There were a couple of small deficiencies (like the shower in the upstairs hall bathroom, which works, but not quite perfectly) and it was oddly refreshing that our real estate agent took those matters seriously enough to immediately draft an addendum to our contract requiring the sellers to resolve the issues before closing. I couldn’t help but mentally contrast this to five years ago, when I bought the current residence, which was near the height of the real-estate market hysteria in northern VA. Back then a house would go on the market on Friday and by Sunday night the sellers would be reviewing a dozen bids: first they would laugh and discard anyone who actually wanted a contingency home inspection, and then of the potential buyers who waived the inspection the highest bidder usually won out. I insisted on a home inspection contingency for the townhouse – I take no chances when it comes to hyperintelligent insects, potential electrical fires and/or hellmouths – and I’m pretty sure I only ended up winning my bid because the townhouse was a former rental property being shown empty and didn’t attract any competing buyers. In any case, this time around I was going to insist on a home inspection again, but on some level I expected that, as long as the report was not stamped with a big red RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, I would just take the minor flaws in stride and deal with them later. So to have pretty much everyone on all sides say, “No, no, for the money you’re paying for this house you should get everything in good working order” … logically I know it shouldn’t be odd, but it is.
The whole family – my wife Nisse and son Wendell and me – trekked out to the new house for the inspection but due to the time-consuming thoroughness of the enterprise our roles quickly became established: I followed the inspector around getting the play-by-play, and Nisse kept Wendell occupied and out of trouble. Mostly Nisse supervised while Wendell played with the two dogs who currently live in our future house; these dogs give great lick-y kisses (something our dog doesn’t do at all) so Wendell was totally delighted by their attentions. For the better part of three hours Wendell really was an angel, but towards the end as we were congregating in the kitchen Wendell spotted a lone banana in the fruitbowl and decided he wanted it very much. His mother and I weren’t comfortable stealing food from people whose house we’re trying to buy, so we made every effort at distraction to fend off the threatened temper tantrum. I thought I was doing all right at shifting Wendell’s focus when I got one of his random-pictures-and-words books and started flipping through it with him in the living room, but he quickly skipped ahead to the page devoted to foods and pointed insistently at the picture of … the banana. Apparently the boy thought it had somehow slipped my mind that he had been demanding a banana earlier, but even though he’s a pre-verbal child he was happy to use a visual aid to get me back on task. I thought that was pretty funny. He never did get the banana, and I’m sure his therapist will be hearing about that cruel deprivation years from now.
So another major milestone has been met and now we just need to finish our official mortgage application, make it through closing, find a renter for the townhouse, and pack and move everything we own. Truly it is the most wonderful time of the year.
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