posted
I'm thinking of trying to get the local paper in College Station to let me write a "newcomers'" column. I know this is WAYYYYY too long, but other than that, what do you think?
quote: A recently single male moving to Texas needs help. That’s what it said on my forehead, I’m sure of it. Lucky for me, I was coming to College Station with a built-in support group. I’ve got friends who are more like family and they made sure I didn’t do anything too bone-headed as I wandered around town looking for a place to store my trailer, get an oil change, or stick whatever money was coming to me after the sale of my previous house. So, I wasn’t a complete tyro upon arrival. It’s a good thing too because becoming a Texas resident is a serious venture and one that should not be undertaken without a lot of support from the locals. Note that I don’t claim citizenship yet in the former Republic of Texas. I hear there’s some sort of test I have to pass. Continuously. But that’s another story.
Today, I’d like to tell you about buying a house, Bryan/College Station style. My move was from a relatively inexpensive part of Florida that shall remain nameless but you can get mouse ears there. Usually when someone from my old area moves anywhere else, they are struck dumb by the cost of housing. Not so when moving here. And it is truly amazing because on its surface and even deeper, College Station and Bryan are nicer places to live than lots of areas that cost a heck of a lot more. Because of the local educational institutions, there’s a lot more to do here than in most similarly sized towns. There’s culture. And tradition. You can’t write about this place without mentioning TRADITION! (I suddenly have the urge to watch Fiddler on the Roof.)
But buying a house here. Whew! Okay, first off, there is land everywhere. That keeps prices lower because the lots are inexpensive to begin with. And you can always build here for a reasonable amount of money if you don’t mind waiting. But if you are like me, you need an actual house that’s already in existence, built and ready to occupy as soon as the previous owners can get the heck out. Funny me. I like a roof over my head most nights. And as much as I like contractors in general, they have their own sense of the passage of time and they like it slow. Most glaciers are moving way too fast for the average contractor to keep up with.
So that narrowed my search to areas with actual houses. Next in my price range, I nixed the trailer on a huge property idea (and “huge” is a relative term here. I call anything big enough to appear on a map from AAA huge, okay?) Nothing wrong with trailers on huge pieces of land, mind you, but you have to really want that. And I discovered that I didn’t. A lot of land looks like a lot of work. In fact, government studies have shown that the amount of work required increases as the cube of the land area (which is 10 to the sixth power, if I’m not mistaken). I think an Aggie scientist discovered that, by the way. Also, owning land is good but you’re a lot better off financially if you can qualify for some sort of tax break, like a farming exemption. Now, farming is a whole ‘nother topic, but basically, as I understand it, you have the choice of growing plants or growing animals if you want to call your place a farm. Animals, to count, have to be things like cows, pigs or horses (or maybe emus and llamas if you want to be the oddball in your county). Putting cows, pigs or horses on a lot of land is a great idea if one understands cows, pigs or horses. I don’t. And I’m pretty sure they don’t understand me either. That mutual misunderstanding would probably lead to trouble that neither party would enjoy. Emus and llamas might as well be from an alien planet.
That left growing plants. Plants involve a lot of labor saving machinery like things that whirl and spin and scythe and sift and sort and make large cylinders of something I’m probably allergic to. I look really at home on a tractor, so this might’ve seemed like a natural choice for me, but I’m not allowed around sharp objects. I tend to bleed a lot and lose parts of my anatomy when there are sharp things to contend with. So I scaled back my dreams of Rancho el Bob and decided to look for a house that had that indefinable thing called “character.”
Viewed negatively, character means that the house isn’t like the ones on either side of it. That to get to it, you don’t drive past a bunch of similar looking boxes. But a positive definition is required as well. Especially if you are trying to get a real estate agent to zero in on properties you might actually like to see. So, I defined “character” as large, probably two story, probably old (though modernized would be fine), with a floorplan that had at least one “bend” in it somewhere.
It turns out that there are a lot of houses like that in B/CS. The range is daunting. Consider that there are two bona fide historic districts within a few miles of each other. And there are other “nearly” historic districts here too. But in between and surrounding these areas are other areas that may or may not hold interesting houses and may or may not be “desirable” (which in real-estate parlance means “you’ll overpay but be able to get some other sucker to overpay even more a few years from now – you hope”).
The other thing B/CS has a lot of is “named” houses. These are the houses that are (typically) named for their original owner. I, for example, am purchasing the Tredwale (not the real name) house. Mr. & Mrs. T were the original owners. Presumably they raised their kids there. I know they raised a lot of plants and at least one cat (hence the really cool kitty flap in the patio door). Owning “the Tredwale house” is cool. It’s like owning a piece of local history. It has its drawbacks. By living in the T house, I give up the possibility of having it ultimately become “the Scopatz house.” If I cured cancer, wrote the great Texas novel (a slightly more prestigious accomplishment than writing the great American novel), and became President of the United States (hey, it could happen, I’m now a Texan…), neighbors will still refer to me as that large guy who bought the Tredwale house. If generation upon generation of Scopatzes are raised here, they will grow up referring to the ancestral manse as “the Tredwale house.” That’s just the way things are here. I like it. But I sure would like for people to see some house and say “oh, who’s that moving into the Scopatz house?” Just so long as they don’t follow that with “sure hope they got that tilt fixed.”
Which brings me to what South Central Texans call soil. Uh huh. This is liquid brown goo over a layer of slightly browner, slightly less liquid goo. It moves. It quivers like jello. It seems to be laughing. At all of us. “Build a house,” it says, “I dare you!” Pier and beam is interesting construction ideally suited to this soil. It is based on the principle that you can always move into the part of the house that isn’t sinking at that moment. This turns out to be a good principle. Every few decades, you hire some skilled people to crawl under your house (imagine the embarrassment of what they’d find under there – I mean c’mon, a house with a space underneath it? I’m thinking storage!!!) and jack parts of it back up to be level with the parts that didn’t sink quite as much. Then you fix the walls and floors and you’re good to go for a few decades. Not too bad overall.
Then there’s slab construction. If your slab is in good shape, settling is a minor problem. A bit here, a bit there, and that brickface might crack or you might need to repoint, but that’s about it. Sometimes a wall will buckle a bit and you have to fix it up with new sheet rock or some duct tape. But then again, there are the rare slabs that are so strong that they don’t crack under incredible torsion. Rather, they just lift on one side and sink on another side and the whole house tilts as if it was riding the crest of a wave. And, in fact, it is. A very slowly moving wave of clay and mud and goo. Hang ten dude!!!
I have looked at all these houses. I’ve looked at houses that, I’m told, were actually occupied by people who were in other respects perfectly normal and law abiding, but that were so slanted (the people as well as the houses) that they hung pictures of the Leaning Tower of Pisa to sort of make it seem reasonable. But that was not the worst of it.
I saw houses -- actually occupied houses -- in which there were dead birds in the closet. Mold in the fridge. Built in appliances that were installed at a jaunty angle. Bare walls exposed (for aesthetic effect, one assumes) but without enough care to remove the 1000s of staples that previous tenants put in the old puffy wall batting to hold it up “temporarily.” I’ve seen houses with water heaters installed in an inaccessible closet 10’ off the floor – in a stairwell!!! I saw a house that had clearly been turned over to a troop of monkeys to live in for awhile. Someone came in afterwards and fixed the air conditioning and the roof. As if that made up for the smell and the damage, not to mention all the monkey droppings.
I saw a house with a bloody streaked handprint on the ceiling!!!
C’mon people! If you are selling a house, at the very least you should clean up the dead birds, the feces, and the blood. Maybe it’s just me, but I think prospective buyers are put off by such things. 10 minutes in one of these places and I’m checking closets to see if I can spot the actual gate to Hell that surely must be there. My real estate agent’s voice starts getting really deep and ominous, which is some trick for a dimunitive female raised in Berkeley, let me tell you! Of course, she wasn’t really possessed. It was just her severe cat allergy. That’s another thing. If you’ve moved out of a house, take your cats with you. If you don’t want them, what makes you think I will?
Okay? Had enough? Well, no, you really haven’t heard the worst part. Do it yourselfers take note. You should not try a project out for the first time on your most important investment. Having never held a paint brush in your life, you might be tempted by the Home Depot display to take the plunge and do the job yourself. Don’t. At least, do a little personal examination first. Were you the kind of kid who could color inside the lines? If not, what makes you think that painting is any easier? Paint runs. It spills. Mostly it’ll clean up with water. You have to notice it though. Then you have to want to do something about it. Some of us just don’t have that kind of foresight and caring attitude. Many of us just plain lack the capacity to paint a wall well. Be honest with yourself and you’ll save yourself some lost equity in the long run. I’m serious. I looked at houses where the person had used a roller to cover a wall in deep dark red. They rolled all the way up to the ceiling. And the roller bumped the ceiling. The bright white ceiling. And left red paint. And nobody cleaned it off the white ceiling. It will be there for a long, long time. Oh, and let’s not forget that when you use a roller on a wall, it doesn’t actually hit the topmost part of the wall where the wall joins the ceiling. So, you have to finish that little bit at the top with a brush. When you do that, it’s a good idea to use the SAME COLOR PAINT as you did on the rest of the wall. It’s not that hard! You dip the brush into the roller tray and finish the top part of the wall. You don’t run down to Home Depot and scan the ½ price bin for a color that’s “close enough.” Oh, and don’t let the monkeys paint the place either. It is a rare monkey that will do a good masking job first.
Okay. Now we just have the really hard core stuff left. The stuff that is so beyond cleaning and cosmetics that I wouldn’t have believed it unless I actually saw it and had 3 witnesses. I know pools are a hassle. But having one in decent shape adds tens of thousands of dollars to the price of a home. Having one that obviously needs resurfacing and a deck might not add as much to the value of the home, but it’ll still pay back something. Having a pool filled in with dirt so you could plant weeds doesn’t get you anything. It takes away value from your house. That dirt is just not worth a lot. And the weeds? Well, I’m not up on that market, but unless you have a minimum 12 acres, they don’t count towards a farm exemption.
Other hard core things. A stone wall is worth more than a rotting wooden fence. In general, don’t tear down a good condition stone wall to put up a rotting wooden fence. But if you simply must tear down the stone wall, don’t leave sections of it standing where you just obviously gave up. Also, Kelly green roofing materials rarely complement a house. Your house is probably not one of the ones that it works with. What, was Lowes out of plaid roofing shingles? The paisley was on back order? Sheesh!
Oh, and sewer caps are there for a reason. Don’t use them as street-hockey pucks. Or, if you do, put them back before the next big rain. Please! Oh, and sorry about the carpet. I couldn’t get back out of your house by any other route. And you were in the house just 10 minutes before. Didn’t you notice the smell and the runoff? Maybe you really love your house and secretly just don’t want to sell? I’ll help you in that quest.
Anyway, I did see some great houses. I saw some okay houses nearly destroyed. I saw some houses that actually detracted from the value of the land they were on. I found and bought a house I love in a neighborhood I think I will really enjoy. I managed not to cause permanent physical harm to my lovely real estate agent. So, all is well and I’m your new neighbor. I hope I pass the test.
quote:This is liquid brown goo over a layer of slightly browner, slightly less liquid goo. It moves. It quivers like jello. It seems to be laughing. At all of us.
Yes. Yes it is.
It is long - but you know that. I am intrigued by the bloody handprint. Holy cow!
You're really good at this you know, even your letters to the editor have always been great.
For critique - waaaay too many details. I'd nix paragraph about not wanting to live on a lot of land altogether, you could get the gist across in one sentence. In fact, that's where I'd start if I were you - try to reduce each major paragraph point to one or two sentences only.
Quite frankly, it's too big a subject for one small column piece. You could work an entire column out of one incident alone - I daresay the bloody handprint could be a great column all by itself, how you saw it, speculation on what may have caused it, etc.
I think you have four or five column length pieces here, jumbled together. You could get a lot of mileage out of condensing the entire topic down and focusing on just one incident in particular to portray your frustration at the house searching process.
I love your writing, I always have. I just think this could have been much, much funnier if you weren't trying to cover too much ground at once.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
ditto Belle. You also have too much bad stuff all together about houses in the town to make a newspaper editor happy. I mean we know you saw some good ones too but the last thing you want to do is move in and diss a TX town. Though kat might be the better judge of that.
posted
I agree with Belle. You have Moving to College Station, Getting Acquainted with the Culture, Subtle Jabs at Florida, Becoming a Texan, Living in a Named House, and Finding a House. That might get you through the first 6 months.
Very funny, though. Did you make any witty comments when you spotted the bloody handprint?
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:C’mon people! If you are selling a house, at the very least you should clean up the dead birds, the feces, and the blood. Maybe it’s just me, but I think prospective buyers are put off by such things. 10 minutes in one of these places and I’m checking closets to see if I can spot the actual gate to Hell that surely must be there. My real estate agent’s voice starts getting really deep and ominous, which is some trick for a dimunitive female raised in Berkeley, let me tell you! Of course, she wasn’t really possessed. It was just her severe cat allergy. That’s another thing. If you’ve moved out of a house, take your cats with you. If you don’t want them, what makes you think I will?
I giggled obnoxiously at this part.
I agree with what Belle said to a point. I think you can work in most of your jabs and fun one-liners. What I noticed was that it took me 4-5 paragraphs to realize that you were discussing your house-hunting adventures. The three paragraphs in the middle about land and farming plants and/or animals are hilarious and quippy, but don't seem to belong with your main gist, which, as you stated in your second paragraph is
quote: Today, I’d like to tell you about buying a house, Bryan/College Station style.
Quite good though. Funny without being strained and jokes that everyone will get and laugh at, whether they're from TX or FL. Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
I agree with the general consensus. This is great. But break it into smaller parts and/or omit some of the tangential parts.
Oh, and I caught a typo
quote: . . . or you might need to repoint,
At least, I really hope that's a typo. Tilting houses should not have points added to them, I think. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Yes, it is funny, but it is as if I feel you are too much aware you are talking to Texans, as if you do not feel as free as you feel when writing things to us Hatrackeers. Maybe this is because you are constantly addressing them, which is a style in which you have to be careful what you say for fear of being insulting? Hm, I don't know quite how to describe what I mean.
As for the length: Why don't you offer it as a topic for a Special Edition of the newspaper? You know the one with all houses-for-sale-advertisements in it and your story being the main article? Posts: 1247 | Registered: Apr 2000
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