Homes and Other Black Holes

1
 
Getting Ready to Get
Real Depressed
 
DECIDING WHICH HOUSE TO BUY
 
In deciding which house to buy, the first thing you have to do is determine your Price Range, using this simple formula:
 
1.     Take your total annual family income, including coins that have fallen behind the bureau and any projected future revenue you have been notified about via personalized letters from Mr. Ed McMahon stating that you may already have won fourteen million dollars.
2.     Count up the number of children you have and note how many of them are named Joshua or Ashley. That many? Really? Don’t you feel this trend toward giving children designer names has gone far enough? Don’t you think we should go back to the old system of naming children after beloved uncles and aunts, even if we in fact hate our beloved uncles and aunts and they have comical names such as Lester? Can you imagine having an aunt named Lester? These questions are not directly related to your Price Range. I’m just curious to know how you feel.
3.     Now take these figures (No! I’m not going to tell you again which ones! Pay attention!) and multiply them by six; which will tell you, in thousands of yards, roughly how far away the lightning bolt was. No! Wait! Sorry! Wrong formula! You want to take these figures and multiply them by something other than six. This should give you a very strong idea of what your Price Range is, although we shall soon see that it doesn’t matter because there are no homes in it anyway.
 
There! Now you’re getting somewhere! But you’re not done yet: you need to decide what style of house you’re looking for. The major styles of houses in the United States are:
 
OLDER HOUSES with many quaint and charming architectural features such as that during certain phases of the moon the toilets flush up.
 
NEWER HOUSES built by large developers using modern cost-cutting efficiency measures such as hiring semiskilled derelict felon gypsy work-persons who are prone to forgetting to install key architectural elements such as windows and those large pieces of wood, “rafters” I believe they are called, that hold up the roof.
 
REALLY NICE WELL-BUILT, WELL-LOCATED, AFFORDABLE HOUSES that are not for sale.
 
Another very important factor is neighborhood. Ask any real estate broker to name the three most important factors in buying a property, and he’ll say: “Location, location, location.” Now ask him to name the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, and he’ll say: “Location, location, location.” This tells us that we should not necessarily be paying a whole lot of attention to real estate brokers.
 
If you have school-age children, by far the most important factor in selecting a neighborhood is, of course, the proximity of the nearest Toys Backwards “R” Us store. You will be spending a great deal of your time and disposable income there, because from kindergarten through about sixth grade, the average child attends approximately 36,500 birthday parties. Your child will go through a period, usually around first grade, when his classmates will have as many as six birthdays apiece per year, meaning you’ll spend virtually all of your Saturdays racing to Toys Backwards “R” Us, then racing off to the party, leaving a trail of flattened pedestrians because you are wrapping the present as you drive. But all the hassle is worth it when you see the look on the birthday child’s face when he or she rips open the present and remarks with delight: “Hey! I already got this!”
 
Once you have selected several potential neighborhoods, you should drive around to evaluate them, using this convenient …
 
Neighborhood Checklist
 
Note What the Residents Do with Cars That No Longer Function
 
—Good Neighborhood: They get rid of them.
—Bad Neighborhood: They keep them all forever, arranged tastefully on their lawns, as if expecting the Car Fairy to come one night and whisk all the cars away and leave everybody a nice shiny quarter.
 
Note What Kind of Names the Local Streets Have
 
—Good: Jasmine View Court Terrace
—Bad: Interstate 95
 
Note What Kind of Businesses Are Operating In the Neighborhood
 
—Good: Arthur A. Wutherington IV, Investment Banker
—Bad: Earl’s All-Night Nude Revue & Motorcycle Repair
 
Note What the Neighborhood Youths Are Doing
 
—Good: Selling lemonade
—Bad: Selling you your rear wheels back
 
Note What Kind of Bumper Stickers the Neighborhood Cars Have
 
—Good: “SCHOOL’S OPEN! DRIVE CAREFULLY!”
—Bad: “I <3 MY PIT BULL”
 
Note the Types of Neighborhood Social Activities
 
—Good: Barbecues
—Bad: Cockfights
It also might be a good idea to do some formal research into neighborhood property values by going down to the Municipal Building and getting shunted from one civil servant to another in an increasingly desperate attempt to find one who is not hostile, braindamaged, or eating lunch, until finally you open fire at random with a semiautomatic weapon. So we can see that this is not, after all, such a good idea, and it probably should not even be included here. Although frankly I doubt that any jury in the land would convict you.
 
CHOOSING A REAL ESTATE BROKER
 
It is possible to buy or sell a home without a broker, as will be discussed in a later chapter.
 
But most people prefer to use a broker, because of the many advantages, such as:
 
If you have a real estate broker, you have an excuse to fend off the other brokers, who will otherwise follow you around and hurl rocks through your window with notes taped to them explaining the many advantages of using a broker.
 
Brokers always have nicer cars than you do, a phenomenon that will become more understandable when we get to the section on commissions.
 
This is by no means meant to be a comprehensive list of the advantages of using a broker. The only reason I’m not listing all the others here is that they don’t spring immediately to mind.
 
The best place to obtain a broker is at a junior high school, where you’ll find that virtually all the teachers obtained real estate licenses once they realized what a tragic mistake they had made, selecting a profession that requires them to spend entire days confined in small rooms with adolescent children. Often it is sufficient to just drive by the school and beep your horn; within seconds, brokers will come swarming out of doors and windows, eager to abandon their lesson plans on the Three Major Bones of the Inner Ear so they can help you find a home.
 
There are many factors to consider in selecting a broker, such as competence, honesty, vertical leap, and placement in the Evening Grown Competition. But the most important factor is an intangible quality called “professionalism,” by which I mean “car size.” You want to select the broker with the largest possible car, because you’re going to spend far more time in this car than in whatever home you ultimately buy.
 
Next you should tell your broker what your Price Range is, so he or she can laugh until his or her official company blazer is soaked with drool. What your broker finds so amusing, of course, is that there is virtually nothing, outside of the Third World, available in your Price Range. I don’t care if your Price Range is a hillion jillion dollars, there will be nothing available in it. This is a fundamental principle of real estate.
 
At first you will probably insist on looking at the something in your Price Range anyway, which will result in the following comical dialogue:
 
YOU: This is it? They’re asking $89,500 for a refrigerator carton?
BROKER: Yes, but I think they’ll take $85,000.
 
This process is called “getting a feel for the market.” Once you’ve undergone it, your broker will explain a creative new financial concept that has been developed to enable people such as yourself to enjoy the benefits of home ownership, called: Spending Way More Than You Can Afford. Usually you have to talk yourself into going with this concept. Here are some sound financial arguments you can use:
 
Although you may not really be able to afford a more expensive home at your current income level, it makes sense to buy it anyway, because in just a few years, at your current rate of progress in your career, you’ll probably be dead.
 
There are major tax benefits to owning a home. The law, written by wise lawyers and bankers, permits you to deduct all the money you give to lawyers or bankers, which will turn out to be virtually all the money you have.
 
Owning a home is a smart investment. As inflation pushes up the cost of living, you will build up equity1 in your home, so that, when you eventually sell it, you will have made enough profit to be able to afford to pay the points and closing costs on your next home!
 
So as you can see, you really can’t afford not to buy a home that you really can’t afford. It’s time to sit down with your broker and take a serious look at the listings.
 
The listings are computerized lists, or “listings,” of all the houses that all the brokers in your region have been trying to sell since the Carter administration. Listings are always written in a special real estate code. For example, this listing: CHARMING(1) RANCH(2)—4BR(3) 3B(4) 2TD,(5) fully landscaped,(6) newly renovated.(7) …can be decoded as follows:
 
1.     Rooms the size of nasal spray cartons
2.     IN URBAN AREAS: No attic or basement. IN RURAL AREAS: Also cattle have wintered in the foyer.
3.     Four bedrooms
4.     Three bathrooms
5.     Two turtle doves
6.     Extensive comical lawn statuary including minority groups holding lanterns; also large, permanent, fully mechanized, spectacularly illuminated display of Santa’s Workshop
7.     The walls have been pretty well scraped clean in the room where the demonic beings from another dimension came through the TV set and caused the previous occupants’ heads to explode.
 
Study the listings carefully and make a note of any houses that look right for you, so your broker can confirm that they were all sold just that morning. This is actually good, because it will help to get you into the proper highly desperate frame of mind where you will do almost anything to get a house, including paying large sums of money you really don’t have to people you really don’t know for reasons you really aren’t sure of. Which is the essence of real estate.