Teardown. Gordon Young
abruptly turning, crossing the street, and cutting through the parking lot behind the Durant-Dort building, no doubt covering the same ground that GM’s creator, Billy Durant, had traversed numerous times about a hundred years earlier.
I took a deep breath, found a shady spot on my front steps, took out my phone, and called Traci in San Francisco. She reported that our cat, Sergio, had invaded the neighbor’s house again, peeing in their basement, then sacking out on one of their beds and refusing to leave. He was relentless in his quest to acquire new territory, an impulse I was beginning to understand. The previous night Traci had gone to a party filled with other writers and reporters that had degenerated into the typical group lament over dwindling jobs, bad editors, and low pay—the sort of unrestrained bitching that often defined our lives as journalists.
I tried to explain how one day in Flint contrasted with the cold, superficial friendliness of San Francisco, where I sometimes felt like I could go long stretches without making a real connection with anyone besides her. I’d already been fretted over by Berniece; confronted, scrutinized, and ultimately accepted by Rebecca and Nathan; embraced by Rich’s mom; and called a muthafucka by the birthday boy. It was all a visceral reminder that the anonymity of big-city life in San Francisco and the stereotypical laid-back character of California had their drawbacks. If you weren’t careful, you could float along on a sheen of lovely views and trendy pop culture distractions. Ironic roller derby matches at the Kezar Pavilion, graffiti masquerading as art in the Mission, and the mesmerizing fog rolling over Twin Peaks. At the risk of sounding like a touchy-feely Californian, somehow Flint felt more real, like I had permanent ties here that I could never make in San Francisco. This must have come off as an overly enthusiastic endorsement, because Traci cautioned me to give Flint a few weeks before I came to any big conclusions. “I miss you,” she said before we hung up. “The house seems empty without you.”
I lingered on the front porch, resisting the urge to go inside and needlessly rearrange my belongings. There was nowhere I needed to be. I tried to sit back and appreciate the fact that after all the planning, worrying, and soul searching, I was really in Flint, well on my way to buying a house. But I couldn’t quite silence the small voice in the back of my head whispering that this was a very bad idea.
2
Bottom-Feeders
Looking back, the desire to own property in Flint was rooted in my decision to buy a house in San Francisco. Despite the yawning economic, geographic, and meteorological gap between the two places, they were united by one thing: I didn’t have any business owning property in either place. By nature, I am deeply skeptical when it comes to most things that involve spending money. A few friends have jokingly used terms of endearment like “cheap bastard” and “tightwad” to describe me. (At least I think they’re joking.) But my frugality seems to disappear when it comes to real estate.
Traci discovered this six months after we gave up our respective apartments and moved in together in 2003. We had a nice two-bedroom flat up a steep flight of stairs on the western slope of Bernal Heights, with built-in bookshelves, an elegant nonfunctioning fireplace, and a back deck, all set to a soundtrack of muffled salsa music that drifted up from the bars on nearby Mission Street. At $1,850 a month, it was reasonably priced by the outrageous local standards. We were happy. We were in love. Why mess with this arrangement?
Well, I couldn’t help thinking about all the money I’d handed over to the landlord of my previous apartment on Potrero Hill, roughly $130,000 in rent over a decade. And I’d always felt a little like a visitor to San Francisco. I liked the idea of Traci and me becoming official residents with a real stake in the city. I was in my forties, and I wanted to be a homeowner. I foolishly believed that by combining the meager incomes of two journalists we might have a shot at owning in one of the world’s most expensive markets. Our household income was around $90,000. Starter homes in the San Francisco neighborhoods we found acceptable started at around $500,000. Neither of us did that well in math back in school. We were writers, after all.
Our friendly landlord at the time, Michelle, was a real-estate agent who was, of course, very encouraging. She thought my plan was brilliant, especially since we wanted her to be our agent. Her husband was a lawyer who grew up in Muskegon and wore U of M T-shirts, so there was a Michigan connection. Already I was basing housing decisions on extraneous emotional attachments.
In the spring of 2004, Michelle put us in touch with a mortgage broker named Ralph, who called to set up a meeting after we’d submitted our financial information. He was a calm, conservative-looking guy with a brush cut, a mustache, and a suit. After congratulating us for having good credit scores and living entirely debt-free, he politely said he couldn’t imagine how we’d ever be able to afford anything in the city. He half-heartedly said a studio condo might be a possibility. That’s right, one room for me, Traci, and our two cats—Sergio and Purdy. “I can’t see you getting a loan big enough for anything larger, and even if you got it the payments would eat up more than half your take-home pay every month,” Ralph said in a sympathetic but firm tone. “Now’s just not the time for you to buy.”
I had an instant flashback to my grandfather sitting at the wooden desk in the corner of his dining room back in Flint. He was a real-estate agent, and he would often work from home when he wasn’t at the office, making calls on the hulking black rotary phone and filling out paperwork while my grandmother and I watched TV in the living room after dinner. In my memory, he frequently talked people out of buying houses. “I think you’d be much better off if you saved your money and kept renting,” he’d say. “You’ll be a lot happier with money in your pocket. You don’t want that mortgage hanging over your head, young man.”
Ralph was saying the same thing. He was being straight with us. Now wasn’t the time. I was momentarily disappointed, but when I left his office I felt a huge sense of relief. I’d given it a try, and it hadn’t worked out. Now I could stop worrying about it and enjoy the summer. Traci took it in stride. “Oh well,” she said. “We’ve already got a great apartment.” It was a different story when I called Michelle. “He told you what?” she said, clearly annoyed. “I don’t think that’s accurate at all. Let me give you the name of another mortgage broker.”
The new guy, let’s call him Jimmy, was down in San Jose, the sprawling city an hour south that languished in the shadow of sophisticated San Francisco. He called after we sent him another thick batch of financial info and told us not to worry; we were already preapproved for a $551,000 loan. He sounded confident, if not a little giddy. I had more or less resigned myself to not buying, so his breezy disposition made me uneasy. I told him what Ralph had said. “No idea why he’d tell you that,” Jimmy replied. “That seems a little unprofessional, but I’d never criticize another broker.”
Thus began the summer of house hunting. Make that the summer and fall of house hunting. Traci and I spent every Saturday deciphering the property listings like code breakers. Sundays and numerous Tuesday afternoons were devoted to open houses. That was our routine for six months. At first we tried to look presentable, but after a while the long slog wore us down, and we opted for comfortable clothes—cutoff shorts and T-shirts. We told ourselves we might appear to be anticorporate Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who had struck it rich creating a useless bit of software or a doomed website. Besides, looking fancy wouldn’t do us any good when we got outbid on a house. And we got outbid five times. Or was it six? Once by $129,000. And once by someone who made an all-cash offer. (Probably some dude in cutoffs.)
We started to recognize the other bottom-feeders as we made the rounds of anything priced at $499,000 or below. Knowing that everyone overbid, this was the only price point we had even a remote chance at. It appeared that the same forty people without enough money to buy were looking at the same low-end properties every week. I started exchanging the manly chin lift of acknowledgment with guys and friendly hellos with women. They were our competitors for these properties, but the fact that they kept showing up meant they were as unsuccessful as we were. I developed a low-key camaraderie with them, although we seldom said more than a few words to each other.
There were times when well-dressed yuppie couples—women in dresses, men in suits minus the tie—would roll up in a