Quixotic Quest for Dream Home Ends in ‘L.A. Deal’
My husband and I began our search for a house in August of 1989, and like Don Quixote, we had an impossible dream--finding a house in the $250,000 range on the Westside.
At first we looked at homes in the “real” Westside--west of La Cienega--but we quickly realized that unless we successfully held up every bank in town and found a rich relative ready to bequeath us his or her fortune, we would be out of luck.
We enlarged our search, pushing eastward and southward. Before long, we found a two-bedroom, one-bath home with a big kitchen and nice living room. The “back yard” was a 5 1/2-foot swath of grass.
It was under $250,000, but we just couldn’t get excited about less than 1,200 square feet and the lack of a back yard. We said no thanks, but retained the agent to be our buying agent. (We eventually referred friends to the house and they ended up purchasing it.)
That house presented the last simple deal we were remotely interested in. Thinking that condominiums would be more affordable, we began looking at some of the newer, “better” ones in the area between Olympic and Pico and La Cienega and Robertson where condos were sprouting up faster than mini-malls.
If you enjoyed early Howard Johnson style, they were great. Paper-thin walls, flimsy hardware, spacious master suites and windows the size of portholes. Often, they were three or four floors with narrow, steep stairs. You might save money on the Stairmaster at the gym, but we couldn’t see ourselves actually living in environments that bore such a stunning resemblance to gerbil habitats.
During this time, we spoke to an attorney friend who had just purchased a home in Pacific Palisades. He suggested that, together, we three buy a duplex. We would live on one floor and he would rent out his floor.
For the next five months, we went through complex negotiations just to get our three busy schedules in sync long enough to view the same duplexes. We were determined to spend no more than $500,000, wanted to be north of Pico and preferably in a three-bedroom so that our partner would be able to ask for a higher rent.
Our first offer was a “backup” on a side-by-side duplex on Masselin Avenue near San Vicente for which the asking price was $450,000. We moved too slowly and lost that one to the first offer.
Other offers soon followed. We found a Spanish-style beauty out of House Beautiful whose owners were splitting up. But then they decided to reconcile. Darn.
In another case, we put in an offer at $490,000 while the owner insisted she wasn’t willing to go below $520,000 “because that’s what (her) neighbors had gotten.”
As time passed, it became clear that we and our partner had different objectives about the duplex-partnership agreement and we parted amicably.
We eventually resumed looking for a house on our own and headed south again, past Pico, an area call “black” by our white friends and “white” by our black friends.
By this time the market had “softened.” We found a great little two-bedroom Spanish house in the area and felt our hearts flutter. That turned out to be a probate that wasn’t supposed to be on the market at all.
Before it was taken off the market however, the selling agent insisted that if we were interested, that we make an offer “right away because two other parties are interested.” She also stipulated that we use her as our buying agent. We refused.
Next was a nice three-bedroom, two-bath with a sun room and a Jacuzzi in the back yard. It was owned by two single men who had bought it a year before--and never even lived in it. The asking price was $320,000 and we offered $300,000. They turned us down, turned down another offer and instead rented the place out in hope of the market’s turning “up.”
It was now May, 1990, and the housing slump was starting to have an effect.
On the day before we were leaving for an overseas trip, my broker had me see a “great deal.” It was. Two mature lemon trees in the back yard. Three big bedrooms, formal dining room, blue-tiled kitchen and a roomy living room, perfect for the baby grand piano we had inherited from my husband’s grandmother. All for a mere $310,000. I loved it. As soon as we returned from our trip, I rushed my husband over and he loved it too. At long last--our home!
But it was not to be so simple. The husband and wife were getting a divorce and to make the plot thicker, the husband had run off to Hawaii, where he had declared bankruptcy.
In our offer, we were careful to add a clause ensuring that our loan “clock” wouldn’t begin ticking until the bankruptcy court in Hawaii had approved the sale, and that if the court didn’t approve of the sale, we would be able to get out of deal.
We were pleasantly surprised when our offer was accepted, but we needed a lawyer friend of ours to send faxes and place cajoling calls to the divorce attorneys, bankruptcy attorneys and federal bankruptcy courts to make sure everything was copacetic.
In the midst of this, the sellers’ agent was also going through a divorce from--of all things--a divorce attorney. As my mother said, “Quite the L.A. house deal.” Eventually, everything worked out and we successfully closed escrow.
We were able to lock in a good fixed-rate mortgage at 10.25% on Aug. 1--the day before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and threw the market a new curve.
We’ve been living here for a month. Everything is out of the boxes and the clerks at Builders Emporium have already come to know us on a first-name basis. Our cat has adjusted well to his new home and stalks our back door.
Heck, it’s nothing for him--he wasn’t forced to find it.
