Cheating

Busy day today, running around and getting ready for my weekend trip to Philadelphia (for work...) and my mid-week trip to upstate New York next week (for work...).  Kanha will be getting some extended "dad time," which isn't all bad, I suspect -- more Ben 10 cartoons and boxes of Annie's mac and cheese.  

I cheated the other night and went onto newenglandmoves.com -- just couldn't resist a little peek at real estate doings.  And I found a little to ponder:  one of the gorgeously renovated condos (at least from the outside) very close to the house with a view has gone on the market -- it's the end unit so clearly has great views, almost exactly the same as my favorite house, from its two decks.   But it's priced at almost $500K, out of my price range without a rental unit in it, and the interior pictures make it look too shiny and perfectly new.  Just too boring -- nowhere to let my imagination run wild.  

On the other end of the scale, I also noticed a house that just came up for sale that looks like it might be about to fall down.  The location is great -- a couple of blocks from Kanha's new school, on Spring Street, a pretty good West End Street - but from the outside it looks like no one has left the house in at least a decade.  The mustard colored siding is peeling off and so is the outer wood on the front door, as if a local squirrel has made a full time job of gnawing it away.  The pictures on the website of its interior are only mildly better, showing some (beat up) built-in cabinets and an, admittedly, pretty dark wood staircase.  But we know for every attractive picture, there are four more scary ones that could have been taken.  While this house would not be boring, it also would take a long time to make it livable, which seems unrealistic for a single mom and her kid who need a place to live.  

After that one foray into the real estate world, I've returned to my hiatus.  Fortunately the weather has helped by warming up a little -- I am not yet in a complete panic about finding our winter coats and hats somewhere in the overstuffed, truly inaccessible storage unit.  Soon enough I'll have to decide, something -- a bigger apartment, a bigger storage unit (so we can find those hats and things), a plunge into some type of house.  But not today.

Huddling in Winter

So far it's been a lovely week off of house-hunting.  It's amazing how much more time I have when I'm not surfing real estate websites and just THINKING about our next place to live.  Not that I'm being very productive with the extra time -- surfing book, movie, and politics websites instead...  

I went to a book signing on Thursday night -- Kanha was with her dad and I got a night out of the house, hurray!  --  for an author, Lily King, that I met through Waynflete, Kanha's new school -- she's a parent of one of Kanha's new classmates (and a great writer, serious but readable fiction, www.lilykingbooks.com, check it out). While there, I bumped into a small Waynflete crowd, and the conversation veered toward Portland real estate.  (OK, I haven't completely stopped thinking about a new home.)  The woman I sat next to had recently bought a house that sounded perfect -- a block from the school, very old but charming by description, 1700 sq ft or so, little backyard -- which she only found by living in a tiny apartment with her family of five for a year until she heard through the West End neighborhood grapevine about this great house that some elderly man was about to move out of and might be available for sale soon.  

So perhaps Kanha and I will be huddled in our one bedroom apartment for a little longer than I thought.  

Today we drive up to LL Bean and buy brand new cross country ski equipment.  I've always said that if you live in New England, you better love a winter sport because otherwise you're going to have the very bad blues, in your heart and on your lips, for five months a year.  Downhill skiing used to be my passion but I've gotten older and it's gotten pricier -- so I've relegated it to an occasional indulgence and am hoping cross country skiing will take its place.  I have a $75 gift certificate saved from my birthday last May (thanks to my brother Dan and his family! -- good Mainers who know the value of LL Bean) and am ready to plunk it down.  Winter will be here sooner than I hope, I suspect.

Deals and Obfuscation

Today I resigned from the hunt for a house.  Well, at least for a couple of weeks.  I feel like I've been through some kind of harrowing experience -- all those meetings, and phone calls, and emails, all those visits to the code enforcement office at city hall, never mind to the house, all the $$ that went out the window for naught ($1100 between the inspector and the appraiser), all the roller coaster of emotion from elation and excitement to good old fashioned terror.  So I'm done for now.

I thought I would have more stamina for it, hence my visit to two houses yesterday morning.  One was a dump with a reasonable view -- I said a quick no, thank you, which is good information -- I think on my last outing I really was in love with the house and not only the view.   The other house was quite lovely and tempting in spite of the dearth of outdoor space (ok, they have a decent deck and a small patio but, as Kanha said, where would we play catch with the dog that will follow soon after the house?) and the absence of a tub (two bathrooms, no bathtub).  But when Nikki started delving into some of our questions with the selling agent, the dirty details and dealing of real estate, the obfuscation I'd even call it, began.  They'd told us the first floor apartment rents for $1100-1200 monthly but in fact, when put on the spot, the agent had to admit that the present tenant pays $750, a deal arranged since the house is on the market, and the agent wouldn't admit to what the previous tenant paid -- apparently she got a reduced rent for babysitting for the owner's kids.  As I said to Nikki, I'd like to know the last time anyone actually paid $1100 or more for the place, an answer I think is not coming soon.

The discussion gave me a headache and made me feel like I was being harrowed again, and harassed, and then it just made me tired.  So I emailed Nikki today and said I'm taking a half a month break.  Kanha turns 10 on October first, and after throwing her party and giving her her gifts, I will celebrate by thinking about house hunting again.  In the meantime, I'll write in my blog, do my work, play with my kid, read my books, live my life.  Maybe it will get me excited about finding a house with a view, or not, next month.

Rebounds and Reasons

I meet Nikki tomorrow morning at 10 to look at two more houses, my half-hearted attempt to get back on the real estate horse.  Half-hearted because I don't feel very motivated about either place - one is the other place with the (lesser) view, and also an ugly house, 

the second a beautiful row house (based on the pictures) but expensive with minimal outdoor space.  

It just feels a little too soon, and I certainly don't want to choose a house on the rebound -- a lot harder to get out of the $400K mortgage for a house that seemed to fill you up after the last one let you down so hard as compared to extracting yourself from a similar love affair. 

Since I have had my share of spiritual influences over the past thirty years, I can't help wondering what was the point of the house with a view.  Why did I get so drawn in, so wildly excited, so certain of my future, and then to have it all end -- what was so symmetrically aligned -- so fast and firmly?  My less cynical side keeps whispering in my ear, There MUST have been a reason.  My only thought today is that it spawned this blog, which has gotten me energized about writing again.  I find it fun and my few readers tell me its fun for them too.  Maybe my real estate fling was meant to bash open a completely unrelated and pretty tightly shut door in my life and give me the chance to walk through and begin again.  

Where Your Home Is

I spent this morning in Bangor (for work), day dreaming about what the future will bring.  It wasn't a sunny picture - I seem to have moved past sorrow to self-pity.  Here I am, a woman with nowhere to live and no career to love, went my lament, which is patently absurd even to the most casual observer.  After all, we have an apartment we can stay in on a month to month basis after the lease ends on September 30th, a fact I confirmed yesterday, and for now I'm still getting two paychecks for my two part-time jobs, both of which invoke my gratitude if not my love.

More to the point, I don't need a house to feel connected or loved or happy as Kanha reminded me through a little trinket she gave me a couple of weeks ago, acquired while shopping at Goodwill with her Massachusetts friends.  I typically hate these little tchotkes, inexpensive, ugly, in the way on the rare moments I want to dust, but this one struck my soft spot so sharply that it has earned a prime spot in the bedroom under the fan.  It's a micro-canvas painting, set on a doll-sized easel, with a flower and a bird and a yellow background and the words, "home is where your mom is" printed across it.  No house or view could ever provide me more happiness or comfort than that little phrase handed to me by that little girl.

Speaking of a house with a view, it came back on the market yesterday -- same price, same description, same grammatical error in the ad.  It's as if I never walked through their halls or their rooms or their lives.    Which I suppose is right for them -- they need to move on, to find another taker with more pluck or resources or both, and I hope they do, mostly to extinguish my dream permanently, to put me out of my misery.

In the meantime, I need to try to move on myself, and as such, I've spent a little time on the New England Moves website (www.newenglandmoves.com, best info on buying a house in the northeast I've found) - I've turned up a few places for Nikki to check into including another house with a view (but nowhere near as good plus zero architectural appeal).  Of course, I could go back to the red house with the unfinished third floor, microscopic kitchen, and entirely exposed front yard that I looked at a couple of months ago.  But nothing is grabbing me.  After all these years, these decades, I haven't "settled" for the wrong guy, should I settle for a house I can't love long enough?

Kanha and I went to visit my dad's grave on Labor Day Monday -- it's just over the bridge and down a few streets of rolling hills and well-zoned subdivisions from our apartment.  I hadn't been since we moved back to Maine in July, and no one had visited perhaps all summer -- the day lilies' day for this year had long since passed;  they were engulfed by stiff brown strands, and the grass had grown in all around Big Chip's headstone.  Kanha picked up a rock from the drive that passes through the cemetery and placed it on the stone to mark our visit as she had done so many times as a toddler.  I remembered that when he was alive, he had been the person most interested in me, in all the little details of my life, he gave me comfort, he provided my home.  One of these days we'll find a house to envelop that incomparable feeling again.

A Real Dream

Last night I dreamt that Nikki told me that the sellers would have been happy to take just $1600 more than the last-ditch offer I had made for the house (who knows where that number came from -- the mysteries of dreams) and she refused to tell me until the deal was officially off.  I begged her to go back to them and she refused.  No mystery in this -- I so wanted the house and she so wanted me to buy anything else.  An honest real estate agent at least.

After a bout with a mild case of heat exhaustion yesterday morning (memo to Marge - don't go for a 3 mile run, especially when you've only been running two miles a couple days a week, in 85 degree, 99% humidity, weather and you're not feeling your most chipper anyhow), I spent the day second-guessing every decision I had made in my quixotic quest for the house with the view.  Well, maybe mostly just one -- should I have given them a lower final price?  If I had offered $450K, would they still have considered it?

Beyond that, my second guessing mostly involved worrying I had led the sellers on:   that I was naive about the costs, that I should never have thought I could have bought the house for more than $500K.  I imagine the white-haired, spindly couple bent over their dining room table, lamenting the loss of the sale, wondering what they'll do now, and cursing out, in the highest class style, the woman who wanted the view for dragging them through the last month of hope.  

Fortunately I talked to my friend Mary Ellen in the midst of my self-flagellation, who tilted my head a little toward another perspective.  As she said, no matter how lovely the elderly artist couple is, they didn't take care of their gorgeous house.  They patched it and band-aided it here and there, as necessary, over the years, and reorganized it, splitting apartments and setting up not-so-professional commercial space, as it suited their needs, without holding one conversation with the city to see if their actions were  legal.  As a result, they have a house that appears to be, both to them and an initial buyer like I was a few weeks ago, incredibly, stunningly, valuable -- with the gardens and the view and the swirly painted walls and the nooks and crannies -- but in fact, is a house that's a mess, a house whose value lies solely in its potential, a potential that will cost any buyer hundreds of thousands of dollars to realize.  

So now I feel less guilty, but no less sad.  As Nikki suggested, I've decided to simply enjoy Labor Day weekend with not a thought of houses, beautiful or not, with views or not, and will plot out my next steps next week.  

Reactions

Just found out the deal is off.  Nikki went back to them with a $420K hard price and they declined immediately, which I kept thinking might possibly not happen -- possibly they would consider just getting rid of it -- but in retrospect, in the harsh light of post-deal reality, is a no-brainer.   Dropping ANOTHER $100K+ after they had already come down so far from their asking price -- it just wasn't going to happen.

Francine, the seller's agent, was distressed with my decision - felt like I had had all the information and had had plenty of time to figure out all the numbers a long time ago.  Nikki was probably happy since I know she never wanted me to buy the place.  I have no idea the sellers' reaction -- well, I suppose I do but I prefer not to think about it -- annoyed, angry, discouraged, betrayed by the woman who had convinced them she loved their house and then abandoned it.  Mostly they're probably wishing they didn't have to start again.

As for me, I feel a bit relieved, a bit foolish, and crushingly disappointed.  

Bad News, Good Spirits

The bad news is just piling on, perhaps so heavily my dream has already been buried.  The appraisal came in at $460K -- yikes -- which is $75K less than the price I signed off on.  And this was provided by Rusty, the cute red head who clearly appreciated the uniqueness of the house.  The truly bad thing about this is at that value I could never remortgage the house for enough to pay off the seller's loan, never mind get some extra $$ out of the loan to pay for further repairs.

In addition, it's clear the city sees the house as having only two residential units plus the commercial space, meaning the two small apartments are supposed to be one larger one -- the present owners probably split it in two sometime over the past thirty years, without mentioning it to the city and, in doing so, getting a legal building permit.  Or, who knows, maybe some else in the litany of owners over the past hundred years chopped it up that way -- it's impossible to know from the microfiche pages of permits and complaints and petitions in city hall.  The only thing I do know is that the house, in addition to its view, has an extremely colorful, and somewhat shady, history.  In any case, according to Ann who I talked to at the city on this visit, while the fact that the actual house doesn't match the city's records doesn't definitely require me to turn the two apartments back to one -- but it does mean I'm up for reams of paperwork, applications, delays in review, etc., which all simply means $$ to me.  

The final blow was my meetings with the two contractors -- my old acquaintance Nick and Scott, the guy who has done work on Nikki's house.  On the plus side, they both said approximately the same thing about what needs to be done to convert a big chunk of the commercial space into an apartment -- lots and it won't be easy, but it's not impossible and could look cool.  So at least the problem is clear.  But on the other, not so happy, side...  they both said approximately the same thing about the costs of these renovations -- more than twice as much as the commercial real estate broker had suggested to me.  (Nikki thinks that guy was blithely quoting a price for an already cleaned up space.)  Nick's price was around $60K and Scott's around $100K -- a very wide split but I suspect it would end up in the $80-90K neighborhood, particularly if I used Nick.  

So why am I not totally depressed?  Probably because I feel like a gigantic weight has been lifted off my shoulders.  I obviously can't buy it for $535K, and probably not even for $460K.  So I will either not buy it at all -- which may make me (very...) sad for losing my dream house but immediately blows away the financial stress I've been under.  On the other hand, if I do still manage to buy it, for MUCH less money than I've got on the table now, I might even be able to do all I want to it and without losing any more sleep about the future of my bank account -- a thought that was further confirmed by Jim, the banker, in my call this afternoon.  It sounds like he could help me with an additional loan if the numbers work, which I guess is what you would expect a banker to say.  

So tomorrow Nikki and I meet to regroup.  It's hard to imagine the sellers will agree to cutting another $100K+ off the price -- I suspect they will be hurt and angry, which is understandable.  On the other hand, their other options aren't clear.  Now that I've been through what I've been through over the past couple of weeks, getting to know seemingly everyone in the Portland housing industry, it's hard to imagine there are many other West End house-hunters who would be willing to invest the same kind of time and suffer the same types of headaches.  In addition, the sellers have already started thinking that they're about to get out from under their problem --  how much will it be worth for them to leave that problem behind?  I'll know in the next few days.

Heat

Yesterday brought more bad news - the electrical guy won't certify the house because he can't be sure how much knob & tube wiring might be left (which could trip up my efforts to get insurance), Maine passed a law this spring requiring lead paint abatement to be done before any electrician works on an old house, which apparently is quite expensive, if I get a conventional mortgage larger than $417K (where did they get that number??), which I plan to, it's considered a jumbo loan and it is offered at a significantly higher interest rate, etc. etc. etc.  I can hear my friend Barbara's voice in my ear -- don't do it, don't do it, don't do it.

The heat is not improving my mood - I'm sitting in my 500 (maybe 450?) square foot apartment, sweltering away, 86 degrees reading on the thermostat (91 when I went to bed last night).  I'm happy to have found this place, but I/we want out!!  The house with the view is calling.

Lots more info today -- phone call with Jim, the bank president, about my absolutely essential loan, visit to the commercial space with Nick, the contractor, to get an idea of the costs of renovation, trip to the CEO office to find out what the house is legally categorized as, maybe the appraisal report will come in.  The dominoes will be falling, one way or another.  

In the meantime, school orientation and picnic for Kanha today, and first day of school tomorrow.  Our new life in Maine officially begins!