and Words
Father wears his Sunday best
Mother’s tired, she needs a rest
The kids are playing up downstairs
Sister’s sighing in her sleep
Brother’s got a date to keep
He can’t hang around
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
It was early in the year; it was either late January or early February. We had talked about getting a place together and thought we might start looking. Meanwhile, a friend mentioned new construction at a nearby neighborhood. However, we weren’t looking seriously; it’s not as if we had specifics on square footage or neighborhood or the like… nor did we really think about the price range. Certainly, we simply knew that we wanted to be together.
During a sunny weekend morning, I program the address into the GPS. I subsequently follow the cryptic directions, but it takes us nowhere. Quizzically, this isn’t even remotely close to what the address describes. Next, I pull over and ponder for a bit; it takes me a couple of minutes to piece it together… My GPS is a few years old, and this is new construction; this road is not on the map yet.
After making some adjustments, I triangulate and determine roughly where this listing should be. Next, I turn a few times and find the place. The road does not yet exist in the GPS map, and it’s pretty clear why. It’s a modestly sized neighborhood, and less than half is built. The model sits in the middle of the street, beside empty lots. Finally, we park the car and approach the house.
A realtor sits at a table in what would be the dining room and greets us. There’s a large sign behind him with the name of the builder. Meanwhile, he shows us around the house, through all three floors. It’s a great house. However, it’s more than we need and more than we thought about paying, but we still really liked the house. We joked that the third-floor loft should become my man loft or man cave. The model had some nice upgrades for show. We liked the builder, and we especially liked the neighborhood.
We searched other locations by this builder and visited those homes. This is how we met Linda; she was showing the model at a different location. We developed a rapport with her, and she became our realtor. She was patient, respectful, and had a great energy.
She showed us an array of houses at other locations. However, I distinctly remember one neighborhood that was a fairly long drive from our respective jobs, and we had to drive through some light snow to get there through some fairly hilly neighborhoods. Meanwhile, Linda was incredibly patient. They were all beautiful places, but none of them were ‘home’.
We liked that first community, and it still had a number of open lots. We therefore decided to build our own home. Having started the process, this is when you come to a startling realization. There is such a thing as having too many options. In other words, you can live in a home for decades without ever thinking about what the precise color of your walls is, the hardware on your cabinets, or the style of your faucets. There are pros and cons to every decision. It was devastatingly mind-numbing. Finally, we were getting overwhelmed by choices.
As we sat in Linda’s office one evening, getting simply overrun by the array of decisions; we even contemplated making changes to the floorplan. Finally, she turned her head and simply asked us, “What about the model?” as she pointed to the lot in the map. She explained that the worst that may happen is that we’d make an offer, and they’d refuse. However, we still thought it was out of our price range, but if the price was negotiable… anything is possible.
We came back with an offer. To be perfectly honest, it was probably an insultingly low offer. Linda, ever the pragmatist, asked what upgrades we’d want done:
- We’d need a garage door opener; that was a no brainer.
- We’d want a sink in the garage; this would be a great convenience.
- This is rare for Washington state, but we both wanted central air conditioning.
- A handful of other changes.
We agreed on a price and wrote up the offer. Meanwhile, we went back and forth with the seller, in our case the builder, for a few iterations. They weren’t able to accommodate some of our requests however, but we ended up getting the items we wanted most, for considerably less than the asking price.
For anyone who has gone through this process, they know what comes next. First, it’s a month of coming up with all kinds of paperwork which most of us find inane. Then it’s a long arduous process of tracking down all your assets that feels more invasive than a colonoscopy; trust me, I’ve done both. Finally, it’s moving grotesquely large sums of money from one account into another to cover the down payment. This is just the loan process.
However, the signing of documents may be more distressing. Initially, they schedule you for an appointment with a limited time window. You have someone who will assist you and answer questions. Next, they hand you a stack of papers which can more accurately be measured in inches than pages. They’ll flip handfuls of pages at a time with directions to check, sign, initial, or date in various places. During the entire process, I hear my voice screaming in my head, knowing that in that text I might’ve signed away my kidney or liver. Consequently, they tell you that you’ll have every opportunity to read every word, yet the appointment is timed. The only assurance that I have that I’m not getting catastrophically exploited is that many people have done this before.
Finally, we wait; doing nothing for a few days. It’s a little like sitting in your car helplessly as you slide over an icy road into an inevitable collision. You know that you’ve set this gigantic machine into motion, and there’s almost no way to stop its momentum, but still, we all wait. The silence is deafening. Then magically one day at a certain time, you turn into a pumpkin. One minute the house is not yours; the next moment it is your home.
Linda, our realtor, was instrumental in our getting our home. We can’t adequately express our gratitude to her.
Many will advise to never to buy the first house you look at. We did. We have no regrets.
Linda met us at the house with the keys and a couple of gifts. We took the keys and opened the door to our new home; we were giddy with excitement.
As we closed the door behind us, we celebrated crossing the threshold into our new life together. I cue up “Our House” on my phone and put it down on the island in our kitchen. We smile. We sing. Happily, we even dance. We hold each other in a moment of bliss. I’ll forever remember that moment. It was over a decade ago.
It is… Our house, in the middle of our street.