My Ordinary Life: Of houses and homes, Part I

My sister Midol was visiting from Seattle last week and we traipsed around looking at model homes in my neighborhood, as she was starting to think about buying for herself after happily renting for years. I myself am in escrow for a small rental property elsewhere, a short sale that I hoped would be relatively quick and painless as far as short sales go, but the Vietnamese have a saying, “Từ môi tới miệng hãy còn xa” (literally, “it’s a long way from your lips to your mouth”), meaning nothing’s for certain until the transaction wraps up.

It seemed I’ve had to jump through more hoops this time just to buy an itty bitty distressed condo than a beautiful million-dollar home back in the days… I guess that speaks to the downward shift in both my personal economics and the general economy as a whole. Anyhow, God knows why I’d want to be a slumlord after my curious landlord trauma a few years back. When I spoke to the loan specialist at Chase about preapproving me for an investment property, he noted that their bank required 25% down in addition to previous qualifying landlord experience… that meant proof of renting income that actually appeared on one’s tax returns for 2 years or more. An errant thought crossed my mind I didn’t dare utter… “I don’t want to brag, but after my encounters with tenants-from-hell, might I be so immodest as to say I’m overqualified!” For the record, and keeping my fingers crossed, I currently have dream tenants at my marital home that I want to keep and they apparently want to stay long-term, but before this couple came along, my aspiration of being a small-time real estate investor had definitely soured on me.

When my ex and I bought our starter house in Tustin on the heels of our relocation from Skid Row, L.A. to grow our family, we had zero experience with the home buying process. I barely knew what rates and points were, or what an interest lock signified. Thanks to an unsolicited offer from a lender that specialized in doctors’ loans (who was eager to provide easy mortgages to potentially high-income professionals already burdened with huge educational debts), we successfully sleepwalked through escrow to end up with a 3-year new house of modest dimensions. I forgot to mention we also borrowed the entire downpayment from my parents (we later switched to borrowing from my in-laws for our next home purchase… that just showed how good we were at saving for long-term goals). At any rate, I went from being pregnant with my first child to becoming a harried mom of four in record time, and the San Simeon home, as I fondly referred to our first house, became a fort that witnessed the kids’ regular roughhousing with their numerous friends and cousins. Our children were ardent homewreckers – not of the romantic type, but literally destroyers of properties... or rather, we allowed them to. By the time we felt ready to move up, the San Simeon house was already in terrible shape, which explained why it was sold to my sister Terra in as-is condition. She still owns it to this day.

It was the start of children and the suburban lifestyle for me and my days basically revolved around the kids, as it should be at that point in time. We didn’t have a lot in terms of money, but we weren’t exactly struggling, and I felt ridiculously happy and fully occupied as a stay-at-home mom. Life was simple, and our family was more than content to be the Vietnamese Tustin hillbillies. The San Simeon home had cathedral ceilings (a novelty to us at the time), which was perfect over the towering resin playhouse we bought for the kids; an adequate backyard, which we used primarily to house the stray cat I brought with us from L.A., and an upstairs master bedroom that made me curse every time I carried my kids up for a nap because it absorbed all the afternoon heat. Living there for 6 years taught me to not ever consider buying a house facing west again, or one that had two stories and only one thermostat.

The housing bubble had just begun its inflationary period when we outgrew our starter home and got in line to purchase our next house, which I often referred to as the Pieper Lane home. Those were the days of easy money, when model homes were selling like hot cakes and in order to buy any real estate at all you had to compete against investors ready to pay entire sums in cash. By some miracle, we, the most underprivileged buyers out of the bunch, landed the prime spot on John Laing Homes' waiting list to purchase a beautiful and spacious new home, with many back-up offers behind us. We were determined not to waste our chance and quickly sprang up with money we didn’t have to secure our position (which explained why we had to borrow the entire downpayment from the other set of parents this time). Thank God for Vietnamese parents who would gladly live in a hut if it meant their children could afford a (relative) castle! As our house was being built from scratch on a pristine lot, we were afforded the luxury of selecting our interior upgrades this time around as opposed to inheriting old aesthetics from the seller. Unfortunately, that required even more money we didn’t have! However, by then we had developed a vague concept of what home equity credit lines were for. And so the saga of our Pieper Ln. home began with a cast of unwitting homeowners, unscrupulous contractors, and an unhappy homeowner association. Just pure chaos in general… and a lot of moolah down the drain.

Still, we were ecstatic to have a pool all to ourselves in the backyard, which entranced the kids for a mere month, then promptly turned into a maintenance issue instead of an asset. I vowed to never own a home with a pool again if I could help it. I'd learned that lesson well, but should have extrapolated to exclude all water features in general. Now I know not to build anything as frivolous as a fountain in landscaping my future residence(s).

The Pieper Ln home's floor plan allows us a choice of either a loft or a true bedroom upstairs and we opted for the former. Visiting our homesite a few weeks before closing, we discovered that our builder had messed up and was in the process of putting the finishing touches on the bedroom that wasn’t ordered. When their mistake was pointed out, they brought us in for a meeting and tried to persuade us to take the house as is, maintaining that we actually stood to gain because it had cost them $8K more to build a bedroom than a loft. My ex insisted he wouldn’t want it any other way. I could tell the sales reps. were fuming. A few days later, their in-house lender informed us we weren't qualified to purchase the home, despite having been preapproved for it before, with no changes in our financial circumstances up to that point.

It was terribly suspect and I knew the builder just wanted to get rid of us as they were confident they could sell the house to any of their back-up buyers, but there wasn’t enough time for us to put up a legal fight. We had only days to save our loan or fall out of escrow. In desperation, my ex handed me a business card from a Chinese businesswoman referred to him by someone at work, supposedly a high-ranking Chase mortgage banker with whom we’ve never had any personal or business dealings. She immediately overnighted us a thick packet of mortgage forms which I dutifully completed in longhand and returned to her with the necessary supporting documents in convenient prepaid, pre-labeled Express Mail envelopes. We didn’t own a fax machine at the time, and I would not be familiar with emails until many years later, so my communications with Sanny consisted of frantic phone calls and our FedEx’ing back and forth over several days. She secured a speedy approval for us just in time and our builder had no recourse but to knock down walls and rebuild our loft where it was supposed to be. The main lesson I learned from this hairy transaction was to avoid in-house lenders for our future home purchases, or at least get preapproved by another mortgage company concurrently in case of a last-minute about-face. Another lesson learned was opposed to the conventional wisdom of selecting a landscape contractor based on direct client referrals. I had made the mistake of choosing mine for the Pieper Ln. home on the strength of his business presence in our neighborhood alone. Problem was, a client referral meant nothing if the job was still in progress. I should’ve known not to trust until I've seen a completed project. When my contractor bailed out on us, many of my neighbors got stuck with half-finished front and backyards besides me. We looked at each other and exclaimed in identical confusion, “I thought I was safe with him because YOU decided to give him your business, too!”