That sign and her phone call has caused me to panic afresh. I spent most of the early evening on the phone with the mortgage people going over options, and I’ve spent the rest of the night trawling realty websites. M eats his dinner, get ready for bed, and then sleeps blissfully. This is, as ever, my problem to solve.

I don’t know how I’m going to solve it. I don’t know if we’ll get a mortgage — I’m not even sure if we could rent a place with no credit history. But I’d better think of something… The clock is ticking, and we have got to get out of this house.

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