“We need to talk.”
Four words you never want to hear, since they usually mean you’re getting dumped. Only this time, I was the one leaving the dreaded message on voicemail. And the person I was essentially breaking up with wasn’t some lunkhead who’d stood me up on Saturday night, but rather, my perfectly nice realtor. I’d be alone forever. Alone in a rented apartment with a galley kitchen and a neighbor who ruled the laundry room with an iron fist. Eventually I did find “The One.” But that’s jumping too far ahead. To understand how I learned that for a competent, confident single woman, buying a first home is like dating—only harder and without free cocktails—I need to start at the beginning: Paranoid. Cheap. France-lover.
For 20 years, friends and relatives had hurled those insulting adjectives my way as they tried to figure out why I insisted on living in apartments. What didn’t they understand? I’d heard enough hair-raising tales of people unwittingly buying “Amityville Horror”–type houses to risk that. Plus, the mortgage I wasn’t paying and ride-on lawnmower I wasn’t buying was more money for my “Paris Fund.” Someday, I just knew, I’d want to run away from home. And what better place to run to than Paris, with a bateau-load of francs?
“I think you have commitment issues,” a friend sighed one night as I confessed all this over drinks in his lovely, heavily mortgaged condominium. Maybe, but they all seemed to vanish soon after when I learned my building was going condo. As a longtime resident, I could buy my place at a very affordable rate. No thanks, I said. Suddenly I had nothing against home ownership. But after being endlessly buttered up by the sales team, I’d turned into the real estate version of Bridezilla. “It’s like when a guy you’ve been dating forever asks you to marry him,” I told my distraught mother. “In a flash you realize, ‘I can do sooo much better.’” Especially with the help of a professional matchmaker.
I loved my present neighborhood and there was an extremely reputable realtor there. The initial meeting couldn’t have gone better: I looked good in my I-mean-business suit. We discussed my likes (crown moulding) and dislikes (wall-to-wall carpeting). My agent compiled a list of attractive prospects and their vital stats (taxes, number of bathrooms). All I had to do was sit back and decide who won my hand!
It feels good to write.
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