deal of the decade

I once bought six pair of dress pants for ten buck each. The original price on the pants were eighty dollars each. That was a great deal.

Nearly fifteen years ago, Sharon didn't want anything to do with being a teacher. It was, in her mind, typical women's work. And despite her now apparent natural gifts as an educator, I'm glad she didn't become a teacher back in the early days, when less-creative minds wondered about her future, asking: "What will you do now? You've no boyfriend to eventually become your husband and take care of you, you've an education, but what for? The world is dry and the bills are due. You want inspiration? Good luck."

Thankfully, Sharon's resolve to live inspirationally, was stronger than hollow tradition and banal advice. For ten years, she traveled to nearly a dozen countries, read, wrote, and took in what was around her. No dust fell on her.

Fast-forward to the year two-thousand. She meets me. We court, we marry, we continue together, observing. Watching our family and friends. We take notes and debate each other. Our alliance becomes solid and our lines in the sand become more defined. We consciously (or unconsciously) separate ourselves from others, from time to time, not wanting to be drawn in to their culture. We realize we've been creating our own culture, one to our liking and in line with our own schedule. We avoid buying a home, we avoid having children, we avoid make-up and fast food. We buy running shoes instead of stock.

After going through several pairs of shoes, Sharon's shoes take her to the doors of her first classroom. Teaching English to seventh graders appears a divinely obvious circle come full.

As her career in education begins, the economy tanks, the real estate market hits a brick wall, and those who can, pull their heads out of Bank of America's guillotine and realize it's time to rewrite their budgets.

The houses in the neighborhood where we lived at the time ran between three-hundred-thousand and seven-hundred-thousand dollars. Understand, the neighborhood we were living in was no exclusive community. It was an old neighborhood that had turned the corner. An area of Denver that constituted the oldest neighborhood in the city. It was established by Italian workers and their families. Organized crime under the Smalldone family called this neighborhood home. In the last twenty years, chicano workers and their families have given the area a delicious latino flavor.

In the last decade, the neighborhood began drawing a new taste of resident. This area became the place to live for progressive, world-minded yuppies and dinks. Sharon and I can probably avoid the label of yuppie, but we are certainly fully vested members of dink convention.

Dink (noun) acronym - Dual Income No Kids

Enter developers. Hundred year old buildings and small square brick cottages were laid low and used to fertilize the ground for the seeds of luxury condos and town homes. Some of these new buildings brought an elevated aesthetic to the hood, others simply sucked.

As condos rose, so did the price of already inflated single family houses. The prices were out of our budget from the beginning. We listened to the growing number of stories of people beginning to reap the whirlwind of living beyond their means. Foreclosure became the buzz word of the day, and, in fact, of the next two years.

At the end of her second year of teaching, Sharon became aware of a housing program called: The Good Neighbor Next Door Program. It is a program established within Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by President Clinton. The purpose of this program, is to assist a vital group of professionals in purchasing a home within the communities that they serve. Certainly, there are many vital professions within society, but these four were chosen to participate in this program: Police officers, Firefighters, EMT personnel, and Teachers. Candidates for this program must also be first time home buyers.

Once a commitment to this program has been made, an arduous marathon of house viewings takes place. The houses that are available through this program are not of the most distinguished breed. All of the houses are foreclosed homes that are now owned by HUD. Many of these houses have not been lived in for many months, or even longer than a year. Most have not been maintained and are in great need of lots of love, or a wrecking ball. We saw everything from dripping mold to cracked foundations.

Each Tuesday, a new group of houses is released by HUD and made available for viewing. These homes are not available to the general public. Xenia, our hummingbird of a realtor, would call us and let us know if any houses had become available, if so, we would set a time to meet her at the house. Once there, we would walk through the property in order to get a taste of the place. Our time at each house was frustratingly short, as Xenia's fiber-optic schedule pressed us to move quickly. After seeing a property, we had about twelve hours in which to decide if we wanted to "bid" on the house. This "bid" is not a monetary bid. It is simply, deciding whether or not to include our names on a list that includes other people bidding on the same property. From this list, a computer randomly selects a winner. It's a lot like a lottery with much better odds.

The winner is announced on Friday afternoon, sometime after two o'clock. We endured this lottery for four months. Some of the houses we looked at weren't much better than crack houses. Some, had great potential. Regardless, when you participate in the program, you have no choice as to where the house is located. Your only power is choosing to bid or not to bid, that is the question.

One of the most difficult parts of this process, was preserving our expectations without being snobby. We have specific ideas of what sort of life we want to live, and the location of our future home would have a great affect on either helping or hampering our lifestyle. If you'll pardon the drama, here's an excerpt from an email that I sent to Xenia after viewing a home located in the cultural desert of the eastern suburbs:

To Xenia:

[...Unfortunately, living so far
east (of the city) would simply be a detriment to my own career as an artist, which
is greatly influenced by my proximity and access to Denver's community
of artists and galleries. A culturally challenging environment is
vital to my career, and living so far east would severely compromise
this and defeat the pleasure of owning a home altogether.

...we are established enough
in our careers that it is necessary to maintain certain requirements
to where we live so that the years of work we have invested are not
reversed. We have the patience and will to wait for a property that
will afford us our first home, without sacrificing career goals that
are very important to us...]

After that letter, we had an understanding, no houses outside Denver's city limits.

As we began to grow weary of the show, we were shown the property at 2190 Jewell Ave. The house was starkly different from all of the other houses we had seen. Primarily, because the house was only six years old. The majority of our viewings consisted of homes built between 30 and 50 years ago.

The house was not the most architecturally inspiring form, but it had a comfortable, solid look. We made our routine room-to-room dash with Xenia, noticing the light. I really liked it, Sharon did too, but at this stage, she had come to the point of, "Who cares? We won't get it." Still, the house felt really nice to both of us. We left the property and went home. Friday's drawing came and went. We didn't get it. The clouds darkened and grew.

Two weeks later, I'm at work. My phone rings, it's about nine o'clock in the morning. It was Sharon.

"Hey!" said I "What are you doing?"

"I'm in between classes!" said she. "Xenia just called me at the school, we won the house!"

"What?!" says I.

"We won the house! Whoever won the house two weeks ago apparently backed out, and our name was the runner up! We won the house!!"

"Holy shit." said I.

Once the shock passed, I spent the rest of the day in the Millennium Falcon, warp-speeding all over the city, working frantically to renegotiate a nine-month apartment lease, down to a six-month agreement, which we had signed no less than twelve hours previously. This was absolutely necessary because, as part of our agreement with HUD, we would be required to move into our new house within six months of closing. I made arrangements to provide to our realtor, a cashier's check for our ernest money, a mere 1 percent of the purchase price.

Now, here's the tasty part of this program. The purchase price of the house is half of current market value. For instance, if the house is appraised at $150,000, the price paid by the teacher drops to $75,000. At closing, two loans are taken on. One for $75,000 (the cost of the house) and a second, silent loan for $75,000 (insurance). Any repairs or renovation that are done on the house are financed into the mortgage loan. The buyer agrees to live in the home for three years. Once this obligation has been fulfilled, the second, silent loan disappears, leaving only the half priced loan remaining. At this point, the home owner can continue to live in the home, or sell it for current market value, without having to pay taxes on the obvious profit. As a result, substantial equity in the home is gained in a very short time.

This is how we bought our home. This deal surpasses my dress-pants purchase.

Have a good weekend, and Godspeed, John Glenn,

Dave