The Saga: Moving Part III

Ok, so we had our THIRD buyer fall through! Just last weekend. Do you how hard it is to sell a house THREE times? Well, now we have to sell it a fourth =)

Actually, this last situation made me upset because we had a low-income family trying to obtain the house.  A single mother with her mother and daughter wanted to move in.  They loved the house, it was a good layout for them, and they were using a state aid program that was reputable.  In fact, they only needed to put down $500 for a deposit and Massachusetts was willing to come up with all the rest of the asking price we wanted.  Amazing.  And then, when we finally felt great about helping someone in need and accepting the welfare program they had, the buyer’s father drove by the house and talked them out of it.  He said that the neighborhood was not good enough for them, for the money they were going to put in.

Ok first of all, the state was putting up the money, not them.  Second of all, the neighborhood is fine.  It is cool, quiet, safe, flat, and family friendly.  Third of all, the father isn’t the one living in the house.  He didn’t get to see the inside (which is what the buyers liked the best) and isn’t even married to the mother anymore.  Fourth of all, this is a low-income family in an upper middle class suburb who shouldn’t really have that excuse.  I was so upset.

I am definitely getting tired. But I suppose it is just part of the process. I mean, we really want to move and confirmed that point. And if prices continue to fall in Boston (and they probably will because housing is inflated about 76% in the last five years alone according to statistics), then it could take a number of years to come back up to our break even point. We could be stuck.

Why move from Boston you say? Isn’t Beantown the coolest? Well it is. Except that things are so expensive. The average house in my neighborhood sold for $389,000 just two years ago. And our car insurance is like $1000 per car too. Plus, it’s like a Big Brother state the way the laws are set up and the government watches your every step. I’m not kidding! We have two police officers in our neighborhood who watch for people fudging on their building permits, an appraiser from the town who stopped by last week to walk through our house and make SURE we hadn’t added any square footage without notifying the office, preschool teachers who visit your home routinely to make sure you’re not too weird, cops who will snag you if your inspection sticker is ONLY FIFTEEN DAYS overdue, real estate laws that prevent you from evicting your own tenant if you are a renter, immunization laws which require your child to have a physical every year to the day and all the newest vaccines (including chicken pox) to attend school, courthouses who will fine you if you flash your lights at someone who’s going too slow on the highway, insurance companies who won’t insure you if your fence has not been professionally surveyed to make sure you’re not over the town boundary line at the front of your yard, libraries who do not give even one day grace period on your returns, restaurants who won’t let you use their bathroom unless you buy something, contractors who must report uncoded repairs you haven’t made, and worst of all… police departments who refuse to help you if your car battery dies on a hot summer day—even if you are pregnant with three toddlers in the car! (They’ll tell you to take the problem to the fire department).

So all these reasons and more chalk up to good excuses to leave. Please hope with us that we’ll get out before the kids graduate