July 17th, 2022. A week ago…

Tuesday was a beautiful day in Catonsville. We got out and voted for perhaps the last time in this district, but everything is up in the air – and truly you never know what to expect. All the neighbours that we don’t know very well came out to take photos on the front porch. There are issues, but honestly I quite like Living here.

You remember Sunday, right? Smiling with friends while trying NOT to think about the news we’d just gotten…

A week ago we got a text from our landlord : “Quick question. Don’t freak out but we’re thinking about selling the house. Don’t freak out. We’ll talk.”

Then we had to put our happy faces on and go run my open mic and celebrate Kristen’s birthday as if we hadn’t suddenly gotten the news that someone might be thinking about evicting us…

Monday we had the Conversation which, was frankly, pretty anticlimactic. “Thinking about” sounds like it’s a pretty solid plan : our landlord (s, actually, two brothers: one owns the property, the other is the guy we’re familiar with, who admins and takes care of everything) are ready to retire from the Lording, and the brother that actually owns the property is ready to sell the house, buy an RV and go a’travelin.

A beautiful sunset in our backyard here in Catonsville, MD.

Going to vote, my head was ringing with that tune “signs, signs, everywhere it’s signs… ” I know this isn’t what Les Emmerson was referring to, but I’m a literal rob.

I get this.

The market makes it an attractive time to sell, wanderlust is real, age is inevitable. They’ve treated us well over the past TWELVE+ years and so I know not to take it personally, but all the positives that make it an attractive time to sell are the negatives that make it an unattractive time to buy… and though Kristen and I have often danced with the idea of buying a home, we’d never gotten terribly serious in hunting – just this year we changed up our accounting with the idea that we wanted to look better on paper for acquiring a mortgage, but unfortunately that was with the idea of prepping this year and next for hunting whence the market “cooled”.

And it’s strange to think that all these decisions which we’d kinda pored over might end up being moot for wherever we might need to move. (well, Kristen pored, I copied her homework mostly and then pored a LITTLE). If we don’t get to Live under the regime of the Orphans’ Court I elected I guess I don’t actually care, but it feels like everything we’re doing right now is in the context of an uncertain future.

Renting in this area has gotten absurd. Our deal was sweet, but it was always weighted by the fact that we trusted our landlord. There seems like no way in which that’s anything but a back up to the back up plan.

In any case, the past week has seen us sending emails, making phone calls. We filed a mortgage application this weekend and this week we’ll probably find out IF we have a budget, if we’re going to have to figure out some other sort of solution… just how much our Life’s about to change.

I GET that many people do this. Hell, maybe many people are even first-time home buyers in their late forties, like we’re hoping to be. But man – as storms grip the country this summer and knock trees into roofs, flood friends’ basements, as we think about our own experiences with water heaters (call the landlord!) toilets (call the landlord!!) and lawncare (call the landlord!!!) – being on the hook for all of that is terrifying – and that’s before you get into the idea that taking out a 30 year mortgage at my age means I’ll be in debt till I’m 77. Average Life expectancy in the U.S. is wavering around 78 so… IF I can get a mortgage I’m likely signing documents to be in debt till the day I die.