Buyers Market

If you are going to be from Portland, you have to have a Portland address. So I decided I was done living in “Not Portland” and needed to buy yet another house.

This time I didn't want something tiny. It might be all the rage but I have many kids and am not ready for that level of Portland yet. I also didn't want something gauche, I wanted to host backyard BBQs and game nights. I also decided against anything too opulent, I might be a wealthy blogger but I also pride myself on being accessible and relatable to the common man/woman. I don’t want to slap my common friends in the face with a mansion in Forest Park or Southwest Hills. Have to stop getting my house on the front page of the paper.

To really be from Portland, I’m told you needed to live on the Eastside; where true Portalders live. I picked NE Portland for its mid-range cost and ease of access to downtown. It’s screamed common man as I drove past gravel driveways, brown lawns, and burnt-out cars. The hunt began. A self-imposed spending limit dedicated to my next residence. I need to spend my personal wealth carefully. I may retire from blogging. And one should always diversify one’s investments, as they say. After looking online for what seemed like an hour, we landed on a few homes to visit. 

We quickly learned there were 2 types of houses in our price range, great house + crappy lot or crappy house + great lot. It was hard to look at some of these houses; one we entered the floor sloped to the center of the home. As I was forcing the sagging doors open, I knew that the house was not calling my name.

Moving on we kept hunting. After another grueling hour, we found more, and more, and too many. We looked at very small ones with bathrooms only accessible through the garage. Large ones with no yards. Fixer-uppers with great foundations and nothing else. Perfect ones in the wrong zip code. Ones with garages bigger than the house. Ready to move in ones is there was no yard and a 300/month HOA.

While we talk HOA. The man is not going to tell me what to do in my own home or on my own land. If I decide to paint my house hot pink, I should be allowed to. I mean back to gauche, I wouldn't, but on principle, I should have the freedom to. My house, my choice. This thankfully eliminated half the house options and unfortunately most of the nice ones. Turns out HOA's keep you from letting your house go. But no matter, there was a gem for us out there somewhere. 

The hour turned to afternoon and evening fell quickly our house hunt. We were so utterly drained. Shopping for stuff is fun but all the arbitrary restrictions made it hard. We called it a day and went to bed

Not giving up I continued to look for months. Every couple of minutes I would refresh the app, hoping this time our dream home would appear out of thin air. We looked on Zillow, Home Snap, RedFin, Xome, Trulia, Realtor (your welcome), and came up empty-handed. Just as all hope seemed lost, we found it, the home of our dreams! Just in time for the long weekend, so after all that waiting, we waited some more.

The worst part of buying a house is all the waiting. Wait for the offer to be accepted. Wait for the appraisal to complete. Wait for the inspector to check the house. Wait for the counteroffer to be accepted. Wait for the bank to relook at the application even though we are pre-approved already. Wait for that bank to process the application. Wait for the bank to look at all the random documents you have to resubmit because "things change". Wait for photoshop to export my screenshots as PDFs on my slow computer because the bank won't accept "screenshots" but will accept PDFs. Wait to accept all the cash gifts from my faithful blogger followers to not jeopardize the process. Wait for the title company to get everything from the bank. Wait in the lobby because you showed up to early for closing.

It went as smooth as a colonoscopy and felt about as invasive. But my journey is now complete. I can now blog "in" Portland.