It was a hot Sunday morning, and with nothing to do, my husband Matt threw me a curveball.
“Why don’t we go to some open houses?” he asked.
I knew this was a dangerous proposition. We had agreed to wait a year to buy a house, and I’m one of those buyers that gets easily attached to things. I bought a car on a whim. I bought the first wedding dress I tried on. There’s no turning back once I fall in love, and we didn’t have money sitting around in case I fell for a house.
“Oh, come on. We’re just looking for fun. We’re not going to buy anything,” he urged.
I conceded reluctantly and prepared us for the hunt. This wasn’t just our usual apartment search—this was a house hunt. And though we lacked a down payment and had a year to look, I took it very seriously. Smartly armed with a city map, a stack of newspapers, and highlighters galore, we set out.
I circled ten possibilities and laid out our agenda. We worked through the list quickly. We were picky, so I crossed off house after house for different reasons: the driveway was too small, the street was too busy, the neighbors were too messy. After our list was fully rejected, the search became a free-for-all.
We drove through neighborhoods in Minneapolis and St. Paul, our eyes peeled for For Sale signs. It was a sort of scavenger hunt with Matt driving, and me shouting, “There’s one on the right. Turn! It’s not sold yet!”
Then, we’d stop at the house and play the price game.
“How much do you think it is?” he’d ask me.
“Uhh…$230?”
He’d run out, get the brochure, and usually break out laughing.
“Wrong again. It’s $280. Ouch.”
We weren’t the only ones with this idea on that beautiful summer day. It was easy to spot other house hunters. They made erratic, last minute turns and drove incredibly slow down each block pointing their fingers out the window. At one time, we had a minivan following us at a suspiciously close distance; it pulled ahead after a while, and we used its driver as our scout. We tailed it around the neighborhood and would wait in our car when she got out to check for a brochure. If there wasn’t one, we stayed in our comfy air conditioning and drove on.
By the end of the afternoon, we had a messy stack of brochures abandoned at my feet and still hadn’t been to an open house. Finally, on a quiet street in our Highland Park neighborhood, we saw an open house sign in front of a quaint Cape Cod-style bungalow. Gambling that it was in our price range, we walked up to the front door.
“Do we ring the doorbell?” I asked. Matt had no idea. Erring on the side of being polite, I did, and instead felt like an idiot. A surprised voice called to us to come in, and we made our first step into a house that could one day be our own.
We went timidly to the dining room table and took a brochure. Acting cool, we flipped it over and saw a $380,000 price tag. We stifled our desire to laugh and run away; instead, we listened to the realtor boast about the house. Nodding intently at her selling points, I stood up a little straighter and smoothed my messy ponytail, trying to look older and much wealthier.
“It has a kitchen on each floor,” she beamed.
We smiled and turned away. “Isn’t cleaning one kitchen enough?” I asked as we walked upstairs. The place was interesting to say the least. The bathroom had a sloped ceiling, so you’d have to crouch in the shower to avoid knocking your head. The bedroom closet was in the hallway and set precariously over the stairs. The three kitchens were simply strange. After seeing what $380,000 would buy us, we threw in the towel and went home to eat frozen pizza.
We walked into the apartment we had loved that morning, and the love was no longer there. Once tempted with the promise of our very own house, our charming, 800-square-foot apartment had turned into a pit. We ate our pizza silently, and as soon as we were finished, Matt asked if I wanted to search online for a while. I didn’t fight him that time.
And so, on that sunny Sunday evening, we sat at the computer talking about basements and bathroom size. I knew we couldn’t wait a whole year. It was midnight when we turned off the computer and retired to our too-small bedroom in our too-small apartment.
This piece was also published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on October 26, 2005.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/417/5686790.html
