The Spendthrift's Progress

The one about the house.

There is nothing in the world that can drive me to tears of frustration like my house. At times, it feels less like a home, more like a bear trap with my foot in it.

The backstory, short version:

Five years ago, nearly to the day, we made an offer on this place, it was accepted, and we closed two months later. We'd been house-hunting for several month with no luck--not much on the market, and what there was sold almost as soon as it hit the MLS--and our agent said that in her experience, things would pick up again in November. It didn't, prices were still rising, and we were starting to panic, so in a fit of stupid, we offered on a place entirely unsuited for our needs.

The backstory, long version:

When I was 12, my mother went into real estate.

Several years later, as she was preparing to retire, she made us an offer we'd have been idiots to refuse: as housing costs were rising rapidly, if we were to buy before we were priced out, and she'd throw her commission towards the closing costs. So we went, got prequalified, and started looking and saving. Our goal was to stay in or near the neighborhood in which we were living, and to find a place with enough room for us, our stuff, and potential future children. Our requirements, such as they were, were 2br, a full bath, and a dining room (my husband's family has a lot of gatherings, and we wanted to be in a position to host them). Room to expand preferred, but not required.

At the time, our neighborhood was, as they say in the biz, taking off.

The amount we qualified for, $200k, had us looking at serious fixers (a no-go, as we were going FHA), condos with confusing bylaws and pet limitations (we have cats), 1br cottages on small (sub-2000 sqft lots). So we started looking outside our area, first north, than east, then, finally, south.

That was our first mistake. No wait. That was our second mistake. Scroll back to the part where my mother made us an offer we couldn't refuse.

I still think we'd have been idiots not to take my mother up on her offer, but the thing we glossed over in our minds was the part where we'd be working with family. Specifically, with my mother. Our first mistake was not thoroughly taking this into account when we started, because there wasn't (and, I fear, still isn't) a clear dividing line between my real estate agent and my mother.

Off the top of my head, I can think of at least three houses we passed on--at least one in our target area--because my mother didn't like them from a mother point of view. ("I'm sure they treated the lawn with all sorts of nasty chemicals, and you don't want to be exposed to that." and so on and so forth.)

The other thing about working with my mother and how it colored our view of the houses we saw is hard to explain. The boy says she's the annoying kind of optimist who sees every obstacle as easy to overcome and thus easily glossed over when she showed us houses ("That? Oh that's an easy fix."), and it's partly that.

The backstory for the backstory, my mother:

My mother grew up in rural Canada without indoor plumbing or electricity (my father grew up mainly in rural Canada, blah blah blah, but he's a hell of a lot less annoying about it). Five girls and three adults all squished into a space smaller than those 1br cottages mentioned above. If you didn't have something, you made do or did without (leading to an exceedingly can-do attitude). Eventually, she moved to the big city, got her nursing degree, married my father, and continued to make do for several more decades. At some point, after my sister but before me, they left Canada when my father was offered a job in the States. They bought a rundown old house with a fabulous view, my father switched careers (from engineering to teaching), and they had two more children. These last three things led to a sharp drop in available money, so the rundown old house became a never-ending DIY project.

She has this expectation that if they could manage, so could anyone else who shares her blood. It's how she judges, when dealing with her children, how much we should be able to bite off.

And of course, as she's our mother and we hate to disappoint, way more than we can chew is, without fail, how much we bite off. This has the natural effect of making us feel like complete failures when we choke, because we're not living up to these expectations that none of us are willing to admit are unrealistic.

Back to the backstory.

So, after the aforementioned months of looking, much second guessing, and a lot of frustration, we decided to go for a second look at a house we'd viewed a week earlier. In the back of my mind was the fact that my mother, for whatever reason, didn't like this particular house (actually, this was the house with the chemical lawn, so there's your reason), so while we were in the general area, we decided to look at one more house she'd pulled up.

This was our third mistake.

I don't know why we didn't veto it without even looking. It was on a busy street, it was at least a mile south of our cut off point, it didn't have a dining room, and it needed a lot of cosmetic work.

Exhausted, vulnerable, and already mentally prepared to offer on something, we looked.

My mother seemed to really like the house.

And for some unknown reason, so did we. Despite the fact that it was in the wrong neighborhood, lacked many of the things were looking for, and despite the curious lack of closets anywhere but the bedrooms. We figured that if, after living in it for a while, we didn't like it, we could sell in five years and move somewhere else.

Five years ago, nearly to the day, we made an offer on this place, it was accepted, and we closed two months later.

All would have been fine, and we'd have stuck with our Worst Case Scenario and We Hate It, Out in Five Years plan, but a few things we weren't counting on happened.

More backstory, the economy part:

When we bought the house, our economic future looked pretty sunny. The boy was working for a local broadcast company, and his particular division was doing fairly well. I was working a temp-to-hire gig for a company that seemed fairly together and stable, even if it was taking them several months to get to the whole "to hire" part of things.

We closed in late January of 2001.

At the end of February, there was an earthquake. While we escaped with very little damage, it was a sign of things to come.

At the end of March, my company finally got around to making me a Real Employee.

At the end of April, meeting notices went out. Three separate ones. Each at a different time, all must-attend. Sinking feelings invaded pretty much all of our stomachs, and with good cause.

The company was laying off about half of its staff. My particular group had to stay on for three months to finish things up, then we'd be out of work.

The last day of July, after my last day at work, I came home, took a bath, and noticed when one of the plastic tiles surrounding the tub fell off that the wall beneath was squishy. Three guesses where my severance check went.

Then the world went to hell and took the economy with it. Our city in particular, reeling from the tech bust and the hits to the aerospace industry, slumped. Parts of the local economy, specifically the parts I work in, haven't quite recovered.

For a very long time, I was without work. When I did find work, it was back doing temp contracts in the tech industry, which is pretty much a feast-or-famine thing.

The boy took a pay cut, first at the old job, and then to take a new job elsewhere.

We had the girl.

The house kept breaking in new and interesting ways, none of which were found during inspection.

Our incomes stagnated while the cost of living and the cost of housing went through the roof.

A house just as frustrating and just as broken, but in a better neighborhood, would cost us at least $325k now, if we were in a position to buy and lucky enough to find one.

So here we are, 4 5/6 of the way through our five year plan, which appears to have been extended for five more years in the best case scenario. There's too much that needs to be done for us to sell, and even if there weren't, we couldn't afford to buy elsewhere, and renting would wind up costing about as much if you figure in ownership's tax benefits.

And here I am, still unable to escape my mother-influenced expectations of myself, a huge lump of house angst stuck in my throat.

The house has broken me. I feel like a wimp and a failure.

I want to curl up and ignore the projects we never finished, because there was always something else to be done that took priority or because, by the time the weather had improved enough to work on them, we could no longer afford the materials.

I want one room, just one room, to not have anything that needs fixing or finishing. A room where I can set the girl down so she can try to crawl, without me worrying about splinters from the floor or random bits of broken crap hurting her.

More and more frequently, I make the mistake of articulating my frustrations to my mother like I did this morning, and she takes it personally, because she sold us the house. When she's not taking it personally, she's giving me impractical and overly cheerful advice of the "In my days, we DIYed uphill in the snow both ways!" variety. (I'm sorry mother, but if and when we finish the attic, I'm not building railings out of random bits of leftover wood that some factory you know of might still give away, nor am I going to repurpose the random cabinets in the basement.)

I should know better, but I don't.

Some days are better than others. On those days, I look back at the mistakes we made when buying as learning experiences, things we'll know not to do next time. Days like today, though, I manage to convince myself that there'll never be a next time, that we'll be stuck here in this house I hate in this neighborhood I dislike for the rest of our lives while the stupid thing falls apart around our ears all because I lacked the job and life skills need to be able to afford to fix it and escape it.

I wish I knew the trick to break myself out of this mental loop of doom.

Of course, I also wish I had a pony.

Somehow, I don't think I'm getting either of those any time soon.

posted by mohmlet @ 8:42 PM