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When THE position came along, everyone started speaking of things like new cars and then new cars turned to Real Estate and then I fainted, because I’m like 14 therefore too young to own a home. Homes are for people with families and take responsibility seriously. I was far too concerned with The Next Great Coach Bag, I could buy with my new earnings and maybe a new ipod to replace the one that broke like 8 months ago and well Kate Spade had a sample sale coming up so there would be that as well.
The prospect of Real Estate and the inevitable shitty game that is well played on both sides – buyers and sellers – is not something that I’m really into delving into at this point in my life. And yet for some reason it’s their lurking because I am not 14 years old, I’m damn near 24. My aunt the auditor extraordinaire and my personal financial guru, bought her first condo at 24 and as I recall, expressed the same reservations that I am fighting right now: That trepidation to even poke a big toe into the Real Estate shark pool. So I decide that maybe buying right now isn’t for me, let’s work on a car that doesn’t shake violently whenever the brake pedal is touched. How about that one for starters, hmm?
So I go along in my happy little renting/living with my mother complicated situation and then suddenly I develop House Envy. A very serious and unrelenting House Envy that has gripped my stomach and has been traipsing through Ikea imagining my future study and then there’s Leah. I love Leah and she is well aware that this love includes me tracking her down at the W just to hug her. Leah and Simon bought a house. A beautiful house that I plan to visit when I go to San Francisco this fall, because the house has hardwood floors and a lush garden. And damn it, I want hardwood floors and a garden. I want a house of my own to do what I want with that doesn’t include my mother’s or roommate’s stray hairs every other step. I WANT hardwood floors with pristine craftsman inlays:
The kitchen and bathroom are probably five or six years old; we're talking stainless steel appliances, travertine tile floors and backsplash, granite countertops, modern cabinetry with brushed metal hardware, a jetted tub--basically everything I make fun of when watching home renovation shows on cable because it's what everyone does. Bah, I say, except now I'm saying it with my cheek pressed lovingly against the baseboards while I tongue-kiss the bathroom floor.
I don't think I'm ready to show you more than just that one wide-angle view of the place, so instead I'm going to give you some more details, since those are the things that are making us fall more and more in love at every turn.
Then there she goes providing a detailed list of things she wish she had known prior to getting into the housing game. Because it’s a game of sorts, sometimes a sick twisted game as Melissa has mentioned ad nauseam (and yet I’m RIVETED. Seriously riveted) wherein some people live in a dream world:
It doesn't matter that the work he's done to the house is incomplete. It doesn't matter that no other homes in the area surrounding his home have sold for this price in 2+ years. He seems to have chosen a price, both for sale and for lease, which existed in a dream. A dream he had where he was living in a booming economy in northern California.
Which then scares me back into my “I LOVE being at the hands of a leasing agency and I will do so for the rest of my life†frame of mind. I’m all la dee da, I don’t need to be no stinkin’ homeowner. Ever. I can live with my mother because THAT’S been a freaking blast (to the head)!
I realize that homeownership will have to happen one day and perhaps sooner than I ever expected. Kind of like how I expected to get THE position sometime in my 30’s and it didn’t quite happen that way. Of course I am grateful for this but then there’s the whole I’m only 23 and a lot of shit could happen in the next seven years (seven years being my cut off date for a lot of things. Semi-arbitrary, semi-I’m
