House hunting
Feb 22, 2004
I’m feeling dejected about house hunting. The matter is that we are going to close on the sale of this apartment and likely be forced to find a rental just to continue looking for a house. Mortgage rates are staying low, fueling an unbelievably heated market and ushering in more and more potential buyers. We’ve seen wrecks- honest to goodness wrecks with leaking roofs, shattered windows, rats in the basement and boilers broken open with ice- where the realtor says that the seller won’t accept a penny less than the inflated asking price. Open houses are packed- literally too many interested buyers for all of them to view the property at once. The realtors, grown swollen and fat on easy commissions, are not bothering to return calls on Saturday for advertisements in the Sunday NY Times. A friend of a friend had one realtor tell them that at this time she doesn’t even bother doing call backs for anything under a million dollars. We’ve seen one place that could be the right house and made an offer but the owner wants much more than it’s location (the subway runs in a valley behind it) warrants. House hunting feels more like pushing your way into a crowded bar with the idea of meeting someone new. You start out hopeful and elated- this could be the night!- and leave feeling worse off and maybe a little poorer.