Feeling Evil
M. and I rent our home. You may have gathered this from my occasional rants about the joys of renting.
It sometimes drives me crazy not to own the house I live in. My mom and dad are both incurable house renovators; if it’s not their house, it’s someone else’s. And they do very, very good work. They watch HGTV the way some people watch porn, albeit with slightly more discriminating tastes. They get me watching HGTV - which, for people who rent, is like porn for the involuntarily celibate; you can look, but you can’t touch.
I sit around our house sometimes and just think of all the things I’d do here if we owned it (which, for the record, would be a colossal mistake; this place has way too many fundamental issues to ever make it a good buy, even if we could ever afford it). And then I get sad, because we very, very much do not own it. I get very self-pitying at this point. It’s hard to live in one of the most overinflated housing markets in the country (no joke - and that’s saying something in this market) and watch people paying obscene amounts of money for houses that they will then own, while we languish in rent-paying hell and wonder why M.’s decent salary can’t get us a house, too.
But then I see sites like this, and I feel so, so much better about myself and our decision to rent for the time being. Seriously - it’s evil to take pleasure in other people’s misery, it really is. But it also feels very nice not to be one of these poor saps.
September 1st, 2007 at 9:49 am
Right there with you. Our place is old and falling-apart but it has great “bones” and I often think about how if it were renovated it would be nice.
I don’t feel bad about praying for the housing bubble to pop. Yes, I feel sorry for the families who will lose their homes, but we were basically punished for being fiscally responsible. We could have bought with one of those crazy ARMs too, but we knew it would be a mistake, so we saved and waited, and meanwhile the house prices outpaced our savings.
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September 2nd, 2007 at 8:44 am
Ha! We’re in the same boat, sorta.
We live in rather dated and old military housing. Our base is converting to a private contractor who will manage the housing, and actually collect rent and utilities. This is all covered by Sarge’s housing allowance based on his rank etc. So many of our neighbors and friends have decided to move off base either to rent or to buy. They think that we’re crazy because we’re going to be “paying” about $2000 or so a month to “rent” our base house. Well, it’s not our money, we’ll never actually see that money. It goes directly from Sarge’s check to the management company.
I think that the people who are so antsy to move are nutty because yeah, they’ll have a nicer house that lives up to the $2000 or whatever they’re given as their allowance. But then they have to pay for gas to drive to and from base, gym membership, and you know you’re not always going to be shopping at the commissary. And that $40.00 pit stop at Safeway to “just get a couple of things” really adds up.
Sarge does not want to move because he already works 12-14 hour shifts, and who wants to spend another hour in traffic after that? Then we really will never see him. And then we would have to buy a second car. We’ve been doing well with only one for 7 years. He also has a friend who finally sold his house in the area this week. He was transferred to Florida in MARCH!!! That is totally insane. I sure don’t need that kind of stress in my life. I’m going to be so happy when we finally get transferred out of here that I just want to pack and leave. And you know if we buy a place, the minute we sign Sarge will get orders out of here.
The only reason we would ever move, would be to get our daughter into a better public school. We were concerned about it going into the first year here, but we have a GREAT teacher, and the administrative and support staff of the school seem to be pretty on it.
So I’m a “renter” untill we’re setteled in our final destination.
Sorry about the book here.
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September 3rd, 2007 at 8:30 am
I just read your interview in the W. Post this morning!
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