Occam's Razor

Houses are not really sold until closing. That’s something I am beginning to understand in my gut after our house was “sold”, i.e. put “under contract”. A real estate contract is actually a highly conditional contract that gives the buyer plenty of reasons to later opt out. These typically include a satisfactory home inspection, a termite inspection and a radon test. No house is perfect, of course, and home inspectors are paid to find stuff.

The home inspector for our house sure found stuff, stuff we would have never noticed in a million years and stuff that really didn’t matter. A handrail we added for support on the stairs to the basement had pickets too widely spaced in this inspector’s opinion. A really stupid child might fall through somehow and hurt themselves. So Elias, our handyman, is busy adding these redundant railings to preclude any such thing, although we are pretty sure the buyer is a single guy. He also noticed a vent missing from a room in the basement and wrote that one up too. And lots of other stuff. But we could get rid of the contingency just by reducing our sales price $7000, the maximum price to fix these “defects”, which included a pool of water from snowmelt in our backyard too he felt should require us to regrade the lawn. Apparently, someone had not informed that the buyer the house was 30 years old, not brand new. I guess if you are a home buyer, you have every incentive to shoot for the moon.

We fought back of course and figuring we had the better bargaining position (given that we had two full price contracts to choose from) told him we wouldn’t fix the swale or tear up the stucco ceiling to add a vent that really wasn’t needed. And we crossed our fingers he wouldn’t walk away. He didn’t. The rest of it we can fix up for another $1000. So that contract contingency is satisfied, as is the radon test. The termite inspection will come in time but that has never been problem. Which leaves the appraisal. The appraiser may tell the buyer that he paid too much for our house, so he should pull out of the contract, or negotiate a lower price. I doubt that will happen.

This is the downside of owning a house. The mortgage interest deduction is nice, but a house is a second child that never stops going to college. It means you don’t have to sleep on the street, providing you can keep up the payments for thirty years. To translate its value into hard cash you have to jump through these flaming hoops, the next one more daunting than the last. But increasingly it looks like we will get through them all with only minor burns, but not without ingesting a lot of antacid.

So now we are here back in Western Massachusetts looking at a hole in the ground. It’s not any hole in the ground, it’s our hole in the ground, what will be our next house, a condominium in a 55+ community which is actually a single family house. As holes go it looks pretty good and that’s because the foundation is laid. Moreover, despite the freezing temperatures and most of the snow unmelted the land is reasonably graded. What’s missing is all the rest that makes a house a home, like a frame and a roof, but that will come in time. We have to be ready for that time, which is why we are here not only pondering our frozen concrete filled hole in the ground, but shuttling around Western Massachusetts talking to vendors about stuff like floors, lighting, cabinets and appliances. Gas or electric appliances? Which of the hundreds of chandeliers we looked at today will hang from our foyer? Hallway lights in the ceiling or on the walls? The builders need to know these details, not immediately, but they must be planned for, and now is the time to figure out these details.

Then there is the minor matter of living somewhere until the house is ready. There are plenty of places to rent out here after our house is sold near the end of April. Unfortunately, almost all of them require a yearly lease, so we have to spend time calling around and scouring Craigslist for sublets and month-to-month rentals. It’s a hit and miss process, but we found a renovated apartment building in Easthampton that will work, only because it is nearing completion. The investor-landlord need tenants in an otherwise empty building. New carpet and appliances make it appealing, but the neighborhood is a bit sketchy. An auto repair shop is across the street and down the street are many old Victorian houses, some somewhat dilapidated. It will do for the four months or so we need temporary lodging. The good part about paying rent is you don’t pay a mortgage, or property taxes, or for the general property upkeep. Owning a house in many ways is a foolish thing to do. The owner is willing to cut us a deal just to start to get the building occupied.

It’s unclear where all our possessions will sit in the interim. There are the usual storage facilities out here and we visited a few to discover they can’t take our stuff, at least not yet. Check with them a week or two before we move up, they tell us. We’ll have to find something. For now we take it on faith that it will somehow work out.

When not occupied with these logistical maneuvers, I ponder this major life change we are about to make. I know I will miss many things about Northern Virginia, where I spent the last 31 years. I will leave behind a daughter, the bulk of my friends, a whole network of doctors and  various other professionals, and many pleasant memories. There’s really no going back. It’s a big gamble that life will somehow be better up here in Massachusetts, and it’s harder to believe two days from spring when the temperature here is below freezing, the winds are gale force from the northwest, piles of snow are everywhere and killer potholes pocket virtually all the streets. If it had been just me, I’d probably not have chosen to live here, but of course it’s not just me. It’s also my wife, who hates Northern Virginia and needs a colder climate. It’s what we could agree on. I know that it will take a long time to feel this place is my home, and not just another way station in life.

Selling our house though will be a gigantic relief. It’s been a money pit and a constant hassle. I’ll be glad to finally cash in on that asset, which may mean no mortgage at all for the new house. A new house will buy us, at least for a time, a respite from worrying about infrastructure. Then perhaps retirement can genuinely begin.

All it requires is getting all our ducks in a row. After much work they are at least all moving in the same direction. That’s progress.