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Hunting for houses

By Ari | Oct 22, 09 08:56 AM

Shira and I have embarked on a new stage of our housing journey. After we read Mortgage-FREE! Radical Strategies for Home Ownership by Rob Roy, we were really into the idea of avoiding a mortgage at all costs. We figured out that we wouldn't be able to afford NYC and moved to Ithaca. We figured out we wouldn't be able to afford property alone, so we worked on forming an intentional community with other people. Then we established that that would take too long for us to bank on if we also want to be starting a family, so we focused on homesteading.

We priced out a-frames made from salvaged materials, permanent yurts, puzzled over mobile houses, tinyhomes, and kits. We made spreadsheets that carefully plot out when we could afford a woodstove and how cheaply we could assemble a DIY solar water heater, how quickly we could set up a greywater system and composting toilet so we could move in, how we could put funds into land leasing and well-drilling at once to save time and money, and other thought experiments aimed at maximizing our funds. In the end, my calculator told us the truth: Either we'd put our money into land and then slowly assemble a house from salvaged materials, or we'd lease land and plunk something down on it faster. Either way, our place would be very small. And it could take years. And neither of our affordable land possibilities seem like they're likely to pan out.

So, we're actually considering a mortgage. Seriously. A small, short-term one, but a mortgage just the same. We've got a buyer's agent, are working on our mortgage pre-qualification paperwork, and are looking at houses. Real houses. On land.

The idea of moving into a finished house (even one that needs work) with utilities and a solid roof and some land around it, all ready for move-in, is a relief. We walk around these places and I imagine a baby rolling around on the floor, a child running up and down the stairs, our cats napping in the sunroom. I imagine being able to move all of our copious amounts of stuff into the cozy space, closing the door, and saying, "we're home!" with no additional years of mud and concrete and straw and laying gravel driveways and collecting old windows to deal with. This fantasy is very alluring, even if it messes with my class consciousness, the idea of paying a bank for capital grating at my soul. Maybe this is just what you have to do, if you want to be in a house, quickly. Maybe we just have that privilege, and can do something productive and good with it rather than denying it.

This is where we're at. Who knows what my next post in this story will be - it seems it changes every day. But this time I feel like we're coming full-circle somehow. By embracing convention after running and running from it, maybe we've found a way to make convention work for us rather than against us. I feel like we understand our options and are making good decisions. Slowly, slowly.

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