The House I'll Build for the Wrens

Three years after meeting, falling in love and marrying Deb I was still selling real estate. I had reversed the vasectomy in the hope of creating our love child and shortly after signing a year lease on a beautiful home in Marpole we decided to buy our home in East Van. We'd been dating all of five months when she came to meet me at a new listing I was trying to flog. It was a Sunday afternoon and my Open House went until 2:00 or whenever it didn't look like anyone was going to come. It was 1997, the market was still soft and I was happy to have whatever company came through the door. I think I bribed her with a promise of a nice lunch if she'd drop by.

She did drop by and as she sat on the couch in the front room the warmth of the building's heritage seeped into her imagination. It still had the original wainscotting and fireplace. She firmly believed that beneath the wall-to-wall carpet lurked an original wood floor begging to be refinished. The kitchen and bath were dated from the 60's - maybe even the 50's - but it had lots of room to accommodate the two teens with us along with our hoped for addition. "We should buy this house" says she.  "Uuhh" says I, "$359,000 is a LOT of money." Buying a house was the last thing on my mind. I was still focussed on a career change and school time and making a baby and nobody else was buying, why should I?

As we talked, another couple came in accompanied by their Realtor. I gave them a brochure and answered their questions but the sales job was up to the their guy; if he was going to get half the commish he was going to have to make it happen. I was hoping for my own buyer to just walk through the door and say "I want it. Write it up". Which is exactly what happened except I was engaged to the buyer. Well the Realtor did his job and called me a few hours later to say "I have an offer". Deb and I had talked more over lunch and came up with a number that we could afford and hoped the owner would accept but now we were in a competition. The process goes something like this: You tell the owner that there is more than one offer and they get to hear all the details of all offers before deciding to accept one or proposing a counter offer to the one they like. So Deb and I had to talk some more.

My assessment put its value at somewhere around $350,000 and anything she got would be a windfall. She and her husband had paid $6,000 many years before but as a widow for many years the maintenance and size were too much for her. I didn't know what the other couple was going to offer but I knew we only had one chance to put our best offer on the table so none of the typical  '5-10% less than ask and see what happens'.  We decided to offer full price.

The other offer came in at a reasonable $345,000 and boy were they pissed. They felt I had an unfair advantage which is probably true as she was my client (I had also sold her mother's home) but the bottom line was I offered more money. Their complaint to my manager got a reasonable "They offered more money" response and quickly faded away but now the real problem screamed in my face - where was I going to get $359,000?

As I contemplated that I also contemplated on how things were developing below decks. I'd had the operation and the boys had resumed their previous size and maybe some vigour so maybe it was time? Doc says "Give it another month. I'll set an appointment for you out at UBC." I didn't know what that meant at first but the truth took shape over the next few weeks and I built up a vision of what the room would look like.

Of all the roles we play our job is the prime contribution to our identity. Well, personality but then the job and I was still working on that. I'd done some aptitude testing that suggested a lot of things but when placed against the template I'd formed from my criteria - two years of training and a job with a paycheque at the end of the rainbow - an area revealed itself. Health care was something I'd always been interested in but in my young distracted days it didn't happen. I was a father at 22 with three more right behind so my days were spoken for, but now? I could be a nurse in 2 or 3 years but my 40 year old body wouldn't take the rigours of that noble profession for long and really, I was more interested in people's mental health. A psychology masters degree could take 6 years or more. A psycho-therapist could be trained and accredited after 2 years but they were mostly self-employed or working in low-paying (but warm and fuzzy) jobs. And heck, I didn't even know if I'd be any good at it. Somebody said "The crisis line is looking for volunteers".

So I found the $359,000 and I'll tell you how. I didn't have much in the bank but I had a credit card and a commission. Deb already owned an apartment and sufficient income to maintain it but didn't have any loose cash lying in wait for an opportunity. I'd written the offer subject to approval of a building inspection and got the report a few days later. There were suggestions on there about the roof and furnace and I came up with a number, $9,000, to get the house through its biggest expenses in the near future. I went back to the owner and said "Here's the inspection report. It says the roof and furnace are about to go. If you knock $9,000 off the price I can use that money to get it done and my growing family won't be living with rainbuckets and without heat next year." She said she'd already decided in advance of receiving the offer that she was prepared to accept $350,000, exactly what I'd told her it was worth. I suggested that instead of lowering her price she pay a bonus of $9,000 on top of my commission. That would give me access to the money I needed for repairs and help keep property values in the neighbourhood up which would make all her neighbours very happy.

It also gave us a downpayment for the house. The credit cards took a beating as we paid Property Transfer Tax, appraisal, assessment and legal fees. And the loan to value ratio was still too high for us to qualify for the payments. And unless we got the mortgage for 75% or less, it would have to be insured by CMHC and the cc's were bursting at the seams. Deb's mom gave us a second mortgage that was registered on title and reduced the first mortgage to an affordable level. We hoped there was a little more life in the furnace and roof but kept the rainbuckets and a load of firewood on hand as we headed down another road.

Going back to school fulltime with a fulltime mortgage was going to be a challenge. We knew we couldn't retire until it was paid off so set an aggressive path. With uncomfortably high payments we could have it paid off in 15 years (Freedom 55). That didn't happen. But lots of cool stuff did that made the extra 2 years of mortgage payments worthwhile and I'll share test day and the rest of the steps I took to redefine myself later.