Skipping Town

We got the house, our glorious house, and here it is: My lesson in real estate: let’s not do this too often. We got the house, but we had a couple of weeks of craziness to get here. After a day of seemingly normal, successful back-and-forth with the seller on a Tuesday two weeks ago (we offered; they countered; we countered back), negotiations went haywire, and suddenly no one was responding to our bid; it seemed the sellers were trying to find another buyer and that we would ultimately be forced to make a blind bid. It was all a lot of real-estate jostling, with our broker angrily threatening to withdraw our offer, accusing the seller’s broker of acting deceitfully, and the seller’s broker responding with a lot of explanations and mild panic. All we knew by late the next night was that we likely weren’t going to get the house unless we offered asking price or higher. Which we just couldn’t do. So I spent that night crying on the couch, feeling robbed, because if we’d just accepted the...

On Sunday, we headed to Montclair, crossing our fingers that we’d find something we loved that would turn our eyes from the Maplewood fixer-upper. We saw five houses, and, alas, none were perfect the way that the (unperfect) fixer-upper is perfect. We saw one beautiful home that had an inground pool (terrifying to me, with babies around), no garage, and no playroom. We saw a large, newly renovated home that was on a very busy road and had a tiny yard. We saw an interesting farmhouse with nice woodwork and a great yard, but the ceilings were low, the upstairs felt very tight (no hallway), and the whole place smelled intensely like the dog that was barking at us from the screened-in porch. (Note to future self: When selling your home, get it thoroughly cleaned first.) We saw a gorgeous, charming Victorian that had everything we wanted—but it was surrounded by apartment buildings and two-family rentals. It’s been on the market for six months, so clearly we’re not the only ones scared off ...

Fueled by urgency to see as many houses as possible in order to get our minds off the fixer-upper—or to decide definitively that that’s the house we want—Andrew took Friday off and we headed to Maplewood to continue our house hunt. First we went back to the fixer-upper and looked at it with one question in mind: Could we live with it as it is, for a little while? We were surprised to find that the answer was yes, with the exception of the second-floor bathroom. Our love for the house renewed, our broker took us to several more houses. The most promising one was a four-bedroom, fully renovated home with all the high-end finishes a home buyer could want. The rooms were quite small, but there was a large finished basement and a decent-sized yard. Beautiful kitchen, wonderful bathrooms, even a master en suite. And…we didn’t like it. It felt airless, suffocating. It was too perfect, too done, just too finished. Our broker said there will likely be a bidding war for his home, but we won’t be...

We returned to New Jersey today to see some houses in Maplewood and South Orange. It was not a successful day. We saw three houses, and we didn’t like any of them. One had a weird sunken living room with two or three stairs to all other rooms of the house—a true toddler death trap. And there was a new addition off the kitchen with depressing-looking linoleum that just seemed bleak and soulless. We didn’t even look upstairs. Another was enormous—like something out of Gone with the Wind—with all the ornate details that go along with a “period” home. Our Ikea furniture would look just…silly there. And the realtor said the heating bill is probably around $15,000/year. It's rare when even I will admit that a house is too much house for us. The third was sterile, too newly done, and though it was pretty in the technical sense, it left me cold. The realtor said it was on the market because of a divorce, so perhaps that was part of the unhappy feeling of the place. The dislike was purely o...

Today was our first official day of house hunting: it’s now March, and if we see a house we love, it’s within the realm of possibility that we could, and should, buy it, since we need to move out of our apartment by the end of July. We saw three houses today—and loved all three. Today may very well have been the beginning and the end of our search. We saw one in Maplewood, one in Glen Ridge, and one in Montclair. All three were enormous—six bedrooms, finished basements, large decks, decent yards, living room, extra living room, dining room, etc etc etc. Space! We can afford them all, more or less; we’ll only have to eat ramen noodles for about twelve to twenty-four months. One package a day. Split four ways. Anyhoo, the Maplewood house has fully captured our imagination. It’s on a gorgeous street, one of the town’s loveliest, and is just huge. Old and huge. It has all the charm and character we could ask for. The downside: it needs a LOT of work. A couple of things—like asbestos tiling...

We set off this morning for the last of our exploratory day trips. Our destination: more of Connecticut, and two of the River Towns. First up was Stamford, which we did not like. It’s a city, and had that stressful city feeling of too much traffic, too few sidewalks, no place to park at a storefront McDonald’s. And we really, really needed that storefront McDonald’s. After a run of several successful (i.e., no-motion-sickness) car trips, Lucia threw up pretty much as soon as we hit the Stamford city limits. And this was epic vomiting. It was everywhere. All over the carseat, all over her clothes, all over Cat and Elmo, some on her boots. It gushed down the neck of her sweater and around the back of her neck. It was horrific. And it was so cold outside, so the poor sweetie was shivering, her teeth chattering, as I changed her clothes in the trunk while Andrew cleaned up the carseat. I’d gotten lazy this trip. I’d still brought a change of clothes and a big box of wipes (we keep paper to...

We embarked on another exploration today. We’re coming to the end of these new-town investigations—there’s one more day trip we might do, but now we’ve seen all the options at least in passing and can start focusing in on our top choices. Today we drove north to Scarsdale, Chappaqua, White Plains, and Pleasantville. Scarsdale was pristine and lovely—like a magical fairytale hamlet—but those fairytale houses were so close together it was like someone had fitted them together into a puzzle. There were no yards to speak of with many of the properties, and everything was way out of our price range anyway. For some reason I’ve always associated Scarsdale with the kind of suburbia that would inspire Richard Yates—engendering a particular sort of existential despair rooted in disillusionment, isolation, burst dreams. I have no way of knowing whether this is accurate and suspect it is not. But with house prices in the $1 million+ arena, we probably won’t find out. There were some pretty proper...

Early this morning, the four of us set out in the car for more explorations of possible places to live. On the agenda today: Mamaroneck, Rye, and Port Chester, in New York; and Darien, Rowayton, and Cos Cob in Connecticut. The outstanding school districts in both areas are extremely appealing, the commute humane, the taxes much more palatable than New Jersey. We expected our trip today to shake up our top new-home choices. But despite our enthusiasm going in, we were surprised to find that we didn’t much like Mamaroneck. There were some beautiful homes, but it seemed remote—and, in an odd way, there was a malaise hovering over the town. I didn’t see a cozy suburban life there—I saw isolation. Perhaps the gloomy day had something to do with it, but neither of us could quite imagine ourselves being happy there. Same for Port Chester. We felt differently in Rye: a really cute downtown, beautiful homes. It seemed livelier somehow; and we could better imagine a home there. It became clear ...

It’s begun: our house hunt. After saving for the past four-plus years, we are ready to buy a house. Well, we’re ready to start the process of preparing to buy a house, with the goal of moving by the time our lease is up on August 1. That seems like a really long way away, but it’s not when you factor in six to eight weeks for closing. So it’s time to start the hunt. Today we drove out to Maplewood, NJ, a pretty town that’s surprisingly close to NYC—we got there in about half an hour, which means Andrew and I could conceivably come into the city to do fun things on nights when we have a sitter or visiting grandparents. The commute for Andrew is humane, and the community for me seems, from preliminary observations, very nice. We were anxious about making the drive with both kids, but they did great: no carsickness from Lucia, only minimal fussing from Greta, and a manageable amount of whining from Lucia that focused on her desire to go either home or to a playground. Both kids ended up a...