The Calculus Diaries - Jennifer Ouellette [50]
HOME SWEET HOME
It’s a bit disheartening to tour a foreclosed home; a sense of loss seems to permeate the space. Despite being only four years old, the town house we are touring has seen better days: The floors are scuffed, the window screens are torn, and the previous owners have absconded with the appliances as compensation for losing their home. While the unit is spacious, the interior feels cramped and dingy on this overcast afternoon, particularly since the electricity has been turned off. But the building is in a prime location, a few blocks from many of our favorite shops and restaurants.
Two years after moving to Los Angeles, we have joined the ranks of nervous house hunters, cautiously dipping a toe into the volatile Southern California real estate market to test the waters. We are in no hurry. Our rental apartment is sufficient for the short term: It’s in a very walkable location in downtown Los Angeles, with free parking in the garage across the street, and a friendly full-time concierge named Mike. But we are running out of space, having merged two households when we got married. Most of our books are in storage. The dining-room table is strewn with Sean’s books and physics papers, while the second bedroom performs double duty as my office and a cramped guest room. And there isn’t nearly enough closet space.
It is both the best and worst of times to buy. We have been patiently waiting for prices to drop to more affordable levels, and in the wake of the economic collapse of September 2008, housing values are plummeting. The median home price in California dropped 41 percent—more than double the 16 percent decline in median home prices for the United States as a whole—between February 2008 and February 2009, according to the California Association of Realtors, as a tidal wave of foreclosures drove down values. Nobody knows how much farther prices will fall, and that uncertainty means everyone is a wee bit skittish, particularly the banks: Loans are much harder to come by, even for highly qualified buyers. The process is fraught with anxiety—starting with the search for a suitable home.
Every prospective home buyer knows there is no such thing as the perfect place. The exercise of touring several homes helps us get a sense of the market, what we can afford, and the factors that matter most to us. We know we need three bedrooms (or two bedrooms with a den), with parking for two cars. We prefer central locations with shops and restaurants within easy walking distance. Such areas tend to have higher housing costs, so we know we will have to make a trade-off between square footage and prime location. We like to entertain, so a spacious living area with open kitchen is desirable. And we don’t want to do any heavy remodeling. Can we find the optimal combination of our desired features—within our price range?
One unit has an awkward layout. Another boasts a dramatic curving staircase in the foyer, but there is no extra space for an office—a prime consideration for a professional writer. I like a faux-Spanish townhouse, but it is less to the taste of my more modernist spouse. One home has bizarre blue plastic kitchen cabinetry; in another, the bathtubs are freakishly small for my six-foot-one-inch spouse; and yet another suffers from cheap flooring and astronomical home association fees. All are preferable to the dingy “penthouse” unit with stained carpets, chipped tiles, and a “rooftop deck” lined with sticky tar paper. As for that first battered foreclosure, we decide the living/ dining area is too cramped for our needs.
House hunting is the ultimate experiment in comparison shopping: weighing different variables and seeking