Goodbye Potter’s Field

Home ownership is a key theme in one of my favorite movies, It’s a Wonderful Life, and as I called our current landlord this morning to officially let them know we won’t be renewing our lease, I couldn’t help but recall the scene where Mr. Martini is moving his family into their new home courtesy of a loan from the old Bailey Bros. Building & Loan Association:

“No more we live like pigs in this Potter’s Field!”

While our apartment is far from a slum, we’ve definitely outgrown it, both physically and psychologically, and more than any other step we’ve taken in the home buying process so far, making that phone call felt like the most concrete affirmation yet that we’re really doing it. There was also a bit of the bittersweet there with the realization that, after a combined 17 years, I will likely never live in the Bronx again.

Of course, It’s A Wonderful Life has an answer for that, too:

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Toys R Us Kid no more

One of the primary things that separates the men from the boys is home ownership. More than marriage or fatherhood, buying a home is arguably the biggest commitment the average person can make, because you can always get divorced and disown your kid(s), but hell hath no fury like a mortgage payment scorned!

I’ve never bought into the real estate as investment theory because first and foremost, a house should be a home, so I would never take out anything other than a traditional mortgage. (A VA loan, actually, officially the best thing to come out of my service in the Army.)  Way too many people are paying a hard price for overreaching a few years ago when their sucker adjustable rates adjusted sharply upwards and the promise of easy re-financing turned out to not be as easy as they were told it would be and their homes were suddenly worth less than they paid for them. When you buy a house to live in it, and buy one that’s within your means, barring some unexpected life-changing event, you’re going to be all right.

With our lease up at the end of June and the market in New Jersey having tanked compared to three years ago when we were looking last time, we decided to give it another shot and spent the last two weekends checking out more than 20 houses, an enlightening variety that ranged from good solid maybes to “good luck that with that!” We put a lowball bid on one last week but didn’t like the counter-offer and, after a second viewing, had some serious misgivings about its short-term prospects and didn’t put forth a second bid.

Then, completely unexpectedly, our realtor pulled a Ty Pennington and showed us a house that wasn’t on our list and was just far enough out of our price range to make us sad.

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Know Hope

April 22nd is a long way off and my nerves are a little bit frayed right now so I’m going to step away from politics for a while here on the blog and focus on some other stuff (see below).

For a final bit of perspective on the meaning of last night’s results, I cede the floor to the inimitable Andrew Sullivan:

Obama supporters should not be dismayed.

Obama has a tougher, nastier opponent in the Clintons than he does in McCain. If he wins this by a long, grueling struggle, he will be more immune to the lazy, stupid criticism that he is some kind of flash in the pan, he has more opportunity to prove that there is a great deal of substance behind the oratory, he has more of a chance to meet and talk with the electorate he will need to win in the fall.

I think the argument for Obama is easily strong enough to withstand the egos of the Clintons. The more people see that her case is almost entirely a fear-based one and his is almost entirely a positive one, the more he will win the moral victory as well as the delegate count. In the cold light of day, the bruising news that the Clintons are not yet dead seems less onerous.

Know hope.

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Primary Predictions: Prepared for the Worst

I’m fully prepared for the highly likely possibility that Clinton wins both OH and TX tonight, albeit narrowly, and if so, will rightfully declare that her campaign will continue through Pennsylvania’s 4/22 primary. The “comeback kid” spin will be dizzying, again, for the next 24 hours, despite the reality being that she won’t actually have managed to put much of a dent in the overall delegate gap, the previous benchmark her campaign had set to measure her viability when they thought this would be finished back on February 5th.

Delegate counts aren’t a sexy story, though, and the media is still engaging in a silly moment of self-loathing thanks to Tina Fey, so the Obama campaign will have their work cut out for them over the next seven weeks.

Assuming tonight doesn’t result in an unexpected blowout by either side — and all spin aside, that’s really what Clinton needs to legitimately justify her staying in the race — here’s what I think Obama’s plan of attack will [should] be to deliver the final knockout blow in Pennsylvania, if not before:

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Longest. Week. Ever.

There's a request of my NY-area readers at the end of this, but first, the preamble. "Life, she is a roller coaster; for every thrilling dip, there is an uphill slog." I just made that sagacious little quote up, because it pretty much sums up last week. Long story short, we've squashed the Bloomfield house search - several reasons, among them the lack of full-day kindergarten, which we didn't realize until AFTER our bid was beaten on the one house - and for now, the overall housing search itself. Turns out fate had a Plan D we didn't know about.…

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"Highest and Best"

"Pop quiz, hotshot. How much do you want this house?" Highest and Best. That's the rules of the game for our bid on the house we want. All offers will go through the listing agent for presentation tomorrow afternoon and the seller will pick the "highest and best" of them, with no counter-offers being made. "Highest" is self-explanatory; "best" represents the variables like mortgage status, closing date, etc., potential tie-breakers in case of equal "highest" offers. We're good on that side of the equation, now we have to figure out the other side without getting ripped off. Fucking seller's market!…

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Adventures in Real Estate

What a crazy week. We flip-flopped so much on our housing situation, I felt like John Kerry by Sunday night!Faced with the likelihood of stretching ourselves unacceptably thin to afford a decent house in Bloomfield, we started working on Plan B, an apartment in a Manhattan neighborhood with a good elementary school. Our logic was that the rent would still be cheaper than the mortgage and would include such things as heat and hot water, and was partially driven by issues connected to India's speech-delay and the difference in available services between NY and NJ. She's been progressing noticeably over…

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