Homeownership

XKCD  I think this may be me.  I do love power drills!

Homeownership

Double-Dipping

In my last post I noted that there are some fundamental flaws with buying a house now.  The main one is our immediate comfort (which is short-sighted, I get it).  The second is that the housing market continues to plummet.   The value of homes continue to decline.

One reason to stay in our rental, even if it is being foreclosed on, is if we buy something now, it will continue to lose value.  It is true we are nearer the bottom of the trough than before we sold our other house, but there is no end in sight.  If we buy a house now, chances are the house will be worth 10% less by 2012.  If we buy a house for 200K, it is a loss of $20,000 (I babied you and did the math).  I know that loss is for the short-term, but wouldn't I rather buy that same house for 20K less next year? YES, yes I would!  We are sacrificing housing stability for value.

The way I look at housing and jobs have changed from the way I was raised.  My grandparents and parents all had nearly the same jobs and same houses for all of their adult lives, and certainly all of my life.  I have lived in 4 states, 6 houses, and my husband has had 3 jobs, and we are in our mid-30's (I have had the same job: 2 kids, but even they are growing, and then I'll get a paying job).   Instability is the new normal.  At first all the unsettledness was scary, but you can't really scare me now.  Holding on, when things are unsettled is hard, but not scary.

That brings me to the title of the blog: Double-Dipping.  When I think of this term, I see my 9 year old nephew devouring ranch dip with one carrot.  For some reason I don't think that is what the term means for real-estate.  The news today was bad for people who use their home value as a means of provision.  Prices are going down again, or double-dipping.  Values went down a few years again, and are going down more, which seems more like a steady decline, than dipping, to me, but I don't make up the terms.

The news is good for those of us holding on, and saving money by renting until our credit gets better, or we've saved the cash to buy a house in toto.  My savings account goes up, housing prices go down.  It might not be as long as you might think if things keep going the way they are going.

Arsenic and a New Place

The story continues.  We did find a house that would be good for our family.  

Good enough. 

There are several fundamental problems with looking for a house, for us.  The main one is, the house we live in is huge, well kept, right in town, beautiful and cheap.  If we look at other houses, I just want to stay here.  It isn't an option to stay here, so mostly I'm in denial that we need to move. 

I HATE MOVING.  

Moving here, we knew we would have to move, so again, I am in denial. 

We made an offer on the good-enough-house.  It has a beautiful perennial garden, roses, clematis and daphne. It has enough room for us, a wood stove, a 2 car garage, a studio/office/workshop and is next door to my parents.  Those are all reasons to move there.  

Here are the reasons not to move there, some are very superficial, but humor me:  

• The neighbors (besides my parents) have big problems, which require visits from the sheriff. 
• The inside requires, in my opinion, updating.  There is gross carpet, and patches of wood flooring.
• There are only 2 bedrooms, and we have 2 kids, who are different genders, so we were going to have to put in a wall in the super-large second bedroom.
• The architecture isn't ideal.  It is 80's Creative, or that is my name for the style.
• Finally, there is arsenic in the water.

Some of the concessions we were making by moving/buying this house, we could live with.  Updating a house is just uncomfortable for a while, then it is over.  The inside of a house is where we live, and the outside was not terrible, just 'unique'.  We have lived in neighborhoods where the authorities visited often, and we were safe, and were happy.

The last inspection we had was the well inspection.  Of course it was the last one, after paying for all the others.  The poison in the well was a deal-breaker.  There are expensive filters we can install, and then every-other year we can spend a mortgage payment to have the filter cleaned.  I decided I didn't want to lay in bed at night wondering if my expensive filter was actually cleaning the water, and my 8 year old's bath wasn't full of rat poison/remnants from the Gold Rush.

We canceled escrow last Monday.  The only loss was the cash we spent on inspections.  It is a tiny loss, and after short-selling our other house, the magnitude of loss is irrelevant.  Escrow is like kissing a girl to see if you like her, you don't have to marry her.  

Also, escrow has nothing to do with crows.

*On a tangent, if you have never seen Arsenic and Old Lace, you should.  It is one of my favorite comedies.

Definition of Insanity

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

I think I might be crazy.  The heart/pocket book ache of last year, and selling our house still smarts.  Who in their right mind would willingly walk into another situation again?  Committed again to a house?  Silas would.   That is Silas' hand signing his name, with a date!

We have to move, it's the whole truth.  We can fudge the 'when' of moving, but we have to do it.  We decided that we would keep a tentative-eye on what is for sale.  Last week we found a modest house, at a modest price.  

It has a shop and an office for Silas' small business.  I would want nicer flooring, and appliances, but the price is right, that isn't such an issue.  The real selling point is the location.  The three acres touch the land that I grew up on.  My parents are a simple walk through the trees, past an orchard.  What a fun childhood, running over to grandma's.

There are many things that might not work out.  We only made an offer.  There might be termites, there might be bad water.  If those are problems, we can stay in house in purgatory.  The pool sure helps!

Ideas for "Easy" Moving

It has been a solid year since I called the mortgage company and turned off the auto-mortgage-payment.  It was one of the hardest/bravest things I have done.  It was hard for me to openly choose to do something that others could judge (blogging about it didn't help there, but it set me free in another way).  I like to choose to do anti-social things that people can't see me do.  A year of water under the bridge, and I can look back to see that the time that part of the story took during my life was transformative, and very brief.  

As with the social consequences of defaulting on a loan, renting also has a downside: instability.  

It seems that financial strain is fine for a while, but terrible over a long period, which is why I understand that our landlords want to be done owning this house.  It also means that we have to move or find a way to buy this house.  I hate moving, have I said that?  Not that I was getting too comfortable here, or haven't moved 7 times as an adult already.

My attempt at enjoying a space, even for a short time.

Here are some ideas I had, as I look at my stuff and think about putting it back into the boxes:

Buy a new fridge when we get where we are going.
Sell all our things on ebay months in advance.
Don't get too comfortable.
Pull our guitars, computers, children and pets to the curb, and start a house fire (not suggested).
Pay for weekly garbage service, and throw most of our old stuff that won't sell on ebay away.
Don't be sentimental: Take some time to consolidate the 5 trunks of memorabilia my husband's mother saved from his childhood.
Don't keep junk: Throw or give away the threadbare towels we got as wedding gifts 15 years ago.
Donate the ice cream scooper to the Hospice Thrift.  Who needs one of those, I already have a spoon.

Renting Real Estate

Making a house a home celebrating Christmas.

Real estate prices continue to drop in our area, as our savings continues to rise.  It turns out, not paying for an expensive house means you can save a bit more than before.  We have been able to save enough for a down on another house (yes that is how high our mortgage was), if we were to be so brave and a bank would loan us the rest (which they wont).  We are hesitant about any change.  Renting feels just right, until the landlord calls.

Celebrating the birth of my niece.

She asked if we were hoping to rent beyond the year that we had leased the house.  It is fine with us to rent this house beyond our lease, it is a comfy place.  As with most things, her question was about something more.  She wanted us to know that they are tired of paying a high mortgage for the house we live in, and the house where they live.  They are hoping to not have both houses.  This means we have a few options, mainly that we will have to move, unless we can figure out how to buy this house.   We moved here thinking only to stay 12 months.  I have been thinking of it as an amazingly comfortable and big hotel room.
Depending on what happens, we will have to move in the summer or we will have to think about buying this house (for the perfect price, of course).
No matter what, I'm going through my kid's closets to get out the small clothes, and de-cluttering.
I'm going to continue blogging, as clearly the story isn't over.  My thinking that the story is over is not accepting how much where we live affects our life.

Fahrvergnügen

Before my husband was my husband, and he was just a teenaged boy, he had a Volkswagen. My dad would come into the house and say, "Silas is on his way". Several minutes later, the boy Silas would pull into my parents driveway, my dad having heard the buzz of the engine a mile in the distance.
Flash forward 20 years and we still we have old VW's. Last week we had two old VW's, and this week, we are down to just one, green Passat (which is older than some of you, and still gets 45 mpg! Don't be jealous).
I'm logging the sale of our 1980 VW Westfalia Campmobile because it was something we owned, a real-estate of sorts. When we were not paying our mortgage, we would joke that if we had to move, we all could live in The Van. We could have lived in the van, and in our early 20's one summer we did live in another version. One reason ideas are humorous is that they are partly true and ironic. I think in the back of my mind, the very creative part, that if we were homeless, we could live in a van down by the river. It was never plausible, or probable, but I thought it.
Selling our bus, is another way of letting go of the stuff we have acquired. I was surprised when my husband said he wanted to sell it. He loves it!
Last week, armed with a "For Sale" sign, our blue bus sat in front of one of the two super markets by our house. It was a new spot, and only hours after we parked it, there was a yellow ticket in the window. I also saw some actual hippies with packs sitting next to the bus on the curb. They were calling the number on the van, as I drove by fuming over the ticket. They called to say that there was a warning slip on the van, and that it was going to be towed. (It turns out it was parked legally, but the note said it was tagged for "storing personal property in the street". This is police for, "I can give you a ticket for anything")
The hippie, whose name was Amber, turned out to be interested in buying it while talking to Silas, who is by nature enthusiastic. Amber is also enthusiastic and spontaneous by nature as well as tired of hitch hiking in the rain. She also was flush with cash.
She drove around a bit, and like I said, was very enthusiastic. She offered to buy the van. If someone has cash from working a job that hippies work, it turns out they are pretty easy-going about price.
They loaded their things into the van, we unloaded our things. We enthusiastically chatted, signed the deed, and exchanged the huge wad of cash. Staying true to her nature, she kissed and hugged us all, and as she pulled out of the driveway told us she was going to name the van after our daughter. Our girl's name is also a good name for a van, or a dog, or a troupe of boys, so it was enthusiastically sweet.
I am becoming accustomed to letting things go. I might have been less enthusiastic about the van than my husband, or than Amber, but it still had a place in my heart, and I still have that, even though the physical auto is carrying weed toting former hitch hikers. I'm reminded that there is joy in owning things, be it a house or a car. There is some joy in working hard on or for something, only to have the memory of the hard work, the experience, and the people associated with it.

It is nearly like when you drive a VW, you are supposed to have enjoyment, just driving it. This is true. When I drive a VW, I feel enjoyment, even if I am driving to the DMV.