shishnit.org

In early 2008 we began to seriously think about buying a house. The home we were living in was extremely overpriced and over-valued. I imagine a lot of people felt that same way about a lot of houses at the time. I wrote about our experiences with our previous landlord here who wanted to sell us the house but we could not afford the $315,000 that he was wanting at the time and tried to purchase his son’s home…which was also extremely overpriced (and is also still not sold today).

I blogged again about my viewpoint on our home purchase a few months later and my viewpoitns 9 months after purchasing it here. I was still feeling relatively good about our choices.

Then one day I googled my old leased house (the one that I really really loved and wanted to buy for the entire year I lived in it) here. The picture dissapeared from that blog post so here it is again.

That house really urked me because I loved it. It was perfect in a lot of ways. Today out of curiosity I looked up that house again…just to see what time has done since last September. I know everytime we’ve driven by it (and we have to make an effort to do so) it has had a for sale sign out front. Today I found out that the house was foreclosed on. I felt like Karma had finally had her say. That’s what you get landlord guy….that’s what you get for raising our rent on us when we were attempting to purchase your son’s house. (a house still not sold either!)

And then I found it….the for sale ad. 116,900!!

It’s now selling for less than we paid for our house. L They wanted 315k when we lived in it two years ago. Oh if only I had waited 2 entire fucking years…..lol as if. Someone got fucked on that house and it wasn’t us. Thank you Jesus. But I still wanted to barf right in that open toilet right there…the same one I peed in for an entire year of my life right before going to bed at night.

But then oddly….I started to think about our house. The one we did buy. The one that we’ve had to fix several things in. The one that needs new air conditioning duct work as I type. The one that has had termites!! The one that needs a trench dug out around the addition. The one that’s driving me nuts right now. And I’m still happy because I’ve had some fantastic moments in that house with the big huge library. The one that isn’t a real estate transaction or a memory captured by google maps but the one that is our  HOME sweet HOME.

The value of our house is plummeting.  PLUMMETING I TELL YOU.  On the Island of Poredom that’s disturbing.  I have watched our home value plummet according to zillow.com since the day we bought it.  SINCE THE DAY WE BOUGHT IT!!  The municipal taxable value dropped a whopping 58,897 in the last year between 2008 and 2009.  The sales comparison numbers that the property tax appraisers office gives states that we’ve lost 16.5k in sales comparable numbers. (whatever those are since value is really in the eye or pocket of whomever might want to purchase our home might we want to sell it)

The assessed value is 35k less.  35k LESS in two years!!  Even zillow is kinder than that (or they are just liars..guessers, etc.) providing a number that’s a mere 30k less than what we paid.  *sigh*

The island of poredom.  I’m glad I love our house becauseI’m sure we’re not able to move anytime soon. I’ve watched those numbers plummetting since I signed the mortgage and got the keys.  Florida, you are a sad state.  I can only say that if we wanted to move, we’d have to be landlords and our monthly mortgage is still less than paying rent on a crappy 2 bedroom apartment.

So imagine my small delight today when I noticed my escrow account on my mortgage has been re-analyzed and the monthly payment is now $18.47 less per month because it appears that our propery insurance is exactly the same but our taxes have gone down by 221.64 a year.  Let’s think here a moment.  When your home value plummets your taxes do go down.

Hmmm it’s not often that a bill goes down and not up and so I was happy about this reduction in the monthly payment.  Wow 18.47 more in our pockets of poredom. Yippee!!

Errr….*screech the record here* 30-35k loss in value and a monthly savings of 18.47???

Fuck.   That is just not right.  And 18.47 won’t even buy me a book (14.99) and a cup of coffee (4.24) unless I have a coupon.  Double fuck.

Tonight I was playing with google map’s.  Out of curiosity I googled up our old address.  Circa April 2008.  We lived in this house for a little over a year and we loved it.  I really woulda killed to buy that house at the time.  They are now selling it for such a low low price too…..  However, I’m happy about where we are and how things worked out.  Chloe would have ruined those hardwood floors by now.

The thing is….when I googled that old address via google maps and asked for a stree view…I got this old shot…with our vehicles in the driveway. We had good memories in this house, and yet we suffered through all that infertility nightmare in that house too.  It’s now for sale for $149,900.  When we were looking to buy they were telling us “oh about $315,000.  Which is what the owner paid (property appraiser records)….but wow…half that price now that we’re all back in reality.

I still miss that jacuzzi tub however…..and we did have some really good times there.

I grew up in the seventies….a baby of the the seventies. My great grandmother was Italian and she only spoke Italian. She was a big fluffy woman, stocky and stout and completely Italian thru and thru. She wore sturdy clothing and big burly shoes and a hankerchief in her hair….what we refer to as a babushka. She was a a proud “studda bubba”. Most people from the Pittsburgh area will know exactly what I mean, yet my great grandmother was not Polish….she was Italian. Studda Bubba means old ugly lady….and yet many people use that terminology to refer to an older Italian or Polish woman and the term was used often in an endearing manner.

She was amazing and yet I have only fragmented memories of her. She smelled like an old woman and yet on her it was this intensely amazing scent. She worked hard and she came to America and was an immigrant. She had an amazing home that if I could now replicate would make people insanely rich with happiness now. She had the old Singer sewing machine the old aluminum chairs, her home was fantastic but it has taken me 30+ years to figure this out entirely.

She passed away when I was 9 years old. I have flash images of memories associated with her. When her home was being dismantled years later my Mother asked me what I wanted from her home. I immediately recalled my most complete memory. My grandmother had a cookie jar sitting in her dining room on her Singer sewing machine. She spoke so little English and yet when she saw me and my siblings arrive she would always yell out “Yate a Cookie!…Yate a Cookie!” and direct us towards her cookie jar. That jar did not hold my grandmother certainly but her gesture and that memory somehow was enough for me to always embrace the intense fact that my grandmother loved us. My mother got that cookie jar and put it on my great grandmother’s hutch in her dining room. Now I have no idea what happened to either of those items since I have not spoken to my mother since I was 19.

The other day while scrolling through E-bay….I caught sight of this cookie jar and my heart broke…..and then it burst forth with so many happy childhood memories of my great grandmother in her studda bubba attire…yelling out “Kristeeeeena…Yate a cookie yate!” My grandmother was a big woman…with a smiling face…a smiling soul. I never knew her or much about her as she passed when I was 9. However….she impressed upon me something sweet and profound in her mere gestures…as she could not communicate via language.

Her’s was a language of sharing. Her’s was a language I still understood. Although I could not communicate with her I loved her. I loved her mere presence and image. I do recall her Italian and the way she spoke with my still living grandmother who spoke Italian fluently with her.

My cookie jar arrived today and I intend to buy lots of Stella D’oro cookies like grandma always had! I cannot eat anisette without getting homesick!

Check out my “Cookie Log”… (that’s whats written on it in red)

I was quite pleased to realize after she arrived that she’s brown and red….and matches my tan/red kitchen theme. She even matches my granite countertops.  Something I had not even considered….it was totally an emotional purchase and now she totally fits in. Do people even keep cookie jar’s anymore? Do you have one?? What’s the story behind your cookie jar? Do you think someone will want it someday? Do you offer your grandkids, your visitors….cookies when they arrive at your house??

That’s my deceased father’s brass pepper mill too. Man…man oh man how I miss him. It can sometimes overcome me in intensity. He was an amazingly quirky and smart man. I recall many things and laugh inside often. That’s HIS actual pepper mill….he had one and lost it in the divorce..it was legendary…that argued over pepper mill. When he passed it was the only thing I wanted to salvage….only because it meant everything to him. I didn’t realize it would mean the world to me too.

I’m a big believer in Karma. Remember Mr. Spamfuck, my former landlord who wanted to sell me his son’s house and therefore raised our rent the minute we balked at the high price of his son’s house?

Well…that house we leased for 1 year and fell in love with and were told we could buy for a mere $315,000 is now on the market for a still overpriced $169,900. Zillow says it’s worth a bit less perhaps. I have to laugh now. The landlord’s sons yellow house I rather liked….still hasn’t sold either.

Don’t remember what I’m referring to…..check old blog entry here

And here is Mr. Spamchuck’s house currently on the market for a whopping $145,500 less a year later. And irony of all irony’s….Skip is trying to sell it for him.

I love my house…I’m grateful that it all worked out for us. I truly am.  I held out for something that fit our financial plan and felt right when I walked in.  Felt right as in on all levels.  Right space, etc. I walked into my current house and knew it was right for us.  I am merely pointing out that Karma exists because these people treated us rather poorly. In the past few years each and every time someone treats me bad I just sit back and say little to nothing because Karma has a way of working things out.

Rick also bought this from Craig’s list for me for my birthday (at my request) and got a great deal. It was a birthday gift from Rick. Our TV doesn’t fit but we’re in the market for a smaller flat screen anyway. I had this mammoth TV when Keith was 4 years old. I just can’t bring myself to ditch something that’s been working all those years without a glitch. I also won it in the Big Divorce of ‘03 and the ex got the little crap TV that promptly broke while moving.  (ha..Karma again!)  This is in the library.

This room used to have this little TV stand that Rick brought home for free…it worked for the purpose but had little to no storage and I was in desparate need of some more storage for so many things without a home.  Like that printer we never really use, etc.  I hate the way the big TV covers up that window…but that window faces the back patio…..and its never open anyway.  Not blocking a great view…so to speak.  The books are all hanging on the wall still…not stacked on top like it appears.