Rant #3,213: Life

Life goes on …

Around 45 to 50 groups of possible buyers have seen the house, and more are coming each and every day.

Some of the potential buyers are quite nice and respectful of the fact that my family still lives in the house.

They say hello, they talk with us while they are looking at the house while we are there, and they are respectful of the fact that we are still living in this house while they look to buy it.

Others are not as respectful.

They bang on the walls to see how thick they are—I guess—and I wonder if they actually put their fists through the walls, will they reimburse us for the cost of fixing the hole they created?

They leave doors open, the garage door open and lights on when they leave, having no comprehension that there is a family still living there.

They park their cars the wrong way on our side of the street—we park with the front of the car pointed west, and they park right in front of our car with the front of the car pointed east, even within full view of every other car on the street parked like our car is parked.

They have no regard for other people’s property, as they park in such a way that they are literally blocking our neighbors’ driveway, parking directly behind it.

They completely ignore us when they come into our part of the house, saying out loud things that you would never say if you were in someone else’s house.

They try to get into the house without a broker, which is something that is not permissible on either our broker’s end or with my family (since the house is in multiple listings, any broker can show the house, but like a cop showing his badge before entering a house, we need to see a broker’s card before they enter).

They touch things that they should not touch, feeling that if they are looking at the house, it is their right to touch everything in the house, regardless of whether we are still living there or not.

And without permission, they take their own cellphone photos of the house, which is an absolute no-no. We have photos on the wall of myself and my family, and for security reasons, we don’t want those photos taken, even though the photos do not focus on these pictures.

And then we have the big talkers, who right in our face want to know how much we currently pay for rent and then, when we refuse to tell them, say, “Well, it doesn’t matter anyway, because we are going to have to gut renovate the house one way or the other.”

Yes, we have had all of these types of people, and more, looking at the house while we are in it, and not only is it a violation of our privacy, but it simply rubs us the wrong way.

We came to an epiphany the other day, based on what we have witnessed with people looking at the house.

While we do want to stay in our home as renters, there is no future in this for us, at least long term.

We really need to find another place, a place that we can hang our hats and feel like we are in OUR home, because as it stands, we currently feel like interlopers in the place that we have called home for decades.

So we have to find a place of our own, a place that we can call home for perhaps the rest of our lives.

We began this quest in earnest yesterday, looking at a few places in housing developments in the neighboring environs, and we will continue to look so we can gauge what is out there and what it is going to cost us.

Out of necessity, we are going to have to stay in our current dwelling, because quite frankly, it will take us four to six months simply to pack everything away in preparation to move the stuff.

It is going to take months for the potential buyer to get his or her things in order, align with the bank, get approved for the mortgage, etc., so we feel that we might have to work out an arrangement with the buyer, if there is one, and maybe go on a month to month or six month lease while we look around.

But since there has been no movement on anyone buying the house, it almost puts us in the catbird seat right now, because we have time to look around until a buyer is in place, and even if one is in place, we can continue to look as we pack everything away over the next months in preparation for a move.

The problem is money.

The costs for rentals are very high, and I do mean VERY high on Long Island, but there is really nowhere else for us to go, as our son gets the best services available perhaps in the world as a resident of New York State and Nassau County, and we want that to continue not just right now but into perpetuity.

And with basically two part-time salaries—my freelance salary and my son’s part-time salary—plus the three of our Social Security payments, we simply do not have the money to be able to pick and choose where we might want to live.

We do have some money squirreled away from my wife and my old 401K plans, and there will be money from the sale of the house—not too much after the reverse mortgage company gets their money, and I split the money with my sister, as my mother used up the entire reverse mortgage payments in her last years—but it is not something that is going to replenish itself, so we are in a real pickle here.

As I said, we did look at a few places yesterday, and while neither place was perfect, and both places were pricey for our budget, we might have to go all in on these—

Because we simply do not have a choice.

To say that this is nerve racking is an understatement of epic proportions, and we know that no one can help us.

We were really left with a catastrophe not of our own making when my mother passed away a month ago, and we are just going to have to clean up this mess on our own, somehow, someway.