stevenpiziks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stevenpiziks) wrote2019-11-06 06:17 pm
stevenpiziks) wrote2019-11-06 06:17 pm
Albion: It Ain't Easy Finding a House
(The Albion saga continues...)
Contract negotiations took almost a month, but finally they were ironed out and Darwin settled on a start date in mid-October.
This meant we had to find a place for him to live.
We settled on a living strategy. Once he found a place to live in or near Albion, we'd send him there with half our furniture and other household goods. On weekends, he'd come home to Wherever, or I would go out to Albion. On summer break, I'd spend most of my time out there.
The hunt for housing turned difficult. We had initially figured on finding a place to rent, but almost no rental units in Albion exist. You'd think in a college town, there'd be lots. Nope! (This is one of the issues the town wants Darwin to address, and he already has ideas.) Battle Creek, a short drive away, has apartments, but they're scandalously expensive.
We finally decided we'd have to buy a house. This made me nervous. Owning two houses? Ridiculous! But we ran the numbers and they were absolutely clear--a house payment in Albion was hundreds of dollars a month less than renting, and in the end, we'd have a house instead of a handful of rent receipts.
But houses are also relatively scarce in Albion. Or rather, houses that meet our standards. A whole mess of tumble-down houses are for sale to people who want a renovation project. We didn't. Darwin did find a huge Victorian three-story house that he absolutely loved and which had been gutted inside down to the studs. It was incredibly cheap and ready for remodeling! I was wary. Neither of us are good at this kind of project, and Darwin would have to continue commuting from Wherever while we shoveled cash into something that was probably a money pit. Fortunately, from my perspective, Darwin inquired about the house and learned someone had already bought it. Whew!
We engaged the services of a local realtor named Jewell. She's a tiny, older woman with a big personality who said she's sold and re-sold nearly every house in Albion since she started selling real estate forty years ago. (!) Both she and her husband were diagnosed with cancer at the same time, but sadly only she lived to tell about it. She's still dealing with the odd bout of chemo. Once, she said, the grief, pressure, and pain got unbearable, so she drove out to the cornfields, climbed onto the roof of her car, and screamed and screamed and screamed. Seconds later, a startled farmer popped out of the cornfield and asked what on earth was happening. Embarrassed, she climbed down and explained. He thought a moment, then gave her a hug and said, "If you need to scream, you come out here any time."
She showed Darwin and me one house after another, but all of them were too expensive, too run-down, or just too. We even looked at some houses in Homer, a teensy town just down the road and where Jewell happens to live. Darwin and I had lunch in a nice café there, and afterward I took his hand on the sidewalk. Darwin felt uneasy about that, but I said, "If we're looking at houses here, we need to gauge the locals." A couple people gave us odd looks, but there was no other reaction. Darwin declared he didn't want to live in Homer, and since the houses we toured there weren't quite right anyway, I didn't press the issue.
Finally, we looked at a very nice house on the bank of an old millrace. The view was amazing, and I loved the idea of being able to wade in or canoe on the river whenever I liked, though I was also a little uneasy about flooding (the homeowner's disclosure said no flooding had ever touched the house, so far) and the house had very little storage space. We weren't sure if we should put in an offer or not.
That day, we stopped in for lunch at the Little Red Lunchbox again. Sue remembered us, waved at the fridge with the pop cans, and showed us to stools. Several people were eating or waiting for food, and Sue was a little frazzled. She flung a, "This is Darwin, everyone. He's the new city manager" over her shoulder and dashed back into the kitchen.
This touched off a bunch of conversation. One man was wearing a MAGA cap, which I didn't like in the slightest. He talked to Darwin a bit, then turned to me with a grin. "And who are you? His bodyguard?"
"I'm his husband," I said with a friendly grin of my own. The man fell dead quiet, went back to eating his hamburger for a moment, then asked Darwin what his politics were.
Darwin carefully replied that as city manager, he's not allowed to have politics; he serves all citizens. The man touched his hat and said, "You can probably guess mine." (This is singular bad reaction to our sexual orientation that I mentioned a while back, and it was pretty small as these things go.)
At that moment, Sue bustled in. "You just ignore him, hon," she told Darwin. "We all do."
"So are you looking for a house?" said someone else in an attempt to change the subject. I allowed that we were indeed in the market for a new domicile.
"My house is for sale," said yet another man, an older one. "You had a look at it yet?" He pulled up the listing on his phone and showed it to me. "This one."
It was a two-story Colonial, and we hadn't seen it.
"It's actually my wife's house," said the man, whose name was Harold. "We're moving out right now, and it'll be empty by tomorrow."
Later, we went out to see it. It was very well maintained, though it needed a few updates, and it was a bit bigger than we'd figured on buying. Three bedrooms, finished basement. Double lot. The price was reasonable (or it would be after some bargaining), the location was great.
Now we had another quandary. Which house?
Darwin and I had endless discussions about it. We made pro- and con- lists. We debated. We argued. When we said we'd settled on one house, we'd change our minds an hour later. I finally realized something.
"We're looking for one of the houses to be bad," I said. "But neither house is. They're both good decisions. We just need to pick one."
In the end, we made an offer on the river house. The owners countered, we counter-countered. But neither side could come to an agreement. So we withdrew the offer and made one on the Colonial. This one was accepted.
I pointed out to Darwin that the Little Red Lunchbox was now two for two. It got him a job, and it found us a house.
Meanwhile, the Festival of the Forks arrived in August
Contract negotiations took almost a month, but finally they were ironed out and Darwin settled on a start date in mid-October.
This meant we had to find a place for him to live.
We settled on a living strategy. Once he found a place to live in or near Albion, we'd send him there with half our furniture and other household goods. On weekends, he'd come home to Wherever, or I would go out to Albion. On summer break, I'd spend most of my time out there.
The hunt for housing turned difficult. We had initially figured on finding a place to rent, but almost no rental units in Albion exist. You'd think in a college town, there'd be lots. Nope! (This is one of the issues the town wants Darwin to address, and he already has ideas.) Battle Creek, a short drive away, has apartments, but they're scandalously expensive.
We finally decided we'd have to buy a house. This made me nervous. Owning two houses? Ridiculous! But we ran the numbers and they were absolutely clear--a house payment in Albion was hundreds of dollars a month less than renting, and in the end, we'd have a house instead of a handful of rent receipts.
But houses are also relatively scarce in Albion. Or rather, houses that meet our standards. A whole mess of tumble-down houses are for sale to people who want a renovation project. We didn't. Darwin did find a huge Victorian three-story house that he absolutely loved and which had been gutted inside down to the studs. It was incredibly cheap and ready for remodeling! I was wary. Neither of us are good at this kind of project, and Darwin would have to continue commuting from Wherever while we shoveled cash into something that was probably a money pit. Fortunately, from my perspective, Darwin inquired about the house and learned someone had already bought it. Whew!
We engaged the services of a local realtor named Jewell. She's a tiny, older woman with a big personality who said she's sold and re-sold nearly every house in Albion since she started selling real estate forty years ago. (!) Both she and her husband were diagnosed with cancer at the same time, but sadly only she lived to tell about it. She's still dealing with the odd bout of chemo. Once, she said, the grief, pressure, and pain got unbearable, so she drove out to the cornfields, climbed onto the roof of her car, and screamed and screamed and screamed. Seconds later, a startled farmer popped out of the cornfield and asked what on earth was happening. Embarrassed, she climbed down and explained. He thought a moment, then gave her a hug and said, "If you need to scream, you come out here any time."
She showed Darwin and me one house after another, but all of them were too expensive, too run-down, or just too. We even looked at some houses in Homer, a teensy town just down the road and where Jewell happens to live. Darwin and I had lunch in a nice café there, and afterward I took his hand on the sidewalk. Darwin felt uneasy about that, but I said, "If we're looking at houses here, we need to gauge the locals." A couple people gave us odd looks, but there was no other reaction. Darwin declared he didn't want to live in Homer, and since the houses we toured there weren't quite right anyway, I didn't press the issue.
Finally, we looked at a very nice house on the bank of an old millrace. The view was amazing, and I loved the idea of being able to wade in or canoe on the river whenever I liked, though I was also a little uneasy about flooding (the homeowner's disclosure said no flooding had ever touched the house, so far) and the house had very little storage space. We weren't sure if we should put in an offer or not.
That day, we stopped in for lunch at the Little Red Lunchbox again. Sue remembered us, waved at the fridge with the pop cans, and showed us to stools. Several people were eating or waiting for food, and Sue was a little frazzled. She flung a, "This is Darwin, everyone. He's the new city manager" over her shoulder and dashed back into the kitchen.
This touched off a bunch of conversation. One man was wearing a MAGA cap, which I didn't like in the slightest. He talked to Darwin a bit, then turned to me with a grin. "And who are you? His bodyguard?"
"I'm his husband," I said with a friendly grin of my own. The man fell dead quiet, went back to eating his hamburger for a moment, then asked Darwin what his politics were.
Darwin carefully replied that as city manager, he's not allowed to have politics; he serves all citizens. The man touched his hat and said, "You can probably guess mine." (This is singular bad reaction to our sexual orientation that I mentioned a while back, and it was pretty small as these things go.)
At that moment, Sue bustled in. "You just ignore him, hon," she told Darwin. "We all do."
"So are you looking for a house?" said someone else in an attempt to change the subject. I allowed that we were indeed in the market for a new domicile.
"My house is for sale," said yet another man, an older one. "You had a look at it yet?" He pulled up the listing on his phone and showed it to me. "This one."
It was a two-story Colonial, and we hadn't seen it.
"It's actually my wife's house," said the man, whose name was Harold. "We're moving out right now, and it'll be empty by tomorrow."
Later, we went out to see it. It was very well maintained, though it needed a few updates, and it was a bit bigger than we'd figured on buying. Three bedrooms, finished basement. Double lot. The price was reasonable (or it would be after some bargaining), the location was great.
Now we had another quandary. Which house?
Darwin and I had endless discussions about it. We made pro- and con- lists. We debated. We argued. When we said we'd settled on one house, we'd change our minds an hour later. I finally realized something.
"We're looking for one of the houses to be bad," I said. "But neither house is. They're both good decisions. We just need to pick one."
In the end, we made an offer on the river house. The owners countered, we counter-countered. But neither side could come to an agreement. So we withdrew the offer and made one on the Colonial. This one was accepted.
I pointed out to Darwin that the Little Red Lunchbox was now two for two. It got him a job, and it found us a house.
Meanwhile, the Festival of the Forks arrived in August