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House Update - Coda
Jul. 18th, 2003 04:07 pmObsession ended - everyone return to your homes. That's what we're doing.
By the end of the day Wednesday, we had basically decided that we were moving. The real estate agents gave us a big speech about selling our house and how much they could get for it. I subtracted $30,000 in my head and did all the math again. Yes, we could afford the monthly payments if we liquidated a bit of retirement savings.
We were running on a deadline. The unit we wanted was back on the market and it was going to go quickly. At 8:45 that evening, the agents came to our house with an offer for us to sign. Some uncanny angel made us ask to see the house one more time. So me, Snake and Br'er Rabbit piled into their car and headed over. Br'er Rabbit hadn't seen the place before and Snake had only been there once. The bunny's eyes shone as he marvelled at the wonderful family he had entered and that he would live in the land of designer touches where three grown men didn't have to squeeze into one small bathroom.
The agent told us that this was a good opportunity to demand fixes in the unit so we wandered around noting every scratch in the paint and sticky cupboard door. Offputting things occurred. The agent noticed a scratch on the fridge and said, "Oh, steel scratches soeasily.... but it looks SO GOOD!" I personally would never pay extra for yuppie luxuries like stainless steel fridge. But, OMG, the whole house is about yuppie luxury. I also mourned the loss of our ancient but wonderful gas stove that was about to be usurped by a 20-dial programmable stainless steel electric monster. I hate cooking on electric.
Meanwhile, Snake was staring out of windows at the awful, industrial-looking back wall of the school that the site is sandwiched behind (unlike in this rendering where it appears to be situated in a park) and feeling loneliness creep into his soul. We found a creaking area in the floor and a badly supported corner of the roof deck, thus denting our unreasonable feeling that we were buying something that would remain problem-free for the next 25 years.
But there was no stopping us! We're young and hung and ready to move on up! Maniacal smiles were exchanged! A meeting was set for the Thursday at noon to sign the offer! We turned down the proferred lift home and decided to walk instead.
No sooner had the agent's Lexus pulled away when I felt the urge to sink to the pavement, weeping and puking. "What's wrong?" asked my little family. I started ranting "I don't belong in that house! That's a house for grown-ups, I don't belong there!" Snake said I was just nervous and that was normal. "You are a grown-up," he stated to no effect, as I was lying on my back kicking my little legs in the air. We started walking home, leaving the desolate back-alley where our luxury townhouse squatted like a huge alien mothership clad in tastefully weathered brick and entered the normal streets of the neighbourhood.
Snake pointed out all the people standing on their front lawns and porches, chatting to neighbours in the warm summer air in a way that would never happen at the townhouse. (When I met the builder on Tuesday, he answered my concern about stepping right out of the front door onto the narrow sidewalk-less street by saying, "You'll mostly be driving in and out through the garage in the back." He had no response when told him that we don't have a car.) Suddenly, Snake felt the loss of neighbourhood. Our street is a tiny block where we know every neighbour. Some are friends, some we just say good morning to. Some are creepy and loony but we now have watched them pass through eight years of history and overheard their laughing and shouting. Our block is thick with large trees and we experience nature up close, watching squirrels leap across branches and porches and late-night raccoons lifting the lids off garbage cans. From the fourth floor of the townhouse, nature is a backdrop. It is a landscape painting paid for with credit that hangs mutely on the wall, inviting no participation.
Back at home, I revisted the math for the 500th time, but this time from a different angle. For one thing, we had learned that the Toronto land-transfer tax on the house would be $5,000. Add to that the $6,000 we'd have to pay in tax on the retirement money we'd cash out, the $1,000 in lawyer's fees and the cost of changing the address on the utilities and mail and we were suddenly spending more than $12,000 just to move. I then looked at the fact that up to now we have been paying two-thirds of our mortgage with rental money from our tenant and putting large lump-sums against the mortgage yearly. Put another way, we have lived simple and cheap for seven years and now are within sight of paying it off altogether. At this point, we are paying $1,500 a month of mortgage principal. We would be replacing this with spending $200 more per month with almost every penny going irretrieveably to the bank. In five years, when it would be time to renegotiate the mortage on the townhouse, we would have hardly paid off any of the principal. What if mortgages are 8% then? Instant economic devastation.
Suddenly, it was all clear! We had been caught up in a consumer dream of instant riches and luxury. All we had to do was assume a huge debt in order to pretend that we were downtown hotshots! So, what really blinded me the whole time? I think it was this rock-and-roll dream plus the artificial desperation of getting the prime end-unit which was, supposedly, in hot demand and would be gone any day. But suddenly, the whole fucking thing evaporated in my mind. I hated the stupid townhouse and loved our dear old dump! Snake took another hour to convince, but in truth, he was over the dream, too. Suddenly, the stupidity of the whole housing development was apparent -- architecture without context; disconnect between the exterior world and the interior world. A lonely box of dreams for pretentious social climbers.
I woke up dancing next morning. I was home. No strangers were going to walk through and turn up their noses at our choices of wall colours or books. No one was going to violate the love we've built into our house. And when we get the oak flooring and the open concept main floor, we will get it because we've dreamed it and chosen it and made it real, paid for in cash and in the hard currency of years.
By the end of the day Wednesday, we had basically decided that we were moving. The real estate agents gave us a big speech about selling our house and how much they could get for it. I subtracted $30,000 in my head and did all the math again. Yes, we could afford the monthly payments if we liquidated a bit of retirement savings.
We were running on a deadline. The unit we wanted was back on the market and it was going to go quickly. At 8:45 that evening, the agents came to our house with an offer for us to sign. Some uncanny angel made us ask to see the house one more time. So me, Snake and Br'er Rabbit piled into their car and headed over. Br'er Rabbit hadn't seen the place before and Snake had only been there once. The bunny's eyes shone as he marvelled at the wonderful family he had entered and that he would live in the land of designer touches where three grown men didn't have to squeeze into one small bathroom.
The agent told us that this was a good opportunity to demand fixes in the unit so we wandered around noting every scratch in the paint and sticky cupboard door. Offputting things occurred. The agent noticed a scratch on the fridge and said, "Oh, steel scratches soeasily.... but it looks SO GOOD!" I personally would never pay extra for yuppie luxuries like stainless steel fridge. But, OMG, the whole house is about yuppie luxury. I also mourned the loss of our ancient but wonderful gas stove that was about to be usurped by a 20-dial programmable stainless steel electric monster. I hate cooking on electric.
Meanwhile, Snake was staring out of windows at the awful, industrial-looking back wall of the school that the site is sandwiched behind (unlike in this rendering where it appears to be situated in a park) and feeling loneliness creep into his soul. We found a creaking area in the floor and a badly supported corner of the roof deck, thus denting our unreasonable feeling that we were buying something that would remain problem-free for the next 25 years.
But there was no stopping us! We're young and hung and ready to move on up! Maniacal smiles were exchanged! A meeting was set for the Thursday at noon to sign the offer! We turned down the proferred lift home and decided to walk instead.
No sooner had the agent's Lexus pulled away when I felt the urge to sink to the pavement, weeping and puking. "What's wrong?" asked my little family. I started ranting "I don't belong in that house! That's a house for grown-ups, I don't belong there!" Snake said I was just nervous and that was normal. "You are a grown-up," he stated to no effect, as I was lying on my back kicking my little legs in the air. We started walking home, leaving the desolate back-alley where our luxury townhouse squatted like a huge alien mothership clad in tastefully weathered brick and entered the normal streets of the neighbourhood.
Snake pointed out all the people standing on their front lawns and porches, chatting to neighbours in the warm summer air in a way that would never happen at the townhouse. (When I met the builder on Tuesday, he answered my concern about stepping right out of the front door onto the narrow sidewalk-less street by saying, "You'll mostly be driving in and out through the garage in the back." He had no response when told him that we don't have a car.) Suddenly, Snake felt the loss of neighbourhood. Our street is a tiny block where we know every neighbour. Some are friends, some we just say good morning to. Some are creepy and loony but we now have watched them pass through eight years of history and overheard their laughing and shouting. Our block is thick with large trees and we experience nature up close, watching squirrels leap across branches and porches and late-night raccoons lifting the lids off garbage cans. From the fourth floor of the townhouse, nature is a backdrop. It is a landscape painting paid for with credit that hangs mutely on the wall, inviting no participation.
Back at home, I revisted the math for the 500th time, but this time from a different angle. For one thing, we had learned that the Toronto land-transfer tax on the house would be $5,000. Add to that the $6,000 we'd have to pay in tax on the retirement money we'd cash out, the $1,000 in lawyer's fees and the cost of changing the address on the utilities and mail and we were suddenly spending more than $12,000 just to move. I then looked at the fact that up to now we have been paying two-thirds of our mortgage with rental money from our tenant and putting large lump-sums against the mortgage yearly. Put another way, we have lived simple and cheap for seven years and now are within sight of paying it off altogether. At this point, we are paying $1,500 a month of mortgage principal. We would be replacing this with spending $200 more per month with almost every penny going irretrieveably to the bank. In five years, when it would be time to renegotiate the mortage on the townhouse, we would have hardly paid off any of the principal. What if mortgages are 8% then? Instant economic devastation.
Suddenly, it was all clear! We had been caught up in a consumer dream of instant riches and luxury. All we had to do was assume a huge debt in order to pretend that we were downtown hotshots! So, what really blinded me the whole time? I think it was this rock-and-roll dream plus the artificial desperation of getting the prime end-unit which was, supposedly, in hot demand and would be gone any day. But suddenly, the whole fucking thing evaporated in my mind. I hated the stupid townhouse and loved our dear old dump! Snake took another hour to convince, but in truth, he was over the dream, too. Suddenly, the stupidity of the whole housing development was apparent -- architecture without context; disconnect between the exterior world and the interior world. A lonely box of dreams for pretentious social climbers.
I woke up dancing next morning. I was home. No strangers were going to walk through and turn up their noses at our choices of wall colours or books. No one was going to violate the love we've built into our house. And when we get the oak flooring and the open concept main floor, we will get it because we've dreamed it and chosen it and made it real, paid for in cash and in the hard currency of years.
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