The Fear of Home Buying

I remember vividly the first time I bought a house. I was a single, young man of 26 and I had just spent a year working what they call “field service” work, to make the extra money necessary to buy 2 things. (1) was a downpayment on a house and (2) was an engagement ring for my then-girlfriend. Well, my relationship with my girlfriend did not survive my “field service” work, but I decided to go ahead and buy the house anyway. I was sick and tired of apartment living, and I had also discovered that with many women, owning a house was waving a giant flag which said, “Dependable Man for Nesting.” When you are an unattractive man, you need all the help you can get. This proved to be the case, when my next serious girlfriend became my wife.

In any case, I called up a realtor, and spent a few weekends trying to convince him that what I said I wanted in a house, was actually what I wanted. I don’t know why this is a difficult thing, but each time I have used realtors since then when purchasing homes with my wife, the same difficulty arose. My haughty demands at the time were that I wanted a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 2 car garage and a yard with one decent tree in it. This was primarily because I had been told those kinds of places resold the best, which has certainly proved to be the case.

I loved my first house, I think because it was the only house I got to pick (see aforementioned note about getting married) and had all the things I wanted. House purchases after that have all been compromises, and a husband should never underestimate how important it is to his wife for her to get all the things she wants. I have never quite understood this, but the way the house looks, its upkeep, and its decorations are reflections of the woman of the house; even if the woman has a very poor spatial sense for laying out rooms. I have never received a compliment for how nice my house looks, like my wife does. The closest I get is, “Nice-sized house”.

When we finally found a suitable house for me, the next thing I had to deal with was a loan officer telling me I could afford to spend more money on a house, and didn’t I want to do that. I thought it was an odd request at the time, but the next homes after that, house-hunting with my wife, every house purchase was the most possible house I could afford. Frankly, home buying when you buy less than what you can afford is a lot less stressful.

When I see poor Michael Patterson in tomorrow’s strip of For Better or For Worse, all stressed out because he is afraid of the “life-changing commitment” of buying a house, I cannot relate in the slightest. Frankly, I don’t know what his problem is either. He has been saving 5 years to buy a house. He has at $20K of financial encouragement from the Sobinskis to help him. He spent the last 2 years with terrible neighbours who actually burned down the apartment in which was living, and that apartment was falling apart before it was torched. He should be, by all rights, eager and anxious to get into a house. And yet, his wife and his dad have to put together all this information for him, just to convince him to do it. It makes Michael Patterson look like a fearful, cowering, indecisive simpleton. At least he’s not egotistical this time.