so, yeah . . . a house. 



like ray called it--Um, yes, that IS a house...--and it is.

but why is it a house of interest? because bonnie and i made an offer on it, that's why.

so we're having it inspected monday . . . things look very promising.

if everything goes all right, we would be moving in in late june.

it was the fourth house we looked at. our agent--whom i worked with at my last job--took us first to a very run down house on east 41st street. this house had several notable advantages. first, there was virtually no front yard and absolutely no back yard at all. the ceilings and floors were suspicious, and the walls were doubtful. the kitchen, while extremely spacious, had no refrigerator or stove, which seemed limiting at best. the porch was plywood sheeting, and there was an omnipresent musty odor. the basement was tops: it looked like someone had used it to shoot porn sometime in the late 1970s; and the flooring collapsed onto the concrete floor as you walked on it.

but it was not the worst basement we were to see!

another plus: the rental property next door looked like it was a set for the shield. very nice.

verdict--no. (N.B.: mind you--we asked to see these places.)





the second was on clark, right off of southwest trafficway. pluses: nice layout, high ceilings. big backyard, respectable but small front yard, adjacent to marsh's sunfresh. minuses: basement accessed by trapdoor in laundry room/back porch; basement reveals wet floor and odd propping system of very old wooden blocks of various shapes and sizes, like someone was playing jenga with a house. (but it was not the worst basement we would see!) another downer--close proximity to southwest trafficway: i.e., forty feet away.

verdict--maybe.





the third was a peculiar little house at 41st and genessee, which it turns out had been on the market for 247 days, with a couple of recent reductions in price. ugly on the outside (but a little charming,) it had a deck, a huge back yard, tall, tall windows, high roofs, a rather bowling-alley like layout, and a big kitchen. there was, however, a moldy smell, and venturing down into the basement, we discovered a great deal of moisture, a running sump pump, and a landslide--i kid you not--issuing from the north wall and consuming half the basement.

verdict--no.





the fourth house--ah! the fourth house. in brookside, somewhere between 63rd and UMKC. bungalow, gas fireplace, spacious living room, two bedrooms, dining room, big kitchen, giant basement with no obvious defects and garage door to drive one's vehicle in, big front yard, side yard with garden, small back yard, fence running around the back of same. nice, nice, nice. we walked in, and bonnie looked at me, and said, 'i want this house.'



the intrepid katie o. said, ' i wasn't sure you'd be interested, since you were mostly looking at midtown,' and we said, 'we're interested.'

'i want this house,' said bonnie. and mind you! this house was the same price as the house on clark.

'i think we want to make an offer,' i said.

'are you sure?' katie o. asked. 'do you want to sleep on it?'

'no,' we said. and bonnie told me later she had a feeling, because there was another couple coming to look at it later.

so we drew up a contract, and made the offer.

the next day was a nervous day! katie o. said that they'd accept the offer, but my mind wrote scenario after scenario of why they would not, since it is my job, always, to think of the worst possible way that things could go. and yet they did! because at four the next day, thirty minutes before the contract expired, katie o. called and said, 'they accepted.'

the punchline was that the next couple that looked at it also made an offer: but they slept on it, and ours was in first, so we were lucky pooks indeed.







i have to say that the experience has been, despite my night--and day--terrors about it, good. we've had a good agent, a good loan agent, and great program that we went through--ACORN--which i highly recommend for the rest of you impoverished untermensch out there who, like me, think you can't afford a house. we've also had great good luck, and i have a wonderful wife who is better and smarter and calmer than i am in every way. and we only had to look at four houses.



now, long, long ago, there was an animated tv show that i saw and liked, when i was only four years old, and all of these animal characters were looking to find a 'perfect place'. they found their perfect place, and there was the end of the story. now, my parents decided to leave kansas city at that time, and my mother came to me and asked me if i wanted to go find a perfect place. and we did, and that palce as perfect in time.

so now i want to find that perfect place with bonnie, and i think--i think, i think, i think--that this is the perfect place for us. because at night it is dark and still, with little lights along the path, and a red tree named henrietta in the front yard, and i want that to be our perfect place.

so we shall see.
 

Posted: Thu - May 5, 2005 at 06:59 PM             |

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