Why are we even looking for a house when we have a great deal on a really great apartment? This is a question my husband and I ask each other night after night.
“Can you please tell me why the fuck we are doing this again?” I ask him. He stops and scratches his head for a minute and then, recites the litany of reasons:
- It takes us over 45 minutes to find a parking spot, often 5 blocks from our apartment.
- The streets won’t be strewn with garbage and food poured out into the streets by the Gyro restaurants who don’t want to pay too much more for garbage pick up.
- It would be nice to have a little more space—a backyard, an upstairs, a downstairs, a basement for storage.
- I can’t stand apartment living anymore.
- We cannot grow in anyway, anymore in an apartment.
- We want to build equity.
- It’s something our kids could inherit.
- We could make it our own.
- It would be ours.
I’m also pretty okay with apartment living. Most of the maintenance is out of my hands for the most part. I don’t shovel snow, haul the garbage to the street, replace broken windows or fix the busted boiler. I don’t pay water bills either and my kids are bath crack heads. I clocked 15 baths one boring day at home during the winter. As far as equity is concerned, how do you build equity in a home when our pockets are bleeding? And, I can live with my kids not inheriting anything except our CD player (yes, we still have one of those)!
As far as I’m concerned, I do make my apartment my own for the most part. I’ve painted the walls the colors I like and nothing pressing is on the list… yes, a new bathroom vanity and newly sanded floors would be nice and fixing the sub-flooring in the bathroom NOW would be cool, but this may have to wait. I’m not too sad that we save a decent chunk of change by renting, get to go on vacations and buy shit from Amazon whenever we want.
So, why the fuck are we doing this? My husband recites the litany of reasons again and I go through my mantra again. Yes, a backyard is very appealing and having our own driveway would be radical, off the map, stellar. Something that is “ours” is lovely in theory, but in practice…? Not so sure when it comes to the massive amount of work and money it takes to make something one’s own.
Again, when shit breaks down or there’s no hot water, we call the landlord, and a maintenance person or the super will come fix it. As homeowners, we'd be the landlord, and all of these little hiccups become our expensive problem. It's our responsibility to maintain the lawn, fix things that break (or pay a handyman) and keep up with aesthetic maintenance, like patching up the walkways, shoveling the driveway when it snows, putting on a new roof when it expires, replacing the stove when it dies. Nothing is cheap. Forget little vacations and buying shit from Amazon whenever we want. That’s the least of it.
Should I shut up already? Am I whining? Do I sound like a putz or someone in touch with reality?
I’m an ambivalent wreck. After seeing the shit boxes we’ve seen, our apartment looks better and better. Then I hear my husband saying, “It would be ours” and something about that is really compelling and seductive. But, this scares me. Is anything one’s own in this god forsaken, wretchedly expensive city, whether you rent or own? If we buy something, we’re bastard slaves no matter how I spin it. Maybe more of a slave if we own, especially since we have no serious liquid cash to speak of.
It’s a god damned trap. Not sure where my brain is at with any of this. We keep hunting for homes anyway. Why not? No rush, right? But, part of me knows that if we don’t move fast, Brooklyn won’t be our city any more. Not sure if it is now.