After recently having the walkway and front porch of our house redone, I realized that in the 11 years we've lived in Oakton, we have altered every inch of our house in some way. Each project is time-consuming and expensive and inevitably leads to more projects. It is exhausting, and I've decided I'm totally over it.
So this past weekend, I did what I should have done a long time ago. I went house hunting.
Don’t get me wrong — we're not looking to move. We wouldn't even consider leaving our current house until our daughter graduates from high school. Besides, after taking the plunge of with our neighbors, this is not a decision we could make without entering into some sort of (likely contentious) custodial arrangement, anyway.
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No, I went house hunting in Arlington with my friend, who, coincidentally, is also in the midst of several home renovation projects. We decided we could escape by looking at some homes that were not ours. And in the 11 years since I last went house hunting, it is clear that both the process and the pricing have changed.
For instance, I was unaware that if you did not fill out the visitors' log at an open house, the obviously desperate real estate agent would threaten, "If you don't fill this out, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
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My friend chose to take the vistors' log the Realtor shoved at her and crumple it up as she walked out of the house. When we got to the car and the shock wore off, we were disappointed we had not instead just completed them as Seymour Butz and Ida Ho.
It's not that I don't have some sympathy, as this house was no easy sale. It was two completely separate homes joined together by what appeared to be an elevated sitting loft in the middle of a gated living room. There were also several commercial freezers scattered throughout the dozen or so tiny, awkward rooms. (The dead bodies conveyed. We asked.)
After attending several other open houses where the Realtors neither cared if we signed in nor threatened to have us removed if we didn’t, we saw several fixers that cost around a million dollars before finding a perfectly lovely (nothing more) home that was listed for $1.6 million. Even though we have both lived in the D.C. metro area for years now, my friend and I both hail from areas with a much lower cost of living and still experience the occasional sticker shock.
At one point, my friend turned to me and asked, "Twenty years ago, if someone told you that a house cost $1.6 million, wouldn't you have expected it to look like Jay Gatsby's estate and come with a butler?" And I said, "That's true. But I also would have expected to be getting kicked out of hipper, trendier places."
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And now I turn to you, readers, for suggestions for my next house hunting excursion: Which prank names should we use when signing in with the Realtor?
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