It was getting dark - a gorgeous sunset - and I was walking my dog. It's been cold and I'm cold but don't want to go in quite yet. I see a man who is sitting on his porch in a big bathrobe with Elton John blaring out the open door.
"Elton John!," I say.
"Absolutely!," he says. And he comes down the steps in the street.
For a moment we admire the sunset. He assures me every day it's like this, watching sunsets. He's young and retired. I've never had an ambition to retire.
In a few minutes this man does one of those 60 second commercials we've all been advised we should have written, practiced, to inform someone else of who we are. After all, first impressions count. The only chance you may have to spew your commercial and impress someone is when you first meet them and bla bla bla. Having experienced the following I doubt that:
Realizing you don't really know someone after all, even after years. Maybe because you didn't realize they changed in important ways.
Being lied to so as to be manipulated.
Savoring the slow process of getting to know someone.
Discovering that I was all wrong about someone because of first, second, and third impressions.
Learning I like someone in ways I didn't know I could like them.
Being uninformed and ignorant and changing my mind later.
The man told me to trust him because he had been a fire fighter and as a fire fighter he knew all about life - disease - and death. He managed to bark questions at me wanting to know about my parent's health, my health - and his health was that he was a cancer survivor. He waved his hand below the belt of that bath robe and said that he could no longer be a "baby maker." Guessing my age (a game some people have) to be a good 20 years younger than I am I had to wonder if he was trying to compliment me or pick me up. But more than anything he wanted to let me know that he'd been married for years and had given his ex wife the big house (dropping the location - a well known expensive suburb) while he bought this one - which would go to their successful grown sons. Their ages, their professions, revealed. I didn't ask why they divorced but I smelled booze.
Ah, I thought, anyone who gets involved with him will have to accept that should they live with him or marry him they will get nothing when he dies. Clearly he's shopping for someone else's ex wife who got the big house in her divorce.
I answered more personal questions than I should have, enough to be angry with myself later. I thought he was rude, not forthright.
He told me he was best friends with his neighbor, asked me if I knew who he was - the family - apparently big shits in a small toilet, and I claimed I had heard the surname. He added that being friends with rich people was cool; the gift of an entire salmon!
When he started probing my assets, location, who gets the house, all that, I wanted to make a run for it.
"Well, it's time to move on," I said.
He wished me "Luck."
Sadly, this man is just one of many I've met in recent months who don't just want to brag and impress but are the equivalent of Gold Diggers themselves. In fact, I seem to be surrounded by people who live for the value of their homes. Some of these homes are falling apart around them and they can't afford to upkeep or remodel, but the prices that neighboring houses sell for, predictions on Internet based estimates, and so on, give them the impression they can sell for more than land value.
Well maybe.
I once had a friend who was married to an upstart executive and at the time they could have afforded a brand new four bedroom house in a suburb, but he didn't want the commute. So they looked for the few streets on the West Side of Los Angeles that had affordable houses, tiny houses on tiny lots without much landscaping that were available due to original homeowners getting old in them and dying. To prove they could afford this one particular house they borrowed from parents and counted their assets including paintings and flea market antique finds. The bank sent an inspector and so did the real estate agent. He, however, hired his own inspector. Really this man was looking for anything that could knock the price down. Instead he found a major problem. To fix this problem and sell the house would cost the owners $20,000. They offered immediately and because the couple were sure that they had known the problem and not been honest about it, my friend and her husband wanted to back out. It took months.
And so when I see houses that would need to be brought up to code, I think "land value." Because honest disclosure about land subsidence, structural cracks, and flooding they think they can get away with, is required.
After the house is sold, staying in the area with extreme rents may also mean having to make unexpected and even drastic changes to other cities in other climates. Or maybe a cabin in the woods?
C 2019 Christine Trzyna
All Rights Reserved
