All My Little Words

I read somewhere today that because of the squishy market, a lot of listings had been purged from “the system” to make it appear as if there is not as much inventory as there really is. I check the same search criteria of listings every day, so I notice if there are more or less listings, even by a few. Usually there are about 9 pages that meet my criteria, sometimes 10. Today, there were only 7.

Additionally, I found a flyer I’d picked up a month ago for a modest looking home across the street from where Sage’s dad lives. A modest $499k home. I wanted to check today to see if the price was the same. That home has been removed from the market. I saw the sign still up just yesterday. Could just be that they have just decided to keep it. Or it could be a purge, even a temporary one. I hear that sometimes instead of using the “price reduced” strategy, people will take the listing off entirely, only to replace it with a “new” listing. I can see how this makes the whole deal look more appealing, but to me, it is a touch shady.

Despite what I said just yesterday about it being a sad, sad week, I am still having a pretty good summer so far.

Before I go on, please allow me to take this opportunity to apologize for my lack of editing posts properly. I was just re-reading one from earlier this month that received a comment, and noticed that it had several errors that I should have caught. Unfortunately, if they are not errors that the spell checker points out, I am unlikely to notice, as I have so little extra time on my hands these days. You may have noticed that I don’t really do this every day, which is due to the fact that I try to do a bunch of stuff before work, and it has been too busy during work for me to concentrate long enough to write anything worth posting.

Yes, that’s right. While unemployment is on the rise, and even mortgage brokers are facing foreclosures, I have just gotten busier. Which is great in more ways than are immediately obvious. If you’ve read much of this, (which I doubt) you may have noticed that I was having a hard time dealing with my job. While there are still aspects of it which are a little unsatisfying, at least when I am busy, I have less time to think about those things. Additionally, it IS satisfying to be someone who is making a nice, steady income (even while working essentially on commission!) in the face of all the doom and gloom right now.

Besides the fact that I chose this line of work because it is an industry that stays pretty strong even in the worst recessions, these days we do even better than we would have historically. Because I have chosen to charge a very moderate rate, I feel that we are getting more customers from places that charge a lot more. Now that everyone is feeling a financial pinch, it is pretty easy to switch from somewhere that is charging $100 to a place which only charges $30 for the same service. So there’s that.

Again, with the thoughts about why I didn’t buy a house when I could have! Should have! (Sarcasm!)
Now I read about the mortgage broker who can no longer afford her home because her income fell from $80k a year to $12k a year, and I think “That just proves my point!” This is what I have been saying all along. What if you lose your job and can’t find another? How will you afford that mortgage? What if you become ill or someone in your family does? So many people did not think ahead. I’d like to be kind (because I have a little sympathy for some) and say they had their heads in the clouds, but honestly, they had their heads up their asses.

I don’t know enough about the US economy as a whole to really know what a mortgage bailout would do, but I do know that I have no desire to see the gov’t encouraging people to make poor decisions, or to be paying for the bailout in taxes. I didn’t get into a risky mortgage, even though I had just as much opportunity as anyone else (and in fact, could have done so to stay in the house I loved so much and really thought I would buy someday) because I had the foresight to know that I might be able to afford the payment at some point.

When I decided to be a single woman again, I came back to Seattle from California with a good job waiting for me. I made so much money that I could afford to pay more for rent here than two of us were paying for mortgage in California. I wanted to buy a house, but I didn’t. I didn’t have a down payment, who knew how long I’d be alone and what would happen, and I thought then (6 years ago) that prices were too high, especially for my situation.
I made more money. Enough that I moved us to a nicer apartment, and reduced my hours. I was only working 4 days a week, and still had plenty of money for whatever I wanted. Yet I still didn’t think it was a good time for me. I was still alone, and I didn’t want to give up the luxury of working less, and doing whatever I wanted.
When I had the chance to buy the house I was living in last year, I was no longer single, but I hadn’t been with someone long enough to make it safe to get into something like that. My business was still too new, I wasn’t making enough money.

Now, the time is closer to right, getting righter all the time. Alex and I have been together a whole year (plus), he is up for some decent raises soon (and has pretty good job stability) and I seem to be making more money steadily, and housing prices seem to be in decline. The only thing holding us back is that mortgages are so much harder to get right now. A year ago, they’d have approved us for the $600k needed to buy my old houses. Now we get $300k and like. And I do like it. I don’t want anyone to tell me I can afford something that I know I cannot.

Okay, enough about the house already! It is finally summer here, and I don’t mind (too much, it is supposed to be 90 Saturday, which will make me want to barf) and it is the little things that make me happy. My house is clean, and my visit to Dooce this morning reminded me that I have two pots of violas outside that are doing well. This is especially cool because mine weren’t a gift – I actually rescued them out of the back lawn. I don’t know how, but two little violas were growing up amongst the grass despite crazy dogs running them over, and I had the foresight to pop them out of the ground before they got mowed down and put them in pots.

Oh, jeebus, I’m out of time again.

Well, it’s a sad, sad week.

Yesterday, George Carlin died. Boo

Today, I’ve already read about how we have a mere 20 years until global warming may cause mass extinction, (although, this one does fit in with my lifelong dream for an apocalyptic event. Note to self – research how possible survival will be.) and then I found out that they knocked down the Ballard Denny’s this morning. Another piece of the Ballard I always knew and loved, gone.

I know, who gives a crap about a Denny’s right? But it was right on the way home, so if ever I needed a place to stop and eat in the middle of the night (ok, after the bar!) it was easy to swing by. And as much as I love good food, I don’t always feel like spending a ton of cash. It was a cheap place to get fairly reliable food. And a great landmark. But mostly, no one is going to put in another diner, much less a 24 hour one. I’d do it, but I can’t even afford a home in my own neighborhood.

It’s funny, I’ve been thinking about how our real estate agent said something like “It’s too bad that you have good taste in neighborhoods”. I understand that she meant that if we were willing to live somewhere else in the city, we could pick up a house for a lot less money. But I don’t want to live here because it is a great neighborhood. When I was a kid, Ballard was a working class, blue collar neighborhood. Only old swedes and fishermen lived here. Most of these Grade A houses were still little 800sf Cape Cods before they were bastardized into mini-McMansions. I agree that all the remodels are lovely, but I hate the fact that MOST people simply did those remodels to make big money off some tiny houses they picked up on the cheap. Therefore turning my dirty little second class ‘hood into a world class yuppie playground. I have lived in the area where I am looking for a house for about 16 years now, before everyone came in and scooped up all the little houses and made them into something they are not. I was too young back then to be ready to buy a house, and by the time I was ready, everything had blown up entirely out of proportion. The jackasses that have moved in here in the interim actually look down their noses at the working class people who have been priced out of their own ‘hood.

I guess the good news is, I can see a change coming. Boom and bust. Those who are living around here who do not have crazy mortgages or other credit problems that are going to wipe them out better be able to adapt.

Talk about Freaky Friday – there was a post here until just now. Monday the 16th.

Watching houses like a hawk. I know the downturn is happening, I see it more every day. That fixer Cape Cod we had considered is now being cleaned out and painted, and the carpets were taken out to expose the hardwoods – they finally realized that no one wanted to deal with all that creepy old lady shit. It will be interesting to see how much they improve it to sell it. They may actually meet the demands we would have made without us even asking.

The house we made an offer on still sits with no offers, even though it may be the most liveable house in that size/price range. As other houses get lower prices or more work done on them, they really will HAVE to lower the price. I will be waiting for it to hit what we were willing to pay. I doubt we will end up buying it though, as more larger houses come into our price range.

Today, I found a short sale for a piece of crap, but it’s not THAT much of a piece of crap. Smaller yard, but not tiny, location not as good, but it is almost 1500sf, 3 beds, 1.5 baths, it has hardwood floors, and a five yo roof. Definitely needs a remodel, but it would be about as worth our while as the Cape Cod because it is already big enough, needs about the same amount of work inside and out, has a newer roof and is less $$. Closer to Sage’s school, but the one thing about it I don’t like is that it is a crap location otherwise, just off of 85th.

Still, all these things are signs that we are getting closer to where we really need to be. If that last house were just a bit more off 85th, I’d say we should snatch it up. Anything workable that is in our price range AND larger than the house we are in now would be acceptable. It is nice to know we can stay here as long as we want, while I watch and wait for the perfect house. But yet, we may be waiting until winter still, and it may be very, very worth it. If we can get into a house for much less than what we qualify for, and it is a much more acceptable house than what we have been looking at…

Winter was my original prediction. And aren’t I always right?

I’m too tired to even be able to form much in the way of a thought these days. Being asked if I would go out for a drink last night, or if I were going to see the Black Angels was laughable either way. I was asleep on the couch by 10, I’m sure.

It’s also laughable when someone calls trying to solicit us to do advertising at work. Apparently, we don’t really need it.

I don’t even have a desire to look for a house right now. I’m too tired to go look, or consider packing up and moving. I still look at the lsitings, but what I found out earlier this week was:

The add-a-shack finally got a price reduction of $22k. It’s actually pretty appropriate, although I personally wouldn’t pay anywhere near that for it. I don’t know much about all of this, but it looks like a tear down to me. But the lot is small and shitty anyway, it’s probably only good for townhouses.

The pit house was taken off the market temporarily. I’m guessing someone informed them that it wasn’t safe and there’s no way they can sell it like that. I don’t know how anyone would fix that. Another tear down?

Anyway, I don’t know what to do with me. Too tired for anything right now.

Psych! Rather than share the details of why it looks like we are not buying the house we made an offer on right this second (it’s a bit complex, and I don’t have the time right now) I thought I might share an my shoe analogy for the housing market, especially because it pretty accurately mirrors the situation.
Guys might not get this as much, because I might apply the fashion aspect of it, but you should in the respect that  good shoes have value, and can be a very wise purchase to make.

For a while now, every time you see your friends, they suggest you buy a new pair of shoes. And so far, you have resisted. The pair you have now is still perfectly good, they will last a while. They are comfortable and a new pair can be painful to break in. Plus, good shoes are expensive, and you know that a new pair is just not in your budget.

Then one day, you look at your shoes, and you think – maybe I could use a new pair. These will last a while longer, maybe indefinitely, but shouldn’t you get a new pair BEFORE you need them? You know that shoes are expensive, especially if you want a good pair that will last. You check your bank account and your budget and decide that you can safely spend $100. Off to the shoe store you go.

You get there and wow, there sure are a lot of good looking shoes! You look around and you find a pair you REALLY like. They seem to be well made, and look like they are classic enough to sail through fashion trends for years to come. Then you look at the price. Jeebus H. Cripes on a crutch! You thought they would be in your price range, but they are actually $500! Whoops! You put the shoes down and keep looking. You go through this process several times, getting a little more frustrated each time. Things sure have changed since the last time you bought shoes! You had expected to pay a little more, but this is more than 5 times what you paid for your last pair.

You enlist the aid of a salesperson. They bring over about ten pairs of shoes. 4 pairs are REALLY ugly AND poorly made. A couple of pairs are okay, but they don’t come in quite your size. A few more pairs don’t even come close to your size. The salesperson opens the last box and! There they are! The perfect shoes! Oh, they are beautiful and stylish and well made, and GASP! They are Manolo Blaniks! What a find! And then you look at the price tag. Even though you told the sales person that you could afford $100, these shoes cost $700! You close the box and start looking at the others again.

You try on the ones that are really the wrong size just to make sure. Right. Not even close. Put those back for sure. You try on the ones that are a little too small. You squeeze them on. Whew. They ARE uncomfortable, aren’t they? But….won’t they stretch? Maybe you could get some of those shoe stretching things…. Hmmm… You look at the price tags. One pair is still way too expensive, even if they are nice, so you set aside the other pair, even if they are too small and a little more than you wanted to spend.

You start looking at the poor, ugly shoes to see if maybe you judged them too quickly. All of them are in your price range, but wow, 1 pair is REALLY ugly, and only half-way decently constructed. A couple others are better looking, but REALLY shoddy. The last pair is, whoops, again a little out of your price range, and a little small, but the best looking pair.

Unbelievable. There isn’t a single pair that is really right for you. You look them over again. Now you’re down to a pair that is a little expensive, but a little too small. A pair that are not as nice, not as cute, a little small, but a little more affordable, although still more than you were supposed to spend.

And then there are those Manolos….But they are way too expensive. But they are amazing and fit like a glove. You could wear these shoes for…the rest of your LIFE, if you took care of them. Hmmmm, maybe that $700 is worth it. No, no, you should be practical. You don’t have $700!

You look at the other pairs. You squeeze them on. One pair hurts a little less than the others. You ask the sales person to check the price, or maybe there is something similar on sale? He comes back and tells, you that the price on one is correct, but the more expensive pair is on sale! How much off? TEN WHOLE DOLLARS!!!!! That will make them only $40 more than you wanted to spend! What a deal!

He slithers up next to you and says quietly, Why don’t you just put your Manolos on your credit card?
OMG, why didn’t you think of that? You could do that! You call the bank and find out that you don’t have enough credit left for the shoes. What if you paid $100 in cash, and put the rest on the card…? No, still not enough when you figure in the tax. The sales person tell you that these shoes are the hottest thing around, and then, again quietly, that this may be your last chance to buy them at this price because he heard that the price might be going up! Wait, you say…don’t the prices of things usually go DOWN after a while? Oh no, not anymore he says. There are only so many pairs of good shoes out there, you may never find another pair like this again.

What do you do? Spend the extra cash on the Manolos because they ARE great and they WILL last?
Or spend a lot less on a pair that is a little small but might work? That one pair IS $10 off….

I can only tell you what I did. I walked away. It may have made some people a little upset. Everyone spent some time, and no one made any money. But I couldn’t let myself spend more than I could afford. Couldn’t you pay a little more? It’s not really that much extra. It doesn’t matter. That is what is wrong with everything these day. Everyone pays just a little more than they can afford, and a little more, and then oh hell, I’m so far over my head already, I’m just gonna go for the gold. What’s a little extra debt every month?

A pair of shoes may very well be worth $700, but that doesn’t mean I can afford them.
Another pair of shoes may be too small, kind of ugly and only okay construction, but why pay everything I have for them when they won’t really work as well as I need them too?
Another pair of shoes may be worth $150 (or $140), but especially when they are still too small (even if they are pretty cute) should I really buy them? Maybe if I wait, I will find another pair of shoes that suits me better for the same amount. Maybe a nicer pair WILL go on sale. Or maybe they will all go up in price exponentially. I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t afford any of those pairs of shoes, especially since the pair I have now really will continue to work for a while longer.

It’s another srsly rainy day in Seattle, and I couldn’t be happier about that.
I hate to be the person who says “If you don’t like it, leave”, but it’s kind of true.
If you hate the weather here now, you’re probably never going to like it and you’re never going to be happy here. When I lived in California last, I hated the weather and after a while, i just became clear that it wasn’t the place for me. So you moved here, bought a house on which the payments are now killing you, and it’s pouring down rain in June so you can’t even go out and play and you’re just miserable. It’s not getting any better. This is what we get here.

When I first read way back in 1990 or ‘91 or whenever it was, that some magazine or other had decided that Seattle was the best US city to live in, I LMAO, if you will. They probably decided that because it was really inexpensive and not really that populated. Between that and Boeing (and then Microsoft, Starbucks, Nintendo, etc) I could see what people thought the appeal was. Now, almost 20 years later, Boeing has moved a lot of its workforce away, Starbucks is closing US stores left and right, at least Microsoft and Nintendo (we love Wii, right?) are still going strong, and the population is huge, but are streets are still crumbling, many of the older houses are rotting and developers have built a fresh crop ready to rot in the steady, everpouring rain.

Back in ‘90 or ‘91 there was a reason why not very many people lived here – it is lush and green for a reason, and that reason is the continuous rain. The miserable, depressing rain. Walking in the rain makes people miserable. Sloshing through puddles is awful. Waiting for the bus, getting wetter by the second, sucks. Then you get home and your roof is leaking like a sieve and your basement is flooded. Your floors get ruined even if you take off your shoes because your clothes drip all over. The inside of your house steams up and becomes just as damp as the outside.

Seattle is rough around the edges. Sometimes everything comes together and people decide that they want to try to conquer its roughness. I think that is what happened in the 90’s. Seattle was an opportunity and there were lots of opportunistic people in other parts of the country who couldn’t resist the challenge. Armed with a herd of freshly popular SUV’s to get them through the puddles and mud, the opportunists came. They came with little regard to the consequences of what they were taking advantage of, and to the consequences to themselves. They took advantage of our open spaces and rotting buildings, to build more and more and more, until now there are an excess of buildings, and many of the buildings are excess in themselves.

Traditionally, people who have lived have carved and existence out where they can. The newer people came and bulldozed their way into existence. The tried to tame the wilds of Seattle, and now maybe they are finding out why it wasn’t already tamed.

There are many places in the world that are amazingly beautiful and desirable, but are simply not for people, or at least not for everybody. This may be a place that is simply just not for everyone. So if you are hating the weather, maybe this isn’t the place for you.

Supposedly rare or unbelievable occurrences happen when Hell freezes over. I don’t know if that actually happened, but on the rainiest June day I’ve ever seen here, in which it was cold enough for me to see my breath, (which may be an indication of severe cold below) we made an offer on a house. It was pretty low, really, so it probably won’t get accepted, which will alleviate my stress about spending too much money on too little house. If it is accepted…well, at least it seems solid and well maintained, and it really is in such a pretty setting. If it doesn’t get accepted, we are waiting to see if there really is a downturn, and if we really could get a house that is more what we would hope for.

When I was growing up, we lived in a wide array of houses as renters, so I have a pretty good idea of what kinds of houses are out there. It’s not like we were rich, but all of the houses we lived in were pretty big, and I guess it is unfortunate that that has helped to set my standard. I think the house that I thought was most perfect had a mudroom in back, a front porch AND an enclosed side porch. A big kitchen, a living room, dining room, and besides the one bedroom downstairs, two more upstairs. My room was upstairs, and at the back of my closet was a little narrow set of stairs leading to the attic. It may be my child’s memory playing tricks on me, but I remember it being a full-sized attic, effectively making it a three story house. In addition to all that, there was a full basement, which seemed to not only have several rooms and occupy the entire space under the house, but had a bit of a “Silence of the Lambs” quality to it, with doors at what must have been at the perimeter of the house leading to I don’t know where, but if there were anything there, it would have to have been under the yard. It wasn’t a small yard either, and there was also a big garage.

It’s not that there aren’t any houses of decent size available to buy now, it’s just that all that have even just three bedrooms instead of two cost 100k more. That is the cost of a single bedroom? Really? That just seems crazy to me. We will already be paying about twice what I think a first home should cost. I don’t mind paying more for something that I think I could live the rest of my life in, as I have gotten old enough to realize that I don’t want to trade up 3 times in the next 20 years. It’s not like we just got married for the first time and don’t have any kids or stuff. We need space NOW, not in 20 years. Sage will be gone in less than ten, I’m sure.

So basically,  I am fluctuating back and forth between the excitement that everyone has when they are buying a house, no matter how dubious the prospect, and the nausea that accompanies the concern that we are doing the WRONG THING. I guess because we sort of randomly decided to look at houses, and this is the first one we really intentionally looked at, I think if it works out it was meant to be for some reason. And if not? Well, it’s not like we can’t live here indefinitely.

I’m sure I have mentioned a great many times that the main reason I have had no desire whatsoever to buy a house in the last several years was because of the enormously overinflated prices. For a while now, there has not been a single house out there that I would agree was worth the asking price. On top of that, a lot of idiots out there (yes, I said idiots because it is partly your fault that things got so out of control) got into bidding wars with one another making the whole situation even worse.

Since the beginning of this year, I have been watching prices, and for the last few months, seeing what looked like things getting a little better. A couple of weeks ago, all it took were the words “I found a listing for a house that I think I’d make an offer on if I were in a position to do so” and we were getting pre-approved for a mortgage.

On Sunday, on a whim, we decided to drive by a house that had been sitting on the market for a few months that we wondered if there was potential for fixing up. By the time we got home after having seen that bastard spawn of the Mystery Spot and the Winchester Mystery House and driven around looking for anything else in our price range, we were depressed.

Today, we went with our realtor and looked at 4 more houses. We were really excited to see one of them because it was situated up on a hillside and it had super-duper privacy. We got there and the house itself wasn’t bad – definitely a little odd but maybe workable. Then we looked at the “basement”. Which was like a well of souls that had been excavated out over the years from a crawlspace, and when we were back upstairs, I became sure that I could see the point in the center at which the whole thing would just cave in.

We saw another one that the realtor referred to as an “add-a-shack” and that we all agreed that we were too afraid to open the door to the second bedroom and just left. It also was terribly crooked and a cave and a maze, and between that and the fact that the yard wasn’t fenced and it was on a busy street, we fled pretty much in terror.

We saw a house that had great potential to be a dreamhouse after it was fixed up – good, solid house with pretty good hardwood floors, a nice sized living room and kitchen and a gigantic (if very scruffy) lot, but after at first getting kind of excited about it, I think we decided that the price would have to be lowered dramatically (60-70k) or a lot of improvements thrown in to make it worthwhile.

Then there was the pretty house. The most expensive of all 4, it was still a fairly reasonable 340k. (Jeebus, I have gone mad.) A very pretty house, but about 50% too small for us, it was as large as any house we’d seen today. But it is in move-in condition, and maybe has an attic, and a nice shop space outside. A fully fenced yard, and is listed as a “gardener’s paradise”. After considering the fact that the good fixer upper would cost about 70k to put it in the same condition, and they are exactly the same size, it seemed like we would ultimately end up coming out about 40k ahead if we tried to get the pretty house.

Throw into the mix the fact that we have no idea if the market will really crash and in a year we could pick up what is now a 400k house for 300k, and the possibility of somehow assuming the mortgage on the (1300sf very livable, in a desirable neighborhood) house we currently live in and we FINALLY get to my ultimate point. I have not been interested in buying a house because it is an absolute nightmare.

We’ve narrowed it down to 4 options – sit here and wait and see on the off chance that the market crashes, while potentially losing out on any current (and maybe all) opportunities;
try to buy this house which is more than likely totally unrealistic (but at the same time well worth looking into);
try to make an offer on the gardener’s paradise which will probably get snatched up by someone willing to pay the asking price (but also worth the effort because it is a realistic house and in the perfect spot besides being super cute);
try to get a much better deal on the fixer upper and live in agony for a few years before ultimately making it into an awesome house.

All pros and cons of all four options weigh out pretty equally when you adjust for short term comfort versus long term value, etc.
There is no deal breaker for the moment. I’m sure a few of the options will play themselves out and become eliminated within a week – only to replaced by an equal number.

Ultimately, it is all okay because I think that, if nothing else, we can stay where we are indefinitely. This house, which was feeling a bit small a couple of weeks ago, suddenly seems pretty much huge after today. I don’t think that it will get sold out from under us. If it does, we are screwed.

On a brighter note, we did find a Wii fit on Sunday – on Craigslist for more than the actual retail price, but it only took about 5 minutes to decide that it was the best $130 we’ve ever spent. Or at least I did, after it declared Alex to be borderline obese and me totally normal, and his “fitness age” to be 20 years older than he is, and mine to be 5 years younger than I am.
At least I am getting some exercise, dammit.