There’s three pretty important things you need to know about me before reading this blog. I live in a two bedroom apartment with my recently divorced mother, I can afford to buy a house but can’t find one to buy, and I am no longer telling people that I’m trying to buy a house.
It’s tough to judge who’s sadder, my divorcee mother who doesn’t know how to restart her life in her fifties, or her only remaining child who doesn’t know how to start his life in the first place. We make the best of it. We watch “This Is Us” together over ice cream after dinner. We find comfort in knowing that neither of us expected to find ourselves in this situation. So we’re in it together. Where the comfort dissipates is when we both start to act our age.
My mother does things like, talk at length about the man she’s just separated from after thirty years of marriage. As someone in their late fifties tends to do. Only one small issue, that man is also my Dad. I’m not without fault. As 28 year olds tend to do, I decided to have a friend over that I had just met at a bar. There’s not much room where I live, as two bedroom apartments tend to do, and I had to introduce this grown ass woman to my Mom who was watching a recorded James Corden episode in the living room before we went to my bedroom like I was fucking seventeen years old again.
“Well why don’t you just move out?”
Wow, wish I would have thought of that.
For the first time in my life, I actually have a little coin in my pocket. Feels great. So I’ve been saving up for a house. Now I do have a little brother who does have his own place. He doesn’t have to worry about having friends over, and also, he has much more friends over than I do. None of that feels great. But he owns a trailer. I could own a trailer no problem. But I have money and he doesn’t. So to even the sibling rivalry scales, I need to buy a much bigger house than him since I’ll be having much smaller amounts of sex in it.
I have the means I just don’t have the inventory. Houses that used to cost 200k are now going for 425k. So the houses that are now going for 200-300k are flying off the market in mere hours and coming in way over asking price. I have money, but only comparatively speaking to my former self. I don’t have 450k lying around.
So I went to my best friend who’s also still living home, and said “Hey, rent costs more than mortgages right now, why don’t we split a house to split the cost. No point in renting and paying someone else’s mortgage when we can build equity of our own. Maybe we even bring in a third friend to rent a room from us to bring down our monthly bills.” He agreed. Now, I’m a forward thinker, I could see possible issues arising. So we hashed them out before we started looking. My best friend and I agreed that if one of us decides we want to move out we’ll either A. Reappraise the house and buy the other one out at current market price, or B. Sell the house together and split the profit. A pretty good idea I thought.
Well not according to literally any person I ever told that to.
I didn’t realize that when you’re discussing purchasing a home, every human on the receiving end of that conversation naturally becomes a real estate expert. They make up mortgage rates, they somehow know when the housing market is going to dip, and instantly know what’s the best course of action for you, without any knowledge of your current living situation. I can’t exactly tell my boss who asked me “What’s the rush?”, that I need to move out so I can try and have sex without fear of my mom hearing me from the next room over.
So if someone tells you that they’re trying to buy a house, don’t ask them how it’s going. It’s going terrible. It isn’t an invitation for advice or criticism. What it probably is, is a feeble attempt to fill the empty air like an adult. What you should say is, “Sounds tough, good luck with that,” so both of you can move the fuck on with your respective lives.
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