Sunday, April 25, 2010

Adapt, Improvise, and Overcome

My silence for the past eleven months can not be blamed on writer’s block or a lack of things to write about. I have spent the past year mostly occupied by family and work. I am happy to say I have found time to read and watch an occasional movie. I spend the time in between wondering how to plan my future in a post-constitutional America. Words like adapt, improvise, and overcome came to mind. Updating a blog that only four people in the world bother to read never seemed particularly important.

Last fall my wife and I invested considerable time searching for a new home and on three occasions thought we had found what we were looking for. The first house we considered was perfect in several ways but overpriced. We made an offer which was not accepted and the seller’s counter-offer was still too high. The second home we considered was in many ways better but needed a new roof. We made an offer taking in account the fact that we would have to pay out close to $12,000 to replace the roof. They gave a curt no to our offer. My wife loved the place whereas I exhibited a distinct lack of enthusiasm. I figured I could adapt to any living situation and so we made a second offer which was also turned down though this time they responded with a counter-offer. Eventually we settled on a compromise price that I believed to be very generous but something I could live with if I didn’t give it too much thought. The mortgage process went smoothly and I figure we were probably within a week of final approval. Then we moved on to the home inspection.

I have participated in home inspections before and they can be very fascinating, sometimes even scary. I recall an inspector finding out that the main electrical panel was ungrounded, that the clean out for the sewer line was 30% buried in concrete, and that some of the wiring was so old that the insulation was cracking, all in the space of less than five minutes. Since the house I was looking at this past month was only 20 years old I did not expect to find problems. I was wrong.

There is something about the inspection process that opens your eyes to defects. Even defects the inspector doesn’t point out to you become obvious. Issues began to accumulate rapidly. On the outside we discovered that the garage door was showing signs of weathering near the ground. I considered this a small defect but one that would require attention as soon as the weather permitted it. The brick walkway was improperly installed and the bricks in the center were significantly lower than on the edges. This would require what amounts to completely rebuilding the walkway. I had not noticed this before.

Walking around the house we studied the way in which the deck was attached to the house but a complete examination would require removing boards from the deck in order to get a good look it. The presence of dirt, pine needles, and moisture along the line where the deck connected to the house suggested potential issues. The inspector pointed out that some of the nails holding the deck to the house were loose and could be pulled out by hand. He didn’t need to explain why this might be. The kick plate was essentially in contact with the deck and unlike the deck is not made of pressure treated wood. This became an issue on the other end of the house where we discovered that the kick plate was completely rotted out and showed evidence of insect damage, probably carpenter ants. Without tearing out parts of the house there was no way we could determine how far the rot had progressed. I won’t bore you with all the details nor do I want to give the impression that everything was bad. The heating system was excellent as was the electrical work.

At the end we decided against proceeding with the purchase and that was that. In the meantime the house in the adjacent town with which I had fallen in love and on which I would have made an offer had sold. It was a little more expensive but the taxes were 40% lower. With no additional houses coming on the market we decided we might as well wait until spring. After all there was nothing happening in the economy to suggest that the market was going to abruptly turn around and now that we are in April of the following year we can see that we judged correctly.

At the moment there are too many things going on and so looking for a house will have to wait until at least mid-May or perhaps longer.