#househuntersdetroit Back Story

I realized that while some of you have heard the back story to our recent home purchase, many haven't. This mostly stems from the fact that I didn't share our home-buying journey on the blog until we were already several months in.

Regular readers and those who have had the [mis]fortune of hearing me tell stories in person know that I'm verbose. I like a lot of details. I feel that stories start further back than most people. So know that some of this won't seem related, but it fits in somehow in the mess that is my head.

Let me start by explaining that I'm cynical about the housing market. I came of age into the Recession - Rebecca and I graduated in 2009, into one of the worst job markets in recent history. We had just watched the housing crisis: foreclosures spiking and home prices plummeting. I didn't believe then (and still don't believe now) that a home is a good financial investment. It's not liquid, the price can fluctuate, and where does one live if the home is sold? The irony is that if we'd had stable income during the housing crisis, we could have purchased a home for a song. A great home. (The home we just closed on sold for about $10,000 in 2008. We paid several times that.) We might have felt differently about the housing market and homes as investments in that case. But home prices have been rising (and I'm mostly happy about that, really.)

So I kind of thought that if we ever bought a home, it would be a long time from now. Maybe after Rebecca finished residency, or when her loan forgiveness contract is up.

Men plan. God laughs.

Our church started the small group program/series Brave a little less than a year ago (as in, this time last year, I had no idea I'd be a homeowner now). For those of you unfamiliar with the general concept of a Protestant small group series, here's what usually happens: The leadership of the church identifies a Bible study or conversation that the body of the church would benefit from. People sign up in existing groups or form new groups (based on a number of factors including family status, availability, sexual orientation, etc). Then they meet, usually about once a week for maybe 4-8 weeks, to discuss the topic. Some studies are in a book. This particular study is free and uses an app. (While it isn't perfect by any means, it's one of the best of these I've done in a while.)

The Brave app starts with reflection and then asks a series of questions to help determine a heading. Rebecca and I both started with career-oriented headings. She wanted to find a way to live the principles of her faith more fully at work. I was wondering if my job at the time was the right fit. Neither one of us felt that our housing situation was on the table.

We were blessed to join an LGBT affirming group, which meant that many in attendance were gay, and all in our group took for granted that Rebecca and I are helpmates. As we moved through discussions with this wonderful group, we started seeing that subdividing our lives into personal, professional, housing, etc was inauthentic.

And then a friend starting posting about land bank auctions in Detroit. As I've mentioned before, Rebecca and I have dreamed for several years now about living in Detroit eventually. Key word: eventually. But some of the homes on the land bank open house list sounded lovely, and it was in the Boston-Edison historic neighborhood, and the weather was perfect that day, so a friend and I (Rebecca was working) went to view a few homes.

The first was amazing, stately, enormous - with a Pewabic tile fountain, grand staircase, everything I associate with a Detroit historic home. And it needed to be fully gutted and redone, Rehab Addict style. In other words, it fit the standard narrative of the Detroit housing market. So while I thought it was beautiful and hope that it gets the attention it deserves, it had no sway on my feelings about real estate.

One of the other homes we visited, though, was in much better shape. A lot of the issues appeared to be aesthetic; it was a much more manageable size, and had a really great floor plan. Oh, and a huge porch. I'm a sucker for huge porches.

Seriously, though. Can't you see yourself here?

I like big porches and I cannot lie. You other sisters can't deny, when a house comes up with a shaded place and a great big neighborhood in your face, you get love.

Yep, that's another porch off the back.

More than that, though, I saw us in it. I could see how we would use it, move through it, find joy in it. I didn't expect to feel that way. I didn't want to feel that way. But I told Rebecca about it. It resonated with her. So we started investigating.

It turned out that in our current situation, buying via the land bank wasn't financially prudent, for reasons I could explain in another post if anyone is interested (seriously, let me know, it's long and detailed and most people wouldn't care). This house was out.

And for a little while, I thought, well, we loved that house, but that feeling won't come from any other homes. It was just that one.

We kept thinking about it though. The thought, the dream kept rising up again. So we got a realtor, and got pre-approved for a mortgage, and selected some areas of the city we thought made sense. Yes, only the city. We didn't want to buy a home anywhere else. None of the suburbs, not out of state. Just Detroit. When we did a cost-benefit analysis, the decision to look in Detroit didn't make sense based on only the financial factors. But I've already explained that we don't view buying a home as a good financial investment. We view it as a place to live belong.

We viewed a few homes and then found one in the University District that instantly felt like home. (David, if you ever close, be prepared for my spook to chill in your Florida room forever.)

Don't even try to argue that it doesn't look like it's straight from a fairy tale.

This Florida Room may be the happiest place that actually exists for me.

See above note about porches.

More Florida room because happiness.

It was the right amount of fixer-upper and smaller and less grand than most homes there. (For real, University District is super elegant and amazing.) We put in an offer, which was rejected, so we looked at some other homes, put in an offer on a different one, which was also rejected, while sort of behind the scenes our realtor kept bargaining with the seller of the first.

(As an aside, HGTV REALLY needs to do a better job illustrating how difficult it can be to make an offer, get it accepted, and make it to close. Like, guys. You're not guaranteed a house just because you like it.)

Eventually, the seller came to a workable-ish agreement with our realtor, so we signed a purchase agreement near the end of June, putting our close date near the end of August. We had an inspection done, stuff started coming to light, we pulled public records, we went back and forth, and the process dragged out. At some point, we started realizing that something wasn't right. The seller seemed very reluctant to, well, sell. He was unresponsive, hadn't executed his portions of the purchase agreement, and our original timeline was shot. So with great sadness, not only for ourselves, but for the lovely home that would remain vacant and unmaintained, we gave up.

I would say this is an aside, but I've already inserted the disclaimer that very little seems like an aside to me - I happened to find out that a friend of a friend is buying this home. We were able to give him some of the documents that we'd paid to have drawn up. And while I doubt it would have felt like a waste anyway - we learned so much about buying a home and what was important to us - it definitely felt like there had been a purpose. Conversations with him have confirmed that this was not the right home for us, but it's comforting to know that someone is trying to close on it.

We gave up. And for a few days, I wanted to give up on the home search. Wait until we had more cash on hand, or Rebecca was done with residency. Until our schedules matched up better.

And then two friends needed to stay with us at the same time, and one of them couldn't and had to stay somewhere else, and I remembered why we were trying to buy a home in the first place. It was to be able to share our space, to host and love people, to put down roots somewhere. Once I realized that, giving up wasn't an option.

Our realtor started looking for more homes for us in earnest. We viewed several, put in an offer on one (it was rejected too), and then, one Sunday, we went to see something like five different homes (I made up a chart for everyone viewing each home to fill in, including the address, pertinent details, likes, and dislikes, because I was worried we couldn't keep them straight).

Miraculously, everyone agreed that of those homes, the one we ended up buying was the best. It was a remarkable find by our realtor - a floorplan that matches our lifestyle, enough space to grow but not enough to get lost in, in need of TLC but not a total gut-job, in a neighborhood we hadn't initially considered but came to realize was just right (we're not actually fancy or elegant enough for the University District) - and the rest is history that you can read on the blog already.

Since it's January 1st, I'll throw in a life lesson: a lot can happen in a year. I haven't even brought in the mold infestation, or the fact that my marriage is now considered valid in all 50 states (something I thought would have happened well before it did), or a bunch of other events.

If you are in pain or despair, hold on and know that in a year, things could be different. If you are experiencing joy, savor it, let it fill you, so that if things change this year, you have a beautiful memory to remind you that life has not always been sorrow. Very little in the future will be the same as now.

Here's to the end of 2015, and the start of a new mystery.