House Hunt March 1 - 10, 2002 if you think that getting lost in a desert is boring, try to buy a residence for a change...

They really call it house hunting here. I would personally comment that houses actually behave quite peacefully -- they don't move, they just sit there on their lots and wait. The one who's running around and is h(a)unted (by time, money, lenders etc.), is the buyer.

Why did we decide to become game? No, it was not our inborn masochism, nor was it any other deviation; we simply made certain calculations, which included a parking lot beginning three feet away from our balcony, domestically violent neighbors (and I mean those former Soviets above us; Vana family are very quiet, despite a handicap of two lively boys), a common laundry room with all two washers and dryers permanently busy doing someone else's stuff, a paint peeling in palm-size flakes (before Sid moved in, the manager had all doors re-painted right as they were, greasy and dirty), a very tired carpet, one miniscule bedroom, entry door leading right into our living room (which also serves as our "computer center" as well as kitchen, dining room, sitting room -- simply a place where we live), rattling garage gate (that has rails fastened exactly under our bed) -- and reached a conclusion that it would be nice to live some place, where one can eventually paint all those doors him/herself, remove a part of a wall, hang a curtain, change a carpet, throw out a set of worn out kitchen cabinets, own his/her own washer, and send to hell (optionally with a police assistance) anybody who would want to try to wash or fix his/her car right under our windows.

But of course -- technically we could rent some better, quieter apartment, and a bigger one, too, for our visitors don't just drop in for coffee; they stay a month or two and then it would have its advantages to be able to put them somewhere else than between our server and our refrigerator. And what if we had little Hippos??? Well, a larger, quieter flat would cost at least half more than we pay now for our small and noisy one, which brings us right to the level of a decent mortgage payment. A mortgage is more or less locked for many (e.g. thirty) years and at the end of it, we would own property, while as renters we could only watch our payments grow over time, and would own exactly nothing thirty years later.

I worked myself up to a large campaign -- first, it was necessary to get Hippo moving, which I managed perfectly within about two months. After much grumbling he worked out how many options we actually had (let's call it employee stock to make things simple), at which point I almost fainted, for we discovered that we had about four times more available than we had hoped for. My ecstasy turned out all premature, as selling stock represents GAIN, which one is forced to pay taxes on (both federal and state). They go together well over 40% -- not four times, but only double of our expectations. It was still a nice surprise.

Being internet addicts, we rushed to our browsers and began to seek housing on sale. We had it all figured out -- we wanted a condominium or a townhouse, certainly not something that would need much maintenance. None of us is a home improvement or garden fanatic. For some two days, we were browsing and e-mailing each other with best catches. Sid got carried away with a pretty little house in Sunnyvale and went there once during his lunch break. We never expected the reality to match the online picture, but I never dreamed of it being a drunkenly crooked ruin, with missing doors and windows patched over with plywood, plus a heap of thrash in place of a garage.

Anyway; by Friday we had collected a sizable list of homes that we would like to visit, and I was accommodating yet another sticker shock -- how could I ever expect that a bank would charge us with almost 200% interest over the lifetime of a loan!!! Where else to let go of your mental pressure than outdoors? So, we enjoyed a skiing freedom at our favorite Kirkwood.

Sunday expected us with a first round of the hunt. We loaded our notebook with addresses, turned on our GPS and rolled out. A satellite navigation system can be priceless especially here in a city (and the whole Silicon Valley is practically one metropolis from San Francisco to San Jose).

Our first targets were located within the same complex in Los Gatos -- uniform town-houses, a large communal swimming pool, well maintained lawns and surroundings, quiet courts. Quite pretty. One of them sported a large sign "I WILL BE BACK AT 12:00", and the second had a plywood sheet in place of a garage door -- and not a soul around. At least we walked around the house, glanced over the fence (the two husky dogs living there did not like it much), and decided to try our luck back at noon, in the first house. It was better anyway, through being farther from a freeway -- I was unimpressed by an idea that only a grassy dyke would separate me from one of the busiest roads in the U.S. Even at three a.m., the traffic does not cease, as everybody in America always drives somewhere, especially trucks at night.

Our next entry was a normal house in Cupertino. A beautiful, quiet town, with gardens a trees everywhere, the house sat on a large lot. Alas, it had single wooden walls (no insulation), no ceilings (your living room goes all the way to the roof, which may be elegant, but impractical during hot summers), no gutters (= rotten roof ends and some outer walls), a lively ant highway led right into a bedroom, a crummy, tiny kitchen. Still, it did not seem bad -- a house can be fixed. As opposed to a freeway under your window - you can't change that no matter how upscale your residence may be.

An open house was starting in another townhouse, and so we hurried to get there in time. An end unit in a nice setting, was about as large as a medium garage, so that all present potential buyers could not even fit in. It was, though, about a quarter below average list price of everything we saw so far -- no wonder that it equaled in size with a housing project studio. This visit indeed did not take much of our time. We started feeling quite depressed and drove back to Los Gatos, to try the house with the sign about noon.

There was a person there in a garage, but did not look very inviting. She admitted having posted the sign, but our further conversation revealed that she was not a selling realtor, but an owner (old or new, whatever), for the house was sold already. She wished us good luck as we were leaving.

We did not feel like leaving Los Gatos as it is a really nice town with good schools. Actually schools determine by large the value of a property. It's a kind of a magic circle, or a spiral. If a town has a good school district, realty prices go up faster, so new owners tend to be more rich (I mean that they tend to have regular, full-time jobs, as opposed to part-time unemployment agency loungers), spending their money there and paying more local taxes, which in turn pays for local schools, directly impacting their ability to attract good teachers, teaching aids etc. This spiral goes both ways -- Palo Alto, where we live now, has the best school district in the Valley. A house in this area is simply out of our reach. Behind a freeway, however, lays East Palo Alto, where one can get a really cheap property -- you are likely to invest there into heavy bars and locks on doors and windows, even on dog kennels, while a gun shot here and there, or an occasional wail of a police siren creates a colorful background for romantic evenings. No idea, how much "fellow Americans", who live there, bother with required school attendance (only 2% of students meet basic requirements of nationally standard tests, so one would not assume much affinity towards education) -- who needs schools if you can get pregnant by 15 and let the state take care of the rest? Sobrietally challenged figures can be regularly found collapsed on street corners. This just to illustrate why we put so much importance on good schools.

And here we were, zigzagging through Los Gatos, looking out for "Open House" signs that indicate a house for sale you can visit. We discovered very quickly that internet offers only a small fraction of houses in the market. Our growing desperation can be well shown by the fact that when Sid noticed a suit setting up those signs, he commanded to halt (we had been using our vagabond setup -- Sid navigating and manning all gadgets, while I drove), and rushed to the poor fellow. He, however, picked up a sales opportunity, so we followed him to our next house.

It was about 10% more expensive than we were able to pay, but we wanted to review it, just in case. I admit that when I saw it, I only managed to cough out "oh my God -- a castle" Castle is our family nickname for crazy, huge, or otherwise stylishly "decorated" residences -- full of turrets and pseudo-gothic windows across three stories, and similar eye candy.

I recon that a sample of such American castle is worth describing. We much liked the upper floor with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. These five rooms were arranged on a square plan like if you drew a pentagram within a square -- outer walls had right angles, but inner wall were always somewhat irregular. It impressed us as very interesting, spacious (every room expanded from a door outwards), and full of light. Alas, the ground floor was horrible. The builder must have gotten carried away by irregular shapes, and had cut up the bottom into unreasonable, small and useless semi-rooms. Right at the entrance, there was such a niche with a window, which left me puzzling about its possible purpose -- most likely, that's where the old grand piano from aunt Eleonora would go, the one that nobody would ever play on. The floor plan had a kitchen as a centerpiece, with three step DESCENDING into all other places -- first being a dining room (just imagine always hauling all those dishes, glasses, food etc. down three steps, and then up again with all dirty dishes). Second room was even more horrid space, a "formal living room". Formality was achieved by a pseudo-antique, marble fireplace, its stone being fashioned into curvy ornaments, in the end emanating the warmth and comfort of a family crypt. The whole gloomy setting was further emphasized by the presence of heavy leather chairs and scattered monstrous statuettes.

A beautiful patio, which offered itself for a summer dinner under the sunset-colored sky, looked out onto a church parking lot. Gee, nothing against god-fearing folk, but this one had a worship every weekday at eight; imagine sitting down and having a dinner, while the whole parish drives in, one by one, each family car belching its exhaust fumes a few feet from our table -- thanks a lot, this very thing we have already been enjoying in our current place... Never mind the early Sunday school.
Our visit, however, had a very positive part. The aforementioned realtor quickly figured out that we wouldn't be buying this monstrosity from him, but also mentioned that though the address said Los Gatos, this block belonged to (somewhat worse) Campbell schools. We described what we did not like and the man promptly produced four different addresses, claiming that these would be something we like. And that we should not get distracted that they formally fall into San Jose (which in average is a rather filthy city), because the area belongs to Cambrian or Union School Districts.

We dug deep inside and pulled out remains of our original enthusiasm. The first house on our new list reinstated some optimism -- a floor level home, well insulated walls, roof in good repair, a small back yard, a garage, no stairs, and everything apparently well maintained. Not to mention a missing family crypt and brass angelic statues. The next house was somewhat larger (four bedrooms) and sported a "contemporary" kitchen. I don't know. A combination of white paint and black granite desktops could be acceptable in a contemporary autopsy room, but I could not live with it. One half of the back yard was covered by dull black granite tiles, the second half was taken over by a giant children's playground structure. Space under and around it was filled in with bark chips, it looked much like an exotic animal run at a cheap zoo. Next house contained a half crazy father and three completely crazy little girls, who obviously "showed off" to all those visitors. Or could it be that they lost their minds because of their intensely purple bedrooms? I was not surprised that this family wanted to move into something larger. Our last item on the list was not available to see inside, but we rejected it anyway because of a pool. Lots are rather small and it just does not seem to be a good idea to have part of your back yard taken over by a pool, which also needs plenty of water and energy and time to maintain.

Did you notice how our original resolve for a condo/appartment fizzled out? And that I suddenly write about houses? My main reason is that almost everybody lives in a house here. Condominiums don't get built that much, though there are quite a few rental complexes. One could live in a complex in something that is a cross between an apartment and a house (it has no lot, but has a separate front with an entrance, and neighbors only on two sides), but a town-house usually comes with plenty of limitations about external appearance (you can't paint the thing a color you like, you can't change windows, add a garage, nothing), often even internal arrangement (can't change a bathroom door!). There's not much freedom in it, and they are not significantly cheaper. On the other hand, they are usually much newer constructions, or much less of a ruin.

So, currently we know what we want and where we want it to be; we know how much money we have. A recommended realtor is taking care of the business end. We still have to figure out a few "details" -- like how to get a mortgage, transfer money from selling our options, read, fill out, and sign a thousand and one form, find a house, try to buy it, if we don't get it, find another one, sign all contracts, pay for all inspections and a title transfer, close a required insurance -- and we can move. Simple, don't you think?

Copyright © 2002-2004 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.