The Great House-Hunt

This winter’s mild weather conjures up reminiscences of the “Great House-Hunt” in last winter’s miserable ice and snow.

My oldest son Matt and my new daughter-in-law Melany started looking for a house a year ago February, just a month past their New Year’s Eve wedding. Two years ago, Melany moved into the Edgewater co-op apartment Matt bought in July of 2008. It’s a beautiful little nest with views of the Hudson, but it was much too long of a commute to her teaching job in a Morris County middle school. So, once they recovered from their wedding and sent out the thank-you notes, they started house-hunting for a place midway between her job and his job in Newark. Since I have an interest in real estate and have written about real estate topics for the past couple of years, I volunteered to go along with them.

We started with open houses in Morris County. The very first place we looked at that sunny but cold Sunday early in February was a tiny Denville Cape, maybe 50 to 60 years old. Pretty much vacant, it looked like an estate that the heirs had upgraded with nice neutral paint colors, refurbished wood floors, and new countertops, tiled backsplash and new gas stove in the kitchen. The dining area – punctuated by big, bright windows – looked as if it had been the back porch in its earlier incarnation. The living room – the room you immediately stepped into when you passed through the closet-size front vestibule – was dominated by a beautiful fieldstone fireplace, but the room itself was tiny. Matt said he couldn’t fit his new sectional sofa in the room. (This became his rallying cry for dismissing certain houses as we went along: “Couldn’t fit my sofa in here.”) There were 3 tiny bedrooms, one of which had a staircase to a carpeted loft, a very odd configuration.

The backyard bordered the river, and I could imagine flooding and the need for flood insurance. Right beyond the river, separated by a fence, was a highway. The home’s price: $282,500.

It looked to me like a “starter house”: A house you could live in until your first child started to walk and maybe you were pregnant with your second. (Matt was very clear about the need to have his own “man-cave” and/or home office, and the third bedroom might have to take on that role.) And it seemed like a lot of trouble to get a mortgage for a starter house, go through closing and settle in, just to have to do it all over again in a few years.

We looked at a house with a first-floor master bedroom sheathed in dark knotty-pine: it was like going into a batcave. And another house with 4 bedrooms, 2 full baths, a finished, usable basement (read “man-cave”), a kitchen with a beautiful enormous center island of light marble, two-wood-burning fireplaces and a 3-season room with sliders to the deck and in-ground pool on 1.75 acres. Price:$439,900. But many parts of the house seemed tired. (Note to sellers:Many of you have gotten the message to de-clutter, repaint rooms in neutral colors, upgrade the kitchen, and get the oil tank out of the ground. Kudos. But those window treatments in teal and coral that you paid good money for in the ’80s look dated today. Bare windows are timeless.)

We ended up at a very interesting home in Randolph opposite a Little League field. Nice new kitchen and nice flow to the dining room. Two bedrooms and a bath downstairs and three bedrooms upstairs. Master bedroom had a Palladian window and cathedral ceiling. Master bath had a skylight. And a third full bath upstairs. On more than an acre. Price $429,000.The real estate agent said the owner was back living in her native Croatia.

But, as the agent pointed out, there was no interior access to the basement except through a hole in the floor of the mudroom. There was no deck or patio and no garage. The agent asked what Matt and Melany did for a living, and when Mel said she was a music teacher, the agent said that she had been a substitute teacher.

We struggled our way back over the ice-and-snow-encrusted driveway. As we were plugging the next open-house address into the GPS, we saw the real estate agent running along the treacherous driveway in her heels. She was coatless. She stood midway on the driveway and looked around.

I lowered my window and asked, “Are you looking for us?”
She said, “I could drive you around to some houses. I’ve got my lock box key.”
“But don’t you have to finish your open house?” I asked.
“I’ll close early,” she said. “What kind of house are your son and his wife interested in?”
“Well, they liked this house,” I said.
“They do?” She seemed utterly surprised. “Really?”
“It’s nice and it’s updated and they liked the two rooms that could be offices on the first floor,” I said.
“You could come back at 4 pm when the open house is over, and I’ll take you to some more houses,” she said.
“I don’t think that will work out for us today,” I said. “But we’ll call you to set something up next week.”

I told Matt and Melany she would probably be a good real estate agent for them because she seemed anxious and would do a lot of research and she seemed rather guileless so she would be less likely to lie.

Melany said she seemed like a classic substitute teacher:No class of her own, no curriculum of her own, and relying on the vagaries of others’ schedules. I guess that can make for a good real estate agent.

The following Saturday, we meet Realtor Diane for a tour of homes in the Randolph-Roxbury area. I had suggested that Matt and Melany get themselves pre-qualified for a mortgage, so they had an idea of how much they could spend. Armed with the pre-qualification and a good-sized down payment, they were looking at houses in the $400,000 to $450,000 range. The mortgage broker said they could afford more, but they felt it would be better to look in a lower range and –as Suze Orman recommends—live below their means. Anyway, taxes on houses in the $400,000 to $450,000 range seemed to be about $12,000 a year, which, as I pointed out to them, meant another $1,000 a month on top of the mortgage payment.

Over three or four different weekend days, we looked at houses in Roxbury, Randolph and Succasunna in Morris County and then moved out to Byram and Sparta in Sussex County. We found that the farther west you go, the more house (and the newer house) you get for the money. (And clearly, we weren’t looking at the priciest houses in places like Chatham and Mendham.) We saw one house with a beautiful new kitchen but the rest of the house was unrenovated. We saw another house from the 1970’s with the most exquisite great room –soaring stone fireplace surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows, but the rest of the house was sad and insubstantial. “If only you could just live in the great room,” my son Matt said. Melany rolled her eyes.

A couple of houses were up steep hills. This gave the homes commanding birds'-eye views, but with snow on the ground, the driveways were extremely treacherous. Our Realtor Diane called one listing agent as we sat at the foot of a hill upon which stood a house for sale.

“How do we get in?” Diane asked. “The driveway is not plowed.”
“It is plowed,” the listing agent insisted. “My husband was just there this morning.”

But alas, it was not plowed. (We’d seen a couple of unplowed driveways, which meant the sellers had moved out or the bank owned the house, or both.) My son and Realtor Diane said they would try to climb the steep, unplowed driveway on foot. Melany and her mother and I decided to stay in the car. We watched as first Diane and then Matt slipped and fell. They slid back down and announced it wasn’t worth it.

Another extremely beautiful house had its front door on one street and its back door and driveway up a hill from another street. From the pictures on the Internet, we couldn’t believe this 3500-square-foot house –priced at $450,000-- hadn’t been snapped up. But when we got to the home’s driveway, we saw a sheer 45 degree slope and a narrow passageway shoveled clean, with mountains of snow on either side.

“Oh, I don’t think you should drive up that driveway, Diane,” I said to the Realtor. “You’ll never get back down.”

But Diane was nothing if not intrepid. Reckless even. She gunned her engine, and smacking this way and that against the piled snow like a pinball, the car achieved the top of the drive.

It was a beautiful 12-room house on 3 levels, with intricate moldings, beautiful flow of space, great lake views, soup on the stove in the modern kitchen, and a fire crackling in the fireplace in the bright family room. Four bedrooms, 3.5 baths, office, study, 5 skylights, and Palladian windows.

“This is my dream house, ‘ said the thirty-something woman owner. “My husband’s in artificial turf, and his company transferred him to the Midwest. He’s out there already. I hate to sell.”
“But don’t you get stuck up here when it snows?” I asked.
“Nah,” she said, flexing well-developed biceps in her tank top. “It’s easy to go out and shovel.”

As we got back into the car, Melany said, “No way we’re buying this house. My family could never make it up the driveway.”

And we backed our way down the drive, smacking and getting stuck in piles of snow on the way out.

Just a little while later, we were backing out of another driveway, and we heard a dragging sound, as though Diane’s car were towing a downed mailbox, or, even worse, a lifeless body. Matt got out of the car, and discovered Diane’s front fender was dangling by a sliver of metal, probably as a result of the dust-up with Mrs. Tank Top’s driveway. Diane ripped off the fender and tossed it in her trunk.

We saw another beautiful house that Matt and Melany would certainly have considered, but the house was located just yards from massive overhead power lines.

House-hunting is really like a sociological investigation or a reality show. Either you’re told something about the seller’s motivation and circumstances, or the house tells you. We were in one house –half renovated, half not -- where the dad’s police uniform was hanging on a drying rack in the kitchen. The kids’ rooms were cheerily painted (baseball stripes on the walls of the son’s room), but the master bedroom looked uncared-for. Probably a divorce.

We visited another home where the wife had raised her family, divorced, and married a new love. She and the new love decided to chuck North Jersey and move to Puerto Rico. That was a very romantic and adventurous motive for selling.

We saw a number of short sales, homes for sale for lower than what the seller owed on the mortgage. I advised Matt and Melany to avoid those houses, because I had done a number of stories on buyers who waited months for the seller’s bank to approve the short sale. Also, with a short sale, you buy a home as-is, with no negotiating to repair defects in the home.

On a Friday afternoon before Matt and Mel went on a weekend vacation, Matt and I looked at more houses while Melany finished her school day. Matt found their house.

Located in a neighborhood of executive-style homes in Sparta, the 4-bedroom, 2.5 bath house, built in 1993, sold for $635,000 in July of 2005, and $438,500 in September of 2000. It was listed at $450,000.

It had beautiful floor-to ceiling windows in the kitchen and family room overlooking a woodsy, rock-terraced and landscaped backyard.(Deer routinely visit the home's acre of land, to look in the windows and gaze at the humans inside.) The kitchen probably had the nicest layout of any kitchen we’d seen. The first floor also held a dining room, living room, office, family room and half-bath next to the two-car garage.

The entryway was the typical two-story-with-chandelier space and a curving stairway leading to the second floor. The master bedroom had a big bathroom renovated in about 2008, done in rough-cut tan stone and brown tile. The family room had a two-story brick fireplace and a staircase running up the side wall to the second floor. Matt’s sofa would definitely fit in the family room.

And, best of all from Matt’s point of view, there was a nicely finished basement that could serve as man-cave.

We parted, and Matt went to fetch Melany for their weekend vacation. Once I was home, I called him while they were still on the road. They had seen on a mobile app what I saw on my laptop: The Internet listing proclaimed it was a short sale. Which Realtor Diane had never mentioned.

But the listing said the bank could grant approval for the short sale within 48 hours, because the loan was owned by a community bank that had never sold the loan to investors.

Melany and her mother toured the house the following week. Matt and Mel decided to bid, offering slightly below the home’s selling price in September of 2000.

It took the seller’s bank a week to decide to approve the short sale. But, all in all, it wasn’t long. Matt and Melany learned a lot about home maintenance from the home inspector. They moved in at the end of April.

There is some sadness in a short sale. This was somebody else’s dream home and clearly they lavished a lot of money on renovating the master bath. The sellers were also divorcing. It was the demise of a number of dreams. Matt and Melany think they’ve seen the sellers drive by the house on occasion, perhaps pining for their lost reality.

But Matt and Melany are enjoying developing new routines together in a new home and new area. Melany bought a baby grand piano so she can give private piano lessons at home. They’ve bought a lot of gym equipment for the finished basement, so they can exercise at home. This summer, I bought Matt a sit-down mower for his 29th birthday. The little boy who obsessed over various childhood geegaws now obsesses over the patterns he mows in his grass.

They are also refinancing the mortgage, because interest rates are even lower than when they first closed on the house. They’ll save a point of interest, and a couple of hundred dollars a month.

I just checked on the status of Mrs. Tank Top’s home, the beautiful 3-story Roxbury home up the killer hill. The house, which was listed at $450,000 when we saw it a year ago, finally sold for $369,000 on January 19 of this year. Maybe the mild winter sealed the deal.

Aunt Peggy and Uncle Whitey

February 1,2012: I called my Aunt Peggy today for her 88th birthday. I sent her a card a few days earlier. But I made a commitment to myself to call her, because it is something my sister Nora would have done. Nora died October 29 of complications of ovarian cancer. I would always say to Nora, “Aunt Peggy left me a message. Would you call her back?” Aunt Peggy is a big talker, and Nora had more patience than I.

My Aunt Peggy is the last of my mother’s sisters, the last of the whole family really. My mom. Aunt Helen, Auntie Ann, Uncle Mike and Uncle Pat are all gone now.

I loved my mother’s family. I know that Mom – when she was around 20 or 21—would bring home whiskey and deli meats on Friday night to their tenement home on East 96th Street in Manhattan to “make a party.” I hear my mom’s words in my head, “Let’s make a party.” It’s a testament to her optimism and to her love of family.

My mother especially loved her mother and her baby sister Ann. I have letters she sent Ann when Mom was first married and in the Coast Guard with Dad during and right after World War II. She clearly loved her baby sister—who was around 14 years younger—and gave her lots of fashion advice.

Mom’s relationship with Aunt Peggy..who was 2 years younger than Mom..was more complicated. She thought Aunt Peggy was a hypochondriac, always complaining about imaginary ills. (But I would have to ask my Mom in heaven, “Who is still alive at age 88?")

And Aunt Peggy is still very clear in her thinking. My mother died of Alzheimer’s, but Aunt Peggy knows the name of the new place where she has moved, and she know what state my husband was visiting when I spoke to her a month ago. Bravo for you, Aunt Peggy.

My Aunt Peggy lived a half-block from our old home in Bergenfield, NJ before we moved when I was age 6. (We moved a couple of blocks east, closer to Tenafly, in 1959 or 1960, I think.) I remember Aunt Peggy making me incredibly smooth tuna fish salad in her blender when I stopped there for lunch when I was little. I remember exceptionally orderly built-in cabinets in her second-floor bedrooms built by Aunt Peggy’s Polish father-in-law. I remember my 2-year-younger brother Lou stopping at her house after he bolted from kindergarten, saying he had to help my mother hang diapers to dry.

My mother was uncomfortable with her sister Peggy. When we stayed overnight at Aunt Peggy’s house for some reason, my Mom remembered Peggy joking about all the little shoes in the mudroom. Mom had 6 children, Aunt Peggy two.

But Aunt Peggy is all we have left. And, blessedly, she still has her memory and some sense of perspective. Last year, I called her to put together a family tree and she remembered everything.

When I called her today, she said her husband had been through surgery overnight for blood clots in his legs. She calls him Uncle Walter. We called him Uncle Whitey for his very pale hair.

I, strangely enough, remember my Uncle Whitey when I was working in television in my mid-twenties. (That was 30 years ago.) I saw him in the subway in Manhattan joking with his friends. He was a printer for magazines then. He did not see me. I didn’t want to interrupt.

Aunt Peggy says the doctors say she has to agree to allow for amputations of his legs (because of blockages) or he will die. She doesn’t want to agree to amputations, too much for him to go through. She says, if we believe in prayer, we should pray for a speedy death. I remember Uncle Whitey in the subway, and know I shouldn’t interrupt. Prayer is what you do when there is nothing else to do. Prayer is powerful, and you do not control it.