Friday, Jul 4, 2008
We had no savings, hefty credit-card debt, and middling self-esteem. Still, we got the house.
Nov 7, 2002 | Long before my wife and I attempted to surmount the financial and practical barriers to buying a house, we had to surmount the psychological barriers. The trouble was, we didn't know we had psychological barriers.
But one Saturday morning, when we were at the bank, robbing our account, I saw a sign advertising a special no-money-down mortgage program for people with limited income. Our income was certainly limited. No-money-down sounded like a lot, but I thought maybe we could scrape it together. At any rate, I was just curious. So we sat down with a bank person. She asked us how much money we were making. I said not much. My wife was working at an independent bookstore and I was working a temp job. We told her exactly how much. I think we were expecting her to scold us for not making more. Instead, to our amazement, she said that we made too much for this special low-income program. A psychological barrier we had lived with for years was thereby shattered.
"That was weird, huh?" I said in the car.
Our barriers to buying a house came in the form of assumptions, not just about our financial ability to become homeowners but about the whole loaded social and cultural significance of owning a house. I equated owning a house with buying into some notarized, amortized, fluorescent-lit Sunday school full of helmet-haired women in crimson blazers, giving up my last shred of individual dignity and freedom. But what kind of freedom was it that could not abide connection, continuity, commitment? It was not the freedom to act, to do, to live, but only the freedom to flee. It was "Easy Rider" freedom. What about settling down to finally do whatever it is you've been talking about doing all these years?
I catalog now the beliefs that stood in the way for so long: Homeownership was square. Corporate guys owned homes. School principals had lawns. Goofy dads kept jars of screws and nuts in the garage. Parents sat up late at night under a dim lamp, scowling over the mortgage. Shiny young couples who majored in finance bought houses and furnished them tastefully.
But rebels didn't buy houses. Artists lived in apartments in dangerous parts of town. Writers were poor. Writers didn't own houses. Writers just needed a room. If you were going to be a writer, you had to steel yourself against entanglements that could distract you from your devotions. A mortgage was a commitment, a distraction.
Private property was alienating. When people owned private property, they became economic competitors and thus bought into a system of oppression. Property was theft. My ancestors owned slaves. I should atone. If I owned a house it would be on the backs of the poor. Banks foreclosed against the poor. Banks equaled slavery. I am not free until every man is free.
It's funny how a little visit with a loan officer can alter one's perspective on Marxism. After our visit, I thought I would see if we could buy the house we were renting. I had the deluded notion that there might exist between tenant and landlord some accumulated goodwill based on the tenant's steady payment of rent over the years, the tenant's assiduous efforts to make repairs and maintain the property and even perhaps some genuine tenant-landlord affection born not out of mercantile exchange but out of common humanity and shared experiences; I thought this hypothetical goodwill might induce the landlord to sell us the place we were renting at a lower price than what it might command on the market.
Why would I think such a thing? It's embarrassing now. Was it my not-so-distant ancestors' semifeudal arrangements down there in Virginia, in which landowning involved noblesse oblige? If so, I could not have been more off the mark.
Anyway, as mentioned in the last column, having determined to see about buying the house, I bought and read the book "Home Buying for Dummies." In the back was a sample inspection report that the book said was the best of its kind. Curious, I looked up the guy who did the inspection. He was local. His name was Warren Camp. I called him up and explained the situation. I told him that if we were to make an offer on the house we were renting, we'd want it inspected. He said he thought the best way to buy a house was to find a buyer's broker to work with you as an advocate. He told me he had just finished doing a deal with a very good buyer's agent and suggested I call her.
Full of fear that we weren't really serious contenders, but sensing that we were on to something, I called the buyer's agent he recommended. We made a date for her to visit and talk. My wife and I cleaned up the house. We got some cookies and made tea.
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