February 15, 2002
So Holden and I are doing this whole house-hunting thing. So far, it's been pretty difficult, considering that neither of us has a clue as to how to buy Barbie's Malibu Dream House let alone a dwelling big enough for us to actually reside in. The most we know is that because Holden is a veteran, we are eligible for a VA mortgage, which means we don't have to put down a downpayment (obviously the thing that is making it possible for us to even consider buying a house), and we cling to this scrap of knowledge in the face of everything else we don't know about purchasing real estate.
Of course, the entire experience would be much easier if our real estate agent were not psychotic.
You do realize that if anyone on this great, big, blue and white planet was going to get hooked up with a psychotic real estate agent, it would be me, right?
Yes, I do have a tendency to overreact (just ask poor Elizabeth about how I was going to leave New Orleans three hours after I arrived because Delta airlines left my bag in Atlanta). And yes, we all know that I am a Drama Queen of the highest order. But seriously, people, I have not needed to call upon my talent for constructing large mountains out of molehills in this situation, because this guy (oh, let's call him Paul) is totally nuts.
We didn't realize it at first. At first, we just thought Paul was quirky. After all, he was employed by a national real estate agency -- one of the big dogs that you see commercials for on TV and everything. I mean, we had specifically called this agency because we didn't know what we were doing and we figured a big chain agency would have things systemized. We thought we would sit down with Paul and tell him what we were looking for and then we would go home and wait patiently until he called us up and said, "I've set up appointments to look at ten houses that would be PERFECT for you" and we would go on the appointments and turn on the faucets to test the water pressure and say things like "Oh, we'll have to see if we can widen that closet" and "This carpet will definitely have to go" and after all that, we'd have found a house that we liked and we'd shake Paul's hand and say, "Thanks so much for all your hard work" and he'd get his commission and we'd move in and everyone would be happy.
Apparently, Holden and I have been living in a dream world for quite some time.
The reality of the situation was this:
I called the big agency and the receptionist said she would connect me to "John" and she put me on hold for a minute and then came back on the line and chirped, "I'm sorry; John is with a client right now. Can I put you into his voicemail? Just tell him what you're interested in and he'll get back to you."
And I said, "Oh, no problem at all," and waited for her to dump me into John's voicemail where I left a detailed message about what Holden and I were looking for. "Hi, John. This is Kate. I'm calling to set up an appointment to come in and talk with you about beginning the process of looking for a house. My boyfriend and I are looking to buy a small starter home, nothing too expensive -- our limit is $150,000. We'd like to stay as close to Center City Philadelphia as possible. If you could call me, my number is...."
Okay, kids, rule number one when dealing with real estate agents: DON'T TELL THEM HOW MUCH YOU WANT TO SPEND UNTIL YOU ARE ACTUALLY TALKING TO THEM FACE TO FACE. Unless, of course, you are aiming to spend three-point-five-million. Then I bet they'd get back to you.
Holden and I must be very small potatoes because John never called me back. Holden called me -- from work, every day -- asking if John had called until I finally called the agency back with the intention of yelling at the receptionist or John or somebody.
The somebody I got was Paul. He was covering the phones for the receptionist.
Rule number two: YOU MAY WANT TO THINK TWICE BEFORE WORKING WITH AN AGENT WHOSE JOB DESCRIPTION INCLUDES COVERING THE PHONES WHILE THE RECEPTIONIST IS ON LUNCH.
"Hello, Big Time Real Estate Agency."
"Hi, my name is Kate and I called last week to make an appointment to talk with an agent and the receptionist said someone would call me back and no one has."
"Well, I'm here and I'll help you."
Honestly, he seemed so pleasant and helpful on the phone. He actually took the time to speak with me instead of offering to dump me into John's voicemail. It's the only reason I made the appointment to meet with him.
So Holden and I went the next day and met with Paul and he seemed nice, if a little unsure. He laughed a lot. He was really excited when he found out that I was in theater. Told us all about his playwrighting and these shows that he does at a local theater. Also told us about how he has a picture of Charles Nelson Riley in his kitchen. Didn't tell us much about real estate.
Rule number three: IF YOUR AGENT SPENDS TWENTY MINUTES DESCRIBING HIS PLAY ABOUT AN AGING SOUTHERN BELLE WHO MOVES TO NEW YORK WITH HER CARD SHARP HUSBAND AND FIVE MINUTES EXPLAINING THE HOME-BUYING PROCESS, YOU MIGHT WANT TO CONSIDER FINDING ANOTHER AGENT.
Still, at the time, Holden and I thought Paul might work out. See, we have this problem. It's a problem that I think afflicts many formerly-middle-class-now-borderline-Bohemian types such as us: We distrust anyone who seems even remotely corporate and we haven't quite figured out that when looking to hire investment bankers, attorneys, and real estate agents, corporate is actually a positive trait.
So, Paul wasn't corporate. We felt comfortable dealing with him because he was an artist, man. I mean, he wrote plays about aging Southern belles; real estate was only his day job. He was like us.
Rule four: IF BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER, THE TWO OF YOU RUN THE RISK OF PURCHASING OCEAN FRONT PROPERTY IN TEMPE, AZ, THEN IT IS NOT A GOOD THING FOR YOUR REAL ESTATE AGENT TO BE JUST LIKE YOU.
But, two months ago, we were so young and naive. We sat down with Paul and after talking about his plays and his picture of Charles Nelson Riley, he asked us what we were looking for in a home. Our response?
"We really don't want a condo. We can't spend much more than $150,000. It doesn't have to be that big because we are planning on renting it out when we are ready to move to a bigger place. Oh, and Holden wants gas heat and gas cooking. Other than that, we're flexible."
Rule five: YOU MIGHT WANT TO HAVE A BETTER IDEA OF WHAT YOU WANT IN A HOME THAN JUST YOUR BOYFRIEND DOESN'T WANT AN ELECTRIC STOVE.
Paul's response?
"We can work with that. Okay, let's talk neighborhoods. As far as I'm concerned, you don't want to look in Olde City or Queen's Village or Washington Square West because they're getting expensive and you can't affort to live in Rittenhouse Square so you're going to want to look at Bella Vista, the Art Museum Area or the Graduate Hospital Area. My recommendation is the Graduate Hospital Area. It's the up and coming neighborhood right now."
Okay. All conversations about aging Southern belle plays and Charles Nelson Riley pinups aside, this is the point when we should have realized something was not quite kosher about Paul. Granted, he was right about us not being to afford to even think about living in the Rittenhouse Square area of Philly, but if the possibility of an affordable property in Queen's Village or Washington Square West came up, you would be NUTS to turn it down. But in our defense, at the time, we knew little about the area that he was recommending -- the Graduate Hospital Area -- so we thought he might actually know what he was doing.
The most we knew about Graduate Hospital was this: My friend Ian lives there. He has a nice house. But he also lives right across the street from the hospital. My friend Nancy lives there, too. She bought her house for $12,000 because it was missing a fourth wall (too bad she doesn't do experimental theater). When I have taken a cab to Nancy's house, I have noticed some of the streets were not very good. (Also, after we met with Paul, I mentioned considering Graduate Hospital to Nancy, who said, "GA is the area that's supposedly been hot for the last ten years. It starts to get good and then the market dips and it's the first one to crash.")
Still, both Ian and Nancy live there and they have not been murdered or mugged or home invaded, so we thought we'd give it a shot.
Paul also told us that we would not want to look at any "Trinities."
Trinities are peculiarly Philadelphian dwellings. They consist of three main rooms, one on top of the other. See, a trinity is a three-story house with a room on each floor. Often the set up is thus: kitchen in the basement, a small living room on the ground floor, a small bedroom and bathroom on the second floor, and a master bedroom on the top floor. Sometimes, if you are lucky, your kitchen will be on the ground floor with the living room and you will have a little basement for storage. I suppose that a trinity is simply an apartment translated into house form. They are small but actually they are not bad for young couples just starting out. Plus, they are all over Philadelphia. Chances are, if you are buying something small in Philly, you are buying a trinity.
However, Paul said we should not look at trinities. He also was not entirely sure what a trinity was until Holden explained it to him.
Rule six: WHEN YOUR REAL ESTATE AGENT IS NOT ENTIRELY FAMILIAR WITH A MAJOR ARCHITECTURAL FORM NATIVE TO THE CITY WHERE HE IS SELLING HOMES AND WHEN HE ADVOCATES NOT LOOKING AT THIS TYPE OF DWELLING -- A DWELLING THAT IS MOST LIKELY WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO END UP BUYING -- IT IS TIME TO WONDER IF THIS PARTICULAR REAL ESTATE AGENT IS FOR YOU.
Yet, Holden and I still thought we'd work with Paul. Go figure. It must have been his boyish charm. Or our unbelievable naivete. We even thought we'd work with him after he seemed to know nothing about VA loans or how we'd go about securing one. I think we were scared out of our minds about entering into the wild and wacky world of home ownership and we just kept telling ourselves that if Paul worked for this major agency, he must have known what he was doing.
Let's fast forward to the day we finally realized that this was not the case.
First, it took us two weeks after that initial meeting with Paul to actually schedule an appointment to look at properties. Holden and I had gone through the listings he gave us -- all in the Graduate Hospital area -- and picked out two: A nine-room carriage house for $150,000 and a $75,000 row home. I called Paul five times before he finally touched base and said he had scheduled both of those appointments PLUS an appointment to see a new listing that he thought we might be interested in.
Holden took off work to look at the houses. Paul had said he would pick us up at 10 am. At 9:50, he called to say that we couldn't see one of the houses -- the carriage house -- because the owner had a dog and she hadn't locked him up because she didn't know we were coming. Um, okay, because Paul didn't make an appointment with her to see the house or anthing? Oh, and also, we wouldn't be able to see the $75,000 house until 12:30 and we were going to meet up with another agent to see the new listing at 11:30 so why didn't he pick us up at 11:15 instead?
Holden was not happy. He was not pleased he had taken off work and Paul hadn't made sure we'd see the properties we wanted to see. He was less pleased when the phone rang at 11:00.
It was Paul again. This time he was pushing back our meeting time to 11:30 and he also said he now wasn't sure if we could see the $75,000 house either because he couldn't get in touch with the owner, but he'd keep trying him. I told Holden about the later meeting time but left out the part about not seeing the house. Believe me, if you had seen the vein throbbing at his temple, you would have left that part out, too.
Rule eight: WHEN YOUR REAL ESTATE AGENT DOESN'T SEEM TO GRASP THE CONCEPT OF MAKING ACTUAL APPOINTMENTS TO LOOK AT PROPERTY, YOU MIGHT WANT TO THINK TWICE.
Paul finally showed up. He picked us up in his car but would not allow one of us to sit in the front seat because it was messy. So Holden and I rode in the backseat and we all went off on our merry way to pick up the other real estate agent, whom Paul made sit in the front seat. We picked her up and then Paul drove us straight into the bowels of Hell.
My god. I know Holden and I said we didn't mind living in a "borderline" neighborhood but if the neighborhood Paul was trying to sell us was borderline, I want to know just what the hell it was borderline compared to. Bosnia? Appalachia? South Central? We pulled up to the first house and we were afraid to get out of the car. On the corner, there was a guy drinking his morning forty and down the street was a crack addict scrounging for change. The lot next to the house was filled with garbage (empty beer cans, old tires, rusting shopping carts) and as Holden and I stood there staring, horrified, Paul said, "Hey, wouldn't it be great if this lot was included in the selling price?"
Oh yeah, just what we're looking for: an overgrown vacant lot where the crack addicts probably sleep at night.
Everyone on the block owned a large dog because the risk of getting robbed and/or raped was high enough to warrant owning a pit bull. The house itself was a terrible little cement bunker with a yard that smelled like dog crap and closets with no doors on them and a bathroom from 1932 even though the building had been erected in 1973.
Holden shut down. That's his typical response in situations like this. He gets insanely angry and he stops speaking (even when spoken to) and cannot be counted on to make any decisions. So we wandered through this soon-to-be-crack-house and I tried to keep talking, just so the tension didn't completely overwhelm us. Meanwhile, I must have sounded like the biggest jackass on the planet, rambling on about how "we'd have to put those doors back on the closets and, obviously, the kitchen will have to be redone." As if we were thinking about spending ten more minutes in the place, let alone living there.
After we escaped the house, Paul sprang the news that he wasn't able to get in touch with the owner of the $75,000 so we couldn't see either of the two houses we had originally wanted to see. Of course, Holden and I were not exactly heartbroken, considering both houses were only two blocks away from where we were standing in Satan's armpit. But Paul suggested that we "drive by" and check out the exteriors.
Rule nine: WHEN YOUR REAL ESTATE AGENT TAKES YOU TO THE THIRD WORLD TO LOOK AT HOUSES AND THEN DOES NOT RECOGNIZE THE IRONY OF USING THE PHRASE "DRIVE BY," YOU WOULD DO WELL TO SIMPLY TELL HIM TO TAKE YOU HOME RIGHT THEN AND THERE.
Naturally, Holden had closed up shop and wasn't making any decisions. So I had to tell Paul whether or not we wanted to drive past these other houses. And I'm such an idiot that I ws worred about being polite, like it would have been rude to say, "Gee, you know what, Paul, but we really aren't interested running the risk of getting murdered every time we open the door to get the mail, so maybe we ought to skip this neighborhood." Nooo, I didn't want to hurt Paul's feelings. So I said okay.
We drove the two blocks to the $75,000 house -- me and Holden still in the back of Paul's car, but minus the other real estate agent who met her clients at the house (two speculator/slumlords who had no intention of living in the house themselves, heavens no). This block featured three burned out and boarded up buildings instead of the vacant, trash-filled lot. Paul parked the car and suggested we get out to "get a good look at the exterior." And Holden and I are such idiots, that we got out.
The house itself didn't look too bad. It looked neat and taken care of and I figured that what had happened was the owner was somebody just like me and Holden who got suckered into buying it because an agent like Paul told them that the Graduate Hospital area was the up and coming area. But I certainly wasn't going to live there. Holden and I stood looking up at the house, wondering how long was long enough before we could get back in the car and make Paul drive us home.
Meanwhile, across the street, people had put junk out on the curb for trash pickup: delapidated furniture, old clothes, knickknacks, etc. When we pulled up to the house, there was a homeless man picking through the junk. Even better was when I turned from contemplating the exterior of the house to look for Paul and found him picking through the junk as well.
Yup. My real estate agent brought me to look at houses in Hell and then spent his time picking through old, disgusting junk. But the kicker is that he then began fighting with the homeless man over a bag of artificial flowers.
I don't think you need a Rule ten, kids. Do you?
Paul won the fight. He tossed his prize flowers in the trunk and we got into the backseat. He asked if we wanted to drive past the carriage house. Holden must have been really angry because he actually spoke. "No."
"No? Why?" Yes, he actually asked us why we would not want to go look at a house located roughly in the center of Cracktown. He then asked us, "Well, where can I drop you?"
If I hadn't been so nervous about what Holden would end up doing to Paul if our outing were prolonged, I would have laughed when Holden said, "Where you got us." He was livid. I don't blame him. In Philadelphia, there are other neighborhoods that feature houses within our price range without the added attractions of homeless people, crack addicts, gangs, and crime. Bella Vista, in particular, is a hot area that actually has seen a lot of revitalization, so even if you move into a presently iffy neighborhood there is a good chance that it will be improved quite soon. The hell hole Paul took us to had no chance of improving even if we lived there for ten years.
Paul dropped us on the corner of our street. As soon he drove off, Holden turned to me and said, "So we're finding a new agent, right?" I don't think he needed to ask.
But really, the icing on the cake is the fact that after this entire debacle, Paul called to tell me that he had set up seven more appointments for us the next week.
But, you know, we had finally learned our lesson. It took a trip to Hell and an argument with a homeless man over some fake flowers to make it sink it, but we finally learned it. I am happy to report that we are now working with a perfectly lovely, quite corporate, young woman named Lisa who is showing us properties in Bella Vista and does not fight with the locals over trash.
7 Deadly Sins and Other, Less Fatal Diversions
Pride:
Envy:
Wrath:
Sloth:
Avarice:
Gluttony:
Lust:
Book:
Tune:
I get it every day.
I wear a little smile
Task at Hand:
Quest for Publication:
So that brings the tally to:
Total Submissions: 20
Holden and I went to the American Modern, 1925-1940: Design for a New Age exhibit at the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts. I was quite surprised at my knowlege of American Modernism and my ability to apply what I knew to principles of design instead of literature. This heretofore untapped knowlege also came in handy while viewing the adjoining exhibit, Restructured Reality: The 1930s Paintings of Francis Criss. Could it be that some of the information disseminated in those University A literature classes has actually managed to leach into my brain? Suddenly, I seem to have an area of burgeoning expertise. Figures it would be in Modernism.
People who lead normal lives.
Erica insists on skating on thin ice despite the clearly marked and prominently posted warning signs. Her latest escapade involves her moving out to return to living with her parents, while still "maintaining" the apartment (all of her crap is still here) "just in case" she wants to spend the night in the city. Not that I'm sorry to have her out of here, but I'm not looking forward to when it comes time to pay the rent next month.
Calls need to be made. Emails returned. Papers graded. Think I've done any of it?
Power has been my thing lately. Wish I had some.
I've been on a clothing binge. It started when I wandered into Buffalo Exchange, looking for a belated Christmas present for Sabrina. Buffalo Exchange is a funky vintage/thrift/consignment store that I can only enter once every blue moon because I tend to empty my checking account every time I go in there. Needless to say, Sabrina got nothing from BE, but I got some cool shirts, a pair of corduroys, and a skirt. Then, after buying Sabrina a lovely moonstone and garnet necklace, I went to visit her and Sammy in New York and they broke my essentially non-existent resistance with the suggestion of a shopping trip at H&M. You don't even want to know what I dragged home to Philadelphia that evening. Let's just say that I'm quite thankful that H&M does not have a store in Center City Philadelphia. The closest one is in the suburbs and I can't get to it that easily. But maybe you can. H&M has locations from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts and Buffalo Exchange is national. Both are cool, cheap (well, unless you're binging) and very, very dangerous.
I've been in a Penn Jilette mood for a while now.
The Hobbit. I am ashamed to admit that I have never really read Tolkien. I read The Hobbit way back when I was ten but I never realized that there were *other* books in the series. I wasn't the most perceptive of kids. And besides, that ugly, ugly cartoon that they made of The Hobbit turned me off of the fantasy right quick. But I finally saw Lord of the Rings. It was so amazing, I went out and bought all four books the next day.
My Heart Hurts by Nick Lowe:
I'm getting used to it.
But every time it hits,
My heart quits
While swallowing the dirt.
But underneath my shirt,
My heart hurts.
Writing a manifesto for our magazine.
I sent out 12 more manuscripts just today. Eleven were for a short story that I wrote a long, long time ago, sent out to one magazine, got rejected and gave up on; but Derek mentioned how much he liked it the other day and Derek usually never likes any of my stuff so I figured I'd give it another shot. The other submission was the quasi-lesbian story again; I sent it to a Memphis-based magazine that's doing an issue on Elvis. Since Elvis is involved in the quasi-lesbian story, I thought "Why not?"
Rejections: 1
Acceptances: 0