House Hunting Is Out of Season
Are you frustrated? Confused? Not sure who to trust? Do you feel inferior and unworthy of full membership in society? Do you wonder what all your hard work has accomplished and whether you’re on the right track in life? Worst of all, are your personal failings so obvious to you that you recount them late at night as you’re trying to fall asleep?
If so, you’ve probably been house hunting in Orange County.
Had pioneers confronted this market, the country never would have been settled. They would have bagged the whole idea somewhere around Indiana. Manifest Destiny is a nice concept, but not at $400,000 for a smallish condo with no yard.
I’ve been house hunting for several weeks but have called off the search. I realize this brands me as a big fat loser, but I consider it the wise choice after
1) not seeing anything I liked,
2) deducing that everything is overpriced and 3) reading a number of articles about the
uncertainty of the local market.
I notified my real estate agent last week, citing the key reasons.
Her reply: “I think you chickened out.” You can tell we’ve become close during our traipsing around, because usually only my family talks to me like that.
Feeling about 2 inches tall, I told her it wasn’t a permanent decision, that I just need more time to look around in the upcoming months and see where the market goes. Knowing I made the same ill-fated decision 10 years ago not to buy, she begged me not to make the same mistake again.
To assuage her, I said I fully expect to be buying something in Orange County. Someday. Just not now.
Still, I wonder: If God indeed has a plan for me, why must it be limited to a thousand square feet for a two-bedroom?
Everyone has his own home-buying equation, and mine never balanced. There was but one constant: Nothing I looked at seemed worth the value. Tax savings and potential appreciation aside, I never saw a place I wanted to go home to for the price being asked.
Having owned two homes 20 years ago in Colorado, I know full well the implications of my decision: I am choosing to rent.
To some, that renders me unfit for societal participation.
It is a burden I must bear.
As one reader informed me months ago when I raised the possibility of continued renting: “I have long since thought of you as a mental midget, but this takes the cake. It is renters like you that haven’t the forethought nor the conviction to buy into our community. If you are too stupid to look back at what you have paid in rent over the last 16 years and look back at home prices 16 years ago and do some third-grade math, well, then you can’t be helped.”
Mental midget. Chicken.
Are we leaving anything out?
Meanwhile, the apartment choices are narrowing. With 30 days left to vacate my current spot, the decision on where to rent comes in the wake of an article last week on rising Orange County rents.
Perfect. That just added to what already had been just a ducky experience -- looking at too-small apartments for too much money. It’s probably a tipoff that things aren’t going well in the apartment hunt when each place includes a mental calculation as to what furniture will have to be dumped because it won’t fit.
Friends and family say it’ll all work out. Translated, that means: Please stop talking about it. Just make a decision and shut up.
Not surprisingly, the only true solace comes from the “apartment people.”
Trying to be helpful, one of the apartment managers told me the complex was full of friendly people. “People will probably come knock on your door and introduce themselves,” she said.
Of course. Misery loves company.
Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com.
