Little Pink Houses For You and Me
I snapped a dozen pics of the rather dumpy house in one of San Francisco’s most far-flung neighborhoods when I told our realtor Matt, “It kind of smells like old people.”
It was a Saturday afternoon, and the pics were for the Manly Fireplug, who was working at the shop, and the house was the first stop on our first tour. We moved to the window of the back bedroom, and Matt pointed out at something in the overgrown yard.
“It comes with its own boat,” he said. A decrepit rowboat had been propped against the sagging fence, half-hidden by weeds.
“Architectural salvage,” I said, “People pay extra for that.” Then I wandered into the pink-tiled bathroom (a vast number of the city’s bathrooms, according to real estate photos, are entirely tiled in pink) and snapped a pic of the cracked toilet basin. Then I followed Matt back down the stairs, and he pointed at a sign hanging on the back of the front door.
“Both hearing aids,” he said. I snapped the last pic of the house, feeling a little guilty about my earlier “old-people” crack. Ms. Martha had lived here, maybe most of her life. Maybe she’d died here, too.
Back in the car Matt kept asking me what I wanted in a home. Location? A garden? A stripper pole in the living room? I told him that after my husband and dogs, nothing was more important to me than my home, but then I found myself stuttering nervously that I…well…I kind of like a place that’s a retreat from the world, if that makes sense?
Truth was, I was scared shitless. Our first application for a preapproved mortgage had been turned down, due to the fact that I’d taken time off for grad school and to work on my book, and though our second application was supposedly “looking good,” nothing yet was certain, and I felt hesitant about this open house tour, and of real estate in general. I’m a writer with one 98%-finished book living in San Francisco, hardly the Danielle Steele of every banker’s dreams.
We spent the rest of the tour driving around the Outer Sunset, one of the few neighborhoods in the city we might possibly afford. I snapped pics of fake-wood paneling, tandem garages, and asbestos tiles. I snapped pics of illegal basement in-law units, and grimy bathrooms straight out of Folsom Prison. I snapped pics of a 12-room house carpeted entirely in, yes, pink.
But I also snapped pics of polished hardwood floors, Wedgewood stoves, and a back yard with cypress trees and a view of the Marin Headlands. We wandered through empty houses, and houses where the owners scrambled to make the beds in the next room. We wandered past a 12-year-old girl, oblivious to us, video-chatting with friends on a laptop at the kitchen table. We wandered through houses where it seemed nobody had ever lived, tastefully staged within an inch of their lives.
I felt the nervous, competitive energy of a house crammed full of prospective buyers – young couples and Chinese families, and more than a few start-up types – all of us pretending not to see each other as we tried to picture the living room in a different color.
After five or six houses I felt giddy and exhausted, a headache gnawing at the edges of my vision. “You have an interesting job,” I told Matt. “You see everyone at their absolute most stressed, teetering at the edge of sanity.”
The next day we got word that our loan application had been preapproved, and the thing I thought couldn’t happen was now possible. Or near-possible. I felt superstitious and unrelieved.
“I’m getting an ulcer,” I told the Fireplug, who had been through real estate insanity in New York and San Francisco, and who, let’s face it, was the more stable, profitable, loan-worthy of the two of us.
“This is nothing,” he said. “Remember what I said. Roller-coaster.”
And I’ve flown off the tracks, full-out OCDing on real estate sites, my already-fractured attention span splintering atomically, unable to focus on anything else. I am writing this partly to distract myself from the fact that Matt is right this moment touring the house that has reached the top of our list, a house we’ve only seen in professionally-staged online photo galleries, in another far-flung neighborhood, a house I want to believe is solid, a house we can both picture living in together, getting older and more crotchety, needing at first one, then two hearing aids, hanging notes on doors to remind ourselves of all the things we’d otherwise forget.
I only just turned 40 and if I don’t put alerts in my calendar to remind me of stuff I would probably leave the house without pants on half the time. Best of luck with the house shopping.
February 9th, 2012 at 3:33 pmExciting stuff indeed! Good luck. Just got rid of the last pink in my own home… a downstairs bathroom complete with pink toilet, pink tub and shower, and God awful pink and white striped wall paper with, of course, pink roses on it. Almost tossed my cookies every time I went in there. Much prefer dead things on the walls…. :) Post pics when you seal the deal!
February 9th, 2012 at 3:55 pm“been through real estate insanity in New York and San Francisco”?!
Banks were giving million dollar loans to baristas back when we did this the fist two times.
J-
February 9th, 2012 at 4:27 pmJoel: I suppose that’s a different kind of insanity. Oh, and having to give up the Chelsea apartment :)
Josh and Deborsha: Thank you for the comments!
February 9th, 2012 at 4:33 pmWhen I read that you’re in full-on OCD mode, your already-fractured attention span splintering atomically, I’m a) impressed at your description and b) somewhat comforted that this happens to people other than me.
February 9th, 2012 at 5:05 pmBest advice I got (after I bought a house I ultimately didn’t feel good in) is to really get a sense of how you will live and use the space before you look at too many places. Once you have a strong sense of what matters most to you, it generally is easier to evaluate whether or not something is a good fit.
Also, once you find a place you think you like, stalk it at different times of the day. Walk all the surrounding blocks each time. Get a sense of the rhythms, the noises, etc. in order to determine if this is a neighborhood you want to call home. We focus so much on the house that we forget it’s part of a larger environment.
February 9th, 2012 at 7:21 pmGood luck boys. xoxoxo
February 9th, 2012 at 10:19 pmAwwww! I think you should stick with the pink carpets and the oh so chic corner fireplace. LOL
February 10th, 2012 at 2:06 amHouse hunting? Haven’t you suffered enough? :=)
FWIW, if you have a pink/black tiled bathroom and
you don’t like it, the tile can be painted. You don’t have
to replace it with new tile. Ditto the bathtub –
however, my understanding is to let a professional repaint
the bathtub. That costs around $325 in these parts
— the Greater Boston area.
Good luck and if possible live beneath your means re:
February 12th, 2012 at 3:08 pmthe purchase price. That will leave money left over for
more sexy underwear and uniforms!
Isn’t it fun? Though, as your hubby notes, the best / craziest part is actually between acceptance of the offer and closing. My partner and I once looked at a house in Syracuse, a beautiful big split level ranch built by a doctor. It was huge. Had a back sun room that rivaled Elvis’ Graceland Jungle Room for 60′s Polynesian chic. It had 4 BR’s, each with it’s own bathroom. In what must have been the daughter’s room was the ever lovely pink and black tile from floor to halfway up the wall. Above the tile was the most amazing wallpaper, with pink cartoon french poodles holding hair dryers, some with curlers in their fur. If we had bought that house (we didn’t) I would NEVER have changed that bathroom. It was too funny.
February 14th, 2012 at 8:48 amHi everyone, the Dogpoet and Manly Fireplug have graciously agreed to be a part of my real estate blogging experiment, where we’ll each be writing about the process from our own perspectives. It could be fascinating, mind-boggling boring, or a train-wreck. :-)
Here’s my take on our first tour:
http://www.jacksonfuller.com/2012/02/16/touring-with-a-poet/
We haven’t yet worked out all the details about where and when we’ll do the blogging, but you’ll be able to figure it out, I’m sure!
Cheers,
February 16th, 2012 at 3:05 pmThe Realtor
[...] He’s a bit ahead of me, and if you want you can read about our first tour together from his perspective. [...]
April 15th, 2012 at 6:21 pm