Hikaru Yuy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
omaewokorosu) wrote2025-02-25 05:37 pm
omaewokorosu) wrote2025-02-25 05:37 pm
moving to Port Jervis [AT FIRST THINGS WERE GRAND...] [PART 1]
When we'd first seriously considered moving out of the apartment in Pompton Lakes, neither of us had any idea of where to even start looking. Egg wanted to look at condos which wouldn't be large enough for her needs for the amount of money they cost.
"A house then... That's fine. Yeah, that would work out fine."
Says the one who owned a house prior to this and refused to keep up with even the most basic of home maintenance; maybe a condo would've been better for her, but it doesn't matter now.
"I'm gonna see if I can get a mortgage for one, use the money from [my grandmother] as a down payment."
There was a mortgage lender not far from the bank we dealt with. She got in contact with them and after saying she had no income outside of monthly social security, they laughed her off the phone.
"We could give you a mortgage for $50,000 maybe, but more than likely you wouldn't qualify for anything to purchase a house with."
"How do old people buy all these houses?!"
"With cash, in full," I said. "Not with a mortgage."
(They may also use a HELOC.)
"Well I don't wanna have to use all of my money and then end up house poor."
"Then don't use all your money to purchase a house and just purchase within a certain budget range." I wondered why I was the one explaining all of this to her. Me, who knew nothing about the real estate industry, just common sense. You know, if you only have x amount of dollars, keep things within that boundary. How much do you want to spend? What's the lowest and the highest points you're willing to go to?
With all of that in mind, we did look on Zillow in different towns and boroughs in New Jersey.
Expensive. More expensive. Too expensive. Out of control expensive. Just for purchasing a house, this didn't count things like property taxes. We were priced out of New Jersey.
Which I didn't care about because I wanted to leave it, honestly.
She suggested Arizona—priced out of there, not to mention moving across the country isn't cheap.
She suggested New Mexico—same story there.
"Plus those places have probably changed since 1974 when you last visited them."
"What about New York?"
New York as a state is all dependent on where. There are reasonable and very nice places to live! There are also grossly expensive places and horrendous places and a lot of rural "out in East Jesus Nowhere" places. And everything in between. Do you want something more urban? Suburban? Country? A lot of people don't realise that New York is more than just the Five Boroughs—it's a beautiful and very scenic place embued with a fuckton of history and just nature vibes.
A lot of trains too.
A lot of famous authors too.
A fuckton of apple orchards—Rome apples for instance come from Rome, NY and Cortland apples come from...guess. NY produces the second highest amount of apples, second only to Washington state. Apples just happen to be my favourite fruit and Rome apples are my favourite apple.
Hell, where do you think Corningware comes from? Corning, NY, located in the Southern Tier.
The Finger Lakes is known for their distilleries and breweries.
Now me, I love history and nature. It's not like New Jersey doesn't also have these things—it's the Garden State, known for blueberries, cranberries, and Jersey tomatoes. It's not that New Jersey doesn't have history—George Washington crossed the Delaware and did a bunch of shit in South Jersey.
His main headquarters though was in Newburg, New York.
This oddly shaped and too-large-in-my-opinion state is also...right there and I have a lot of friends there. I was ready.
So it was time to do some looking on Zillow to see where. Egg didn't really know much about New York and I knew even less. I didn't even know how to pronounce half of the places we ended up looking. And because the state is so big, there is, you know, a lot to look at. Where do you even start?
I started in the places I knew of, because of friends: Rochester (and the surrounding), Syracuse, Buffalo (and the surrounding).
A lot of Monroe and Erie Counties.
Egg kept saying MON-row and even I knew it was MUN-row. There is a place in Orange County named Monroe, said the same way. But it's Egg.
"They get a lot of snow though."
Yeah Lake Erie and Lake Ontario love causing that Lake Effect amirite.
"Plus how would I get gas?"
At a gas station? What do you mean?
"Don't you have to pump your own gas?"
Yeah but I don't think it's that difficult, 48 states manage just fine with it.
"And what about visiting [RM]? That's too far."
"We have to go where you can afford to buy though."
Egg came up with a list of criteria:
* needs to be majority white (because yes, Egg is bigoted, surprise surprise)
* needed to not be "the hood" or white trashy
* needed at least one bedroom and one full bathroom plus laundry all on the first floor
* * the house could be two stories but still needed to meet these guidelines
* had to be gas for heat and municipal sewer
* * no oil, electric heating, propane, septic, or well water
* a yard would be nice for gardening
The places Egg could afford for Rochester, for instance, didn't meet her first criteria. What's wrong with Black people? Nothing—Egg just doesn't like people who aren't like her, which is a shame since diversity is the lifeblood of this country.
"There's probably a lot of drugs."
Those are all on Avenue D in Rochester according to news reports. Heroin is a huge problem no matter where you go and it's usually middle class white people. But okay. Whatever you wanna think, Egg.
(I have been through that area of Rochester and outside of the issue of "urban blight" it otherwise looks perfectly normal? I've been through areas of Newark that looked so much worse and those, too, were not terrible. It's your typical 100k+ population city.)
Looked in Greece, which met her criteria except for gas. Too expensive though.
"I've never even heard of it."
I mean me neither but what does that have to do with anything?? There are plenty of people who haven't heard of Kearny!
"It's like Kearny."
So that was too far north for her. We had to go further down, a little closer to New Jersey. Finger Lakes-Southern Tier then maybe?
Can't afford Ithaca, could afford suburban Ithaca surrounding though—but would have to learn to pump gas.
Didn't like most of Tompkins County. (Well I don't think it likes you either.)
What about places like Corning?
"Too small."
"Elmira?"
"Too rural."
Etc. etc.
We looked in Broome County because some ancestors in her family came from there, though I don't remember what branch of her tree that was. But even that had problems and it all amounted to "too poor", "too rural", or "not white enough." So Broome County, especially anything having to do with Binghamton, was pretty much out. After huffing and puffing over how there wasn't anything available (even though there was plenty available, just not to her "standards"), she had an admission to make: "I'd like to be close to the NJ-NY border."
That left us with Orange and Rockland Counties. Westchester County would've been way out of her price range. Rockland County wasn't really an option even though I presented it to her because Rockland County has a very large Jewish population (specificially Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish). She only like Jewish people who aren't very Jewish (i.e. aren't strictly observant to their religious beliefs).
So Orange County it is, where another branch of her family tree comes from; unlike Broome County, I can actually find evidence of her paternal side all over the place in this area. As far as Orange County goes, the county seat is the Village of Goshen (inside the Town of Goshen, don't ask me why NYS does shit like this) and the biggest city is Newburgh, which maybe doesn't say much considering there are only three cities total: Newburgh, Middletown, and Port Jervis. And then there's a smattering of villages, towns, CDPs (some of which have only a few hundred people), and hamlets.
Egg wanted to see what Warwick had to offer, which in itself has three villages contained therein: Florida, Greenwood Lake, and one with the same name as the town. We'd gone for a drive to see what was on this side of New York and Warwick was very quaint, very cute—keep in mind this was Warwick proper. Egg found it "upscale" and within her standards. She wanted to move here. Wanted to live here. When I went back on Zillow for what felt like the millionth time... Nothing was in her price range—unless she wanted to spring for a condo or a townhouse (which she didn't). Warwick is quite expensive, filled with homes that are three-quarters of a million dollars at the cheap end and 1-2 million dollar homes, well outside of her budget even with a decent mortgage.
So she had to find somewhere else and because it was demoralising and stressful to handle this ourselves, she wanted me to find a realtor. I didn't know how to find one outside of googling for NYS realtors. A list of realties came up with listings on Zillow. I picked the first one who serviced the area. (Don't ask me the name, I don't remember it.) I gave Egg the number and she made contact where they said that an available agent would get back to her and take down all sorts of information. A realtor named Linda called back an hour later, and Egg gave her the area she wanted to look in and what she wanted in a house. Typical real estate things.
"I really liked the Warwick area but Warwick itself seems too expensive."
"What kind of figure are we working with?"
"No more than $120,000."
It wouldn't be easy, but Linda's confidence that she could find a house within that price range was exhuberant.
"Let me give a look through things and I will get back to you."
"Okay."
*
Linda did get back to us and said she picked out some houses in Greenwood Lake if we were interested, one of the villages part-of-but-not-part-of Warwick. Not to be confused by the place of the same name in New Jersey, which is on the other end of the same lake. Neither of us knew anything about the area but we were willing to give it a go, so she set up a date and a time.
"Looks like we'll be going on a road trip."
There are less than 3000 people living in Greenwood Lake. It's a sleepy sort of locale though there are of course chain places like CVS. Though you can live there all four seasons of the year, depending on the area it's not uncommon to encounter three season homes where the owners head somewhere warmer in the winter. The particular places Linda had picked out for us were located in some HOA association whose name escapes me. All of the homes were more or less bungalows between 400 and 900 square feet, which was way too small. Perfect for somewhere you'll stay for a week or a few months and then head back to your actual home, but not great for us. Still, we wanted to give it all a chance.
A lot of the places had this musty smell to them and were very dark. Most of them were within the $60k-90k range which of course leaves plenty of room for improvement...if that's what you're looking for. Which it wasn't. So we had to move on. Greenwood Lake ended up being a dud, so we would need to move on. Problem was...where?
"I didn't think finding a house for under $100k would be this hard."
The thing is, it wasn't finding a house that was hard, it was finding something that didn't need a fuckton of work in order to be liveable. Some of these places were missing floors, walls, half the plumbing was gutted before they gave up and put it on the market... If you want move-in ready, you have to be willing to pay the price for move-in ready.
"There's Port Jervis."
I kind of remembered it from the day trip we took there in 2014, right up route 23N. The only reason she decided to take us there was because of a restaurant she'd gone to with family as a kid/young adult named Flo-Jean's. The restaurant is closed and shuttered, and the building itself is demolished; the only remnant of it is the Riverside Creamery, which is still in operation to this day from March to October. When we'd gone in 2014 the building was still there, but the business had been closed for a while.
So onto Zillow I went.
*
Egg contacted Linda and told her to look for places in Port Jervis with her criteria, and before too long we were heading up almost two hours to look at some houses. I don't remember much about them from memory (and I don't have access to the journal I detailed all of this in at the moment), but one house was like half gutted and another had a million closets... I gave them all nicknames in my journal so I could kind of remember each of them, because after a while, they all blend together and look the same. I remember the one with a million closets was called "The Labyrinth".
(In contrast with this, when my wife and I went house buying, I only gave a couple nicknames, things like "the old people house", "the 'where the fuck are the door knobs?' house", things like that.)
Most of these houses didn't look that great. Port Jervis nearly went bankrupt when the Great Recession happened in 2008 and at this point, in 2017, things were maybe just starting to come back. It had been through hell. A lot of businesses shuttered their doors on the main drags alone, leaving it a graveyard. But I like Port Jervis, I enjoyed the history of it and the fact that Stephen Crane at one point lived there (as did his brother). Not to mention the railroading and canal history.
Despite there not being much we liked about a house, Egg put in an offer for full asking price for a house that is about the size of the one my wife and I purchased years later. There was a room with smashed French doors containing a jacuzzi hot tub. The kitchen needed major updating. Nothing was on the first floor. It offered her nothing that she wanted, and would have been an "it's better than nothing" house, which she would've regretted later on, probably
Thankfully the deal fell through thanks to an off-the-record bid from some investor that ended up falling through... And so did another two, before a fourth one finally bought and reno'd the place.
Upon getting told that that deal fell through and I needed to pick more houses, I went to Zillow and picked out five more houses in Port plus two in Middletown and then one in Newburgh. If none of these worked out then we may have to branch out to places like Suffern. Or Egg would have to do something unthinkable, like learn to pump her own gas, because we would have to go further in-state.
(I was pretty dead-set on Elmira, in fact, as a place to go, but Egg wasn't very enthused about it.)
We looked at the five houses and three of them were more or less "meh not feeling it." If you asked me to list them, I couldn't even tell you. The two I do remember were a Colonial style house with a walk-up attic and a butler's pantry I loved located on River Street...and a Victorian a couple of blocks down right off West Main that was kind of small—when I hear "Victorian" I think of something I guess like a Queen Anne style one, because despite the square footage it wasn't really that big. The colonial in contrast was only a bit smaller.
Cons to the Colonial: no first floor bedroom or laundry and a decommissioned oil tank located in the basement Egg would never venture into, a yard that wasn't too big but not too small either.
Cons to the Victorian: a lot of yard and all of it shaded (making it a pain to mow and needing shade tolerant flowers for gardening), no actual driveway (you would have to park in the backyard, with access located on the street behind that one); the yard access was also right across from a little league field (meaning during certain times of the year getting access from the road to our yard would be a pain in the ass or impossible).
The Victorian met her first floor requirements. Outside of a cool little architectural feature (where half of the second floor was a step up from the rest), I didn't care much for the house; if it were up to me, I would've chosen the Colonial. There were two full bathrooms in the Victorian, one per floor, but only the first floor had a tub, which was odd considering the second floor had the bigger bathroom with room to spare for one.
I wanted the River Street house. Egg kind of leaned more towards that one too, but really wanted the first floor bedroom, bathroom, and laundry access. So she ended up settling for this house she didn't like as much as the other one. Never mind that there are ways to make multi-level houses accessible (stair lifts, etc). It wasn't me buying anything so it was up to Egg.
At one point I started to question... Was it even wise for her to be purchasing a house when maybe renting onw would be better for her age and life circumstances? I...would not have purchased the Victorian house, but she wanted it not just for herself but for me, so that once she was dead and gone, I wasn't immediately homeless. She thought that because the house was paid in full with cash, I would be able to handle this gigantic 2400 square foot home by myself and be able to afford taxes and bills on my own.
(Let me tell you, this choice backfires hugely on her later on.)
Egg liked it enough and decided to put in a cash offer for asking price, which is something that, at that time, you didn't really do, offer full asking. House buying is a lot of back and forth where you start low and then eventually meet up in the middle, where the price you want to actually pay ends up being. So this house was $120k and had been on the market for some time, so there was probably quite a bit of room for haggling. But Egg knew nothing about buying real estate and didn't ask for the realtor's advice - instead she asked for mine, as if my 24 year old ass knew anything about this. And I said it was up to her, which she didn't like.
"Well someday this house'll be yours too!"
You sure about that?
*
So house inspection time came. Egg went with Linda's choice in inspector. He did his thing, said the roof definitely needed immediate replacement and there were some other things but other than that it was "okay." The report is less than 30 pages and points out a whole bunch of concerning things about not just most of the roof needing immediate replacement due to not even having shingles (just tar and some handyman patchwork), but also, the back deck was questionable and in need of expert advice, and the foundation had a lot of issues. Parts of it were crumbling away on the exterior, and the interior had evidence of leaking and needing to be resealed and things patched up and replaced. That's not even factoring in all of the wood framing rotting away and other things needing attention, like the yard with this gigantic hole almost in it and how nothing was level. And then there was the garage with no door and it was visibly leaning... (Meaning it wasn't structurally sound.)
Anyone getting an inspection report like that is going to invoke the inspection contingency part of the contract and pull out, right? Not Egg. Outside of the roof she said everything else could wait a while because none of it seemed urgent (except the roof). She paid $600 for 27 pages of not even thorough inspecting. (To contrast, that is the same amount we paid for our house inspection, and the report was almost 70 pages long with detailed photos and descriptions of everything, plus they went through everything in person and made sure we knew exactly what everything was and suggestions on how to fix it.)
So Egg bought this 2400 square foot house that needed a lot of work and would continue needing a lot of work filled with second- and third-hand appliances, awful flooring, and a lot of questionable repair and "renovating". A lot of flipped houses are done as cheap as can be to maximize profits. She would have command over the first floor, and the second floor was mine to do with as I pleased. I painted two of the rooms and started painting the bathroom until I had to stop because the ceiling right above the shower started to leak first winter after the roof was replaced. But I'm getting ahead of myself there. All of the rooms were of decent size and I had an en-suite bathroom which was cool until it wasn't. (I never want an en-suite bathroom again.) I made things my own, and things were great for a while. I slowly unpacked and got things settled. I found employment not far from where I lived. I tried to make the best of everything. This was supposed to be my "new beginning."
Thing would be fine so long as I "played my role."
It never really felt like "home" to me, so I'd never fully unpacked or bought all of the things that I wanted because I also never planned on staying there forever. I was going to save up money and eventually move out and rent a place of my own. I didn't mind Port Jervis because of all the history there and the fact that I lived right by the train tracks and I love trains and being able to hear them and the constant low hum in the background. At the same time I was in an area where I didn't know anyone. All of my NYS friends lived a few hours away at least. I wanted to be closer to them, so I decided once I was able to, I would move to one of the areas around Ithaca. Ithaca, Corning, Elmira - that area, where Steuben, Chemung, and Tompkins Counties kind of are all jumbled together in the Southern Tier region of New York State. And maybe we could be roommates or something?
Maybe I could actually hang out with IRL friends?
Egg wasn't very supportive of my idea to eventually move out. Kept saying that if I ever did that, I'd have to remain close by in case she needed me for something, because it turns out I was only useful and worth existing if it was for her sake. I had to always keep her in mind. And I said that I might not be able to do that. What if I find a place and it's four hours away? Maybe I end up meeting someone and we move to a completely different part of the state?
"Try to not do that. Try to remain close."
What if I don't want to do that? I'm no longer a kid and I don't want to live with her forever.
Usually parents can't wait for their kids to leave the nest and roost elsewhere but Egg was very much against the idea of it. Everyone else could leave, that was fine. So why was I the one discouraged from doing so?
Asking such a question was frowned upon. Probably because Egg didn't have a real answer. Why wouldn't a parent want their kid to move out?
Control.
I found it funny that this woman—who threatened many times to kick me out of the house and didn't give a rat's ass if I ended up homeless and died in a ditch somewhere—didn't want me to leave and live somewhere else. And the fact that I was expected to do all these different things for her in addition to maintaining regular employment? I didn't understand. I especially didn't understand when she would say that these things were for my benefit or something "mutually beneficial" because I struggled to see where the "beneficial" came into play where I was concerned. In the end Egg was the one who made out like a fucking bandit and I ended up being both victim and villain in the noxious story she no doubt tells to whoever will listen.
It just wasn't normal.
to be continued...
"A house then... That's fine. Yeah, that would work out fine."
Says the one who owned a house prior to this and refused to keep up with even the most basic of home maintenance; maybe a condo would've been better for her, but it doesn't matter now.
"I'm gonna see if I can get a mortgage for one, use the money from [my grandmother] as a down payment."
There was a mortgage lender not far from the bank we dealt with. She got in contact with them and after saying she had no income outside of monthly social security, they laughed her off the phone.
"We could give you a mortgage for $50,000 maybe, but more than likely you wouldn't qualify for anything to purchase a house with."
"How do old people buy all these houses?!"
"With cash, in full," I said. "Not with a mortgage."
(They may also use a HELOC.)
"Well I don't wanna have to use all of my money and then end up house poor."
"Then don't use all your money to purchase a house and just purchase within a certain budget range." I wondered why I was the one explaining all of this to her. Me, who knew nothing about the real estate industry, just common sense. You know, if you only have x amount of dollars, keep things within that boundary. How much do you want to spend? What's the lowest and the highest points you're willing to go to?
With all of that in mind, we did look on Zillow in different towns and boroughs in New Jersey.
Expensive. More expensive. Too expensive. Out of control expensive. Just for purchasing a house, this didn't count things like property taxes. We were priced out of New Jersey.
Which I didn't care about because I wanted to leave it, honestly.
She suggested Arizona—priced out of there, not to mention moving across the country isn't cheap.
She suggested New Mexico—same story there.
"Plus those places have probably changed since 1974 when you last visited them."
"What about New York?"
New York as a state is all dependent on where. There are reasonable and very nice places to live! There are also grossly expensive places and horrendous places and a lot of rural "out in East Jesus Nowhere" places. And everything in between. Do you want something more urban? Suburban? Country? A lot of people don't realise that New York is more than just the Five Boroughs—it's a beautiful and very scenic place embued with a fuckton of history and just nature vibes.
A lot of trains too.
A lot of famous authors too.
A fuckton of apple orchards—Rome apples for instance come from Rome, NY and Cortland apples come from...guess. NY produces the second highest amount of apples, second only to Washington state. Apples just happen to be my favourite fruit and Rome apples are my favourite apple.
Hell, where do you think Corningware comes from? Corning, NY, located in the Southern Tier.
The Finger Lakes is known for their distilleries and breweries.
Now me, I love history and nature. It's not like New Jersey doesn't also have these things—it's the Garden State, known for blueberries, cranberries, and Jersey tomatoes. It's not that New Jersey doesn't have history—George Washington crossed the Delaware and did a bunch of shit in South Jersey.
His main headquarters though was in Newburg, New York.
This oddly shaped and too-large-in-my-opinion state is also...right there and I have a lot of friends there. I was ready.
So it was time to do some looking on Zillow to see where. Egg didn't really know much about New York and I knew even less. I didn't even know how to pronounce half of the places we ended up looking. And because the state is so big, there is, you know, a lot to look at. Where do you even start?
I started in the places I knew of, because of friends: Rochester (and the surrounding), Syracuse, Buffalo (and the surrounding).
A lot of Monroe and Erie Counties.
Egg kept saying MON-row and even I knew it was MUN-row. There is a place in Orange County named Monroe, said the same way. But it's Egg.
"They get a lot of snow though."
Yeah Lake Erie and Lake Ontario love causing that Lake Effect amirite.
"Plus how would I get gas?"
At a gas station? What do you mean?
"Don't you have to pump your own gas?"
Yeah but I don't think it's that difficult, 48 states manage just fine with it.
"And what about visiting [RM]? That's too far."
"We have to go where you can afford to buy though."
Egg came up with a list of criteria:
* needs to be majority white (because yes, Egg is bigoted, surprise surprise)
* needed to not be "the hood" or white trashy
* needed at least one bedroom and one full bathroom plus laundry all on the first floor
* * the house could be two stories but still needed to meet these guidelines
* had to be gas for heat and municipal sewer
* * no oil, electric heating, propane, septic, or well water
* a yard would be nice for gardening
The places Egg could afford for Rochester, for instance, didn't meet her first criteria. What's wrong with Black people? Nothing—Egg just doesn't like people who aren't like her, which is a shame since diversity is the lifeblood of this country.
"There's probably a lot of drugs."
Those are all on Avenue D in Rochester according to news reports. Heroin is a huge problem no matter where you go and it's usually middle class white people. But okay. Whatever you wanna think, Egg.
(I have been through that area of Rochester and outside of the issue of "urban blight" it otherwise looks perfectly normal? I've been through areas of Newark that looked so much worse and those, too, were not terrible. It's your typical 100k+ population city.)
Looked in Greece, which met her criteria except for gas. Too expensive though.
"I've never even heard of it."
I mean me neither but what does that have to do with anything?? There are plenty of people who haven't heard of Kearny!
"It's like Kearny."
So that was too far north for her. We had to go further down, a little closer to New Jersey. Finger Lakes-Southern Tier then maybe?
Can't afford Ithaca, could afford suburban Ithaca surrounding though—but would have to learn to pump gas.
Didn't like most of Tompkins County. (Well I don't think it likes you either.)
What about places like Corning?
"Too small."
"Elmira?"
"Too rural."
Etc. etc.
We looked in Broome County because some ancestors in her family came from there, though I don't remember what branch of her tree that was. But even that had problems and it all amounted to "too poor", "too rural", or "not white enough." So Broome County, especially anything having to do with Binghamton, was pretty much out. After huffing and puffing over how there wasn't anything available (even though there was plenty available, just not to her "standards"), she had an admission to make: "I'd like to be close to the NJ-NY border."
That left us with Orange and Rockland Counties. Westchester County would've been way out of her price range. Rockland County wasn't really an option even though I presented it to her because Rockland County has a very large Jewish population (specificially Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish). She only like Jewish people who aren't very Jewish (i.e. aren't strictly observant to their religious beliefs).
So Orange County it is, where another branch of her family tree comes from; unlike Broome County, I can actually find evidence of her paternal side all over the place in this area. As far as Orange County goes, the county seat is the Village of Goshen (inside the Town of Goshen, don't ask me why NYS does shit like this) and the biggest city is Newburgh, which maybe doesn't say much considering there are only three cities total: Newburgh, Middletown, and Port Jervis. And then there's a smattering of villages, towns, CDPs (some of which have only a few hundred people), and hamlets.
Egg wanted to see what Warwick had to offer, which in itself has three villages contained therein: Florida, Greenwood Lake, and one with the same name as the town. We'd gone for a drive to see what was on this side of New York and Warwick was very quaint, very cute—keep in mind this was Warwick proper. Egg found it "upscale" and within her standards. She wanted to move here. Wanted to live here. When I went back on Zillow for what felt like the millionth time... Nothing was in her price range—unless she wanted to spring for a condo or a townhouse (which she didn't). Warwick is quite expensive, filled with homes that are three-quarters of a million dollars at the cheap end and 1-2 million dollar homes, well outside of her budget even with a decent mortgage.
So she had to find somewhere else and because it was demoralising and stressful to handle this ourselves, she wanted me to find a realtor. I didn't know how to find one outside of googling for NYS realtors. A list of realties came up with listings on Zillow. I picked the first one who serviced the area. (Don't ask me the name, I don't remember it.) I gave Egg the number and she made contact where they said that an available agent would get back to her and take down all sorts of information. A realtor named Linda called back an hour later, and Egg gave her the area she wanted to look in and what she wanted in a house. Typical real estate things.
"I really liked the Warwick area but Warwick itself seems too expensive."
"What kind of figure are we working with?"
"No more than $120,000."
It wouldn't be easy, but Linda's confidence that she could find a house within that price range was exhuberant.
"Let me give a look through things and I will get back to you."
"Okay."
*
Linda did get back to us and said she picked out some houses in Greenwood Lake if we were interested, one of the villages part-of-but-not-part-of Warwick. Not to be confused by the place of the same name in New Jersey, which is on the other end of the same lake. Neither of us knew anything about the area but we were willing to give it a go, so she set up a date and a time.
"Looks like we'll be going on a road trip."
There are less than 3000 people living in Greenwood Lake. It's a sleepy sort of locale though there are of course chain places like CVS. Though you can live there all four seasons of the year, depending on the area it's not uncommon to encounter three season homes where the owners head somewhere warmer in the winter. The particular places Linda had picked out for us were located in some HOA association whose name escapes me. All of the homes were more or less bungalows between 400 and 900 square feet, which was way too small. Perfect for somewhere you'll stay for a week or a few months and then head back to your actual home, but not great for us. Still, we wanted to give it all a chance.
A lot of the places had this musty smell to them and were very dark. Most of them were within the $60k-90k range which of course leaves plenty of room for improvement...if that's what you're looking for. Which it wasn't. So we had to move on. Greenwood Lake ended up being a dud, so we would need to move on. Problem was...where?
"I didn't think finding a house for under $100k would be this hard."
The thing is, it wasn't finding a house that was hard, it was finding something that didn't need a fuckton of work in order to be liveable. Some of these places were missing floors, walls, half the plumbing was gutted before they gave up and put it on the market... If you want move-in ready, you have to be willing to pay the price for move-in ready.
"There's Port Jervis."
I kind of remembered it from the day trip we took there in 2014, right up route 23N. The only reason she decided to take us there was because of a restaurant she'd gone to with family as a kid/young adult named Flo-Jean's. The restaurant is closed and shuttered, and the building itself is demolished; the only remnant of it is the Riverside Creamery, which is still in operation to this day from March to October. When we'd gone in 2014 the building was still there, but the business had been closed for a while.
So onto Zillow I went.
*
Egg contacted Linda and told her to look for places in Port Jervis with her criteria, and before too long we were heading up almost two hours to look at some houses. I don't remember much about them from memory (and I don't have access to the journal I detailed all of this in at the moment), but one house was like half gutted and another had a million closets... I gave them all nicknames in my journal so I could kind of remember each of them, because after a while, they all blend together and look the same. I remember the one with a million closets was called "The Labyrinth".
(In contrast with this, when my wife and I went house buying, I only gave a couple nicknames, things like "the old people house", "the 'where the fuck are the door knobs?' house", things like that.)
Most of these houses didn't look that great. Port Jervis nearly went bankrupt when the Great Recession happened in 2008 and at this point, in 2017, things were maybe just starting to come back. It had been through hell. A lot of businesses shuttered their doors on the main drags alone, leaving it a graveyard. But I like Port Jervis, I enjoyed the history of it and the fact that Stephen Crane at one point lived there (as did his brother). Not to mention the railroading and canal history.
Despite there not being much we liked about a house, Egg put in an offer for full asking price for a house that is about the size of the one my wife and I purchased years later. There was a room with smashed French doors containing a jacuzzi hot tub. The kitchen needed major updating. Nothing was on the first floor. It offered her nothing that she wanted, and would have been an "it's better than nothing" house, which she would've regretted later on, probably
Thankfully the deal fell through thanks to an off-the-record bid from some investor that ended up falling through... And so did another two, before a fourth one finally bought and reno'd the place.
Upon getting told that that deal fell through and I needed to pick more houses, I went to Zillow and picked out five more houses in Port plus two in Middletown and then one in Newburgh. If none of these worked out then we may have to branch out to places like Suffern. Or Egg would have to do something unthinkable, like learn to pump her own gas, because we would have to go further in-state.
(I was pretty dead-set on Elmira, in fact, as a place to go, but Egg wasn't very enthused about it.)
We looked at the five houses and three of them were more or less "meh not feeling it." If you asked me to list them, I couldn't even tell you. The two I do remember were a Colonial style house with a walk-up attic and a butler's pantry I loved located on River Street...and a Victorian a couple of blocks down right off West Main that was kind of small—when I hear "Victorian" I think of something I guess like a Queen Anne style one, because despite the square footage it wasn't really that big. The colonial in contrast was only a bit smaller.
Cons to the Colonial: no first floor bedroom or laundry and a decommissioned oil tank located in the basement Egg would never venture into, a yard that wasn't too big but not too small either.
Cons to the Victorian: a lot of yard and all of it shaded (making it a pain to mow and needing shade tolerant flowers for gardening), no actual driveway (you would have to park in the backyard, with access located on the street behind that one); the yard access was also right across from a little league field (meaning during certain times of the year getting access from the road to our yard would be a pain in the ass or impossible).
The Victorian met her first floor requirements. Outside of a cool little architectural feature (where half of the second floor was a step up from the rest), I didn't care much for the house; if it were up to me, I would've chosen the Colonial. There were two full bathrooms in the Victorian, one per floor, but only the first floor had a tub, which was odd considering the second floor had the bigger bathroom with room to spare for one.
I wanted the River Street house. Egg kind of leaned more towards that one too, but really wanted the first floor bedroom, bathroom, and laundry access. So she ended up settling for this house she didn't like as much as the other one. Never mind that there are ways to make multi-level houses accessible (stair lifts, etc). It wasn't me buying anything so it was up to Egg.
At one point I started to question... Was it even wise for her to be purchasing a house when maybe renting onw would be better for her age and life circumstances? I...would not have purchased the Victorian house, but she wanted it not just for herself but for me, so that once she was dead and gone, I wasn't immediately homeless. She thought that because the house was paid in full with cash, I would be able to handle this gigantic 2400 square foot home by myself and be able to afford taxes and bills on my own.
(Let me tell you, this choice backfires hugely on her later on.)
Egg liked it enough and decided to put in a cash offer for asking price, which is something that, at that time, you didn't really do, offer full asking. House buying is a lot of back and forth where you start low and then eventually meet up in the middle, where the price you want to actually pay ends up being. So this house was $120k and had been on the market for some time, so there was probably quite a bit of room for haggling. But Egg knew nothing about buying real estate and didn't ask for the realtor's advice - instead she asked for mine, as if my 24 year old ass knew anything about this. And I said it was up to her, which she didn't like.
"Well someday this house'll be yours too!"
You sure about that?
*
So house inspection time came. Egg went with Linda's choice in inspector. He did his thing, said the roof definitely needed immediate replacement and there were some other things but other than that it was "okay." The report is less than 30 pages and points out a whole bunch of concerning things about not just most of the roof needing immediate replacement due to not even having shingles (just tar and some handyman patchwork), but also, the back deck was questionable and in need of expert advice, and the foundation had a lot of issues. Parts of it were crumbling away on the exterior, and the interior had evidence of leaking and needing to be resealed and things patched up and replaced. That's not even factoring in all of the wood framing rotting away and other things needing attention, like the yard with this gigantic hole almost in it and how nothing was level. And then there was the garage with no door and it was visibly leaning... (Meaning it wasn't structurally sound.)
Anyone getting an inspection report like that is going to invoke the inspection contingency part of the contract and pull out, right? Not Egg. Outside of the roof she said everything else could wait a while because none of it seemed urgent (except the roof). She paid $600 for 27 pages of not even thorough inspecting. (To contrast, that is the same amount we paid for our house inspection, and the report was almost 70 pages long with detailed photos and descriptions of everything, plus they went through everything in person and made sure we knew exactly what everything was and suggestions on how to fix it.)
So Egg bought this 2400 square foot house that needed a lot of work and would continue needing a lot of work filled with second- and third-hand appliances, awful flooring, and a lot of questionable repair and "renovating". A lot of flipped houses are done as cheap as can be to maximize profits. She would have command over the first floor, and the second floor was mine to do with as I pleased. I painted two of the rooms and started painting the bathroom until I had to stop because the ceiling right above the shower started to leak first winter after the roof was replaced. But I'm getting ahead of myself there. All of the rooms were of decent size and I had an en-suite bathroom which was cool until it wasn't. (I never want an en-suite bathroom again.) I made things my own, and things were great for a while. I slowly unpacked and got things settled. I found employment not far from where I lived. I tried to make the best of everything. This was supposed to be my "new beginning."
Thing would be fine so long as I "played my role."
It never really felt like "home" to me, so I'd never fully unpacked or bought all of the things that I wanted because I also never planned on staying there forever. I was going to save up money and eventually move out and rent a place of my own. I didn't mind Port Jervis because of all the history there and the fact that I lived right by the train tracks and I love trains and being able to hear them and the constant low hum in the background. At the same time I was in an area where I didn't know anyone. All of my NYS friends lived a few hours away at least. I wanted to be closer to them, so I decided once I was able to, I would move to one of the areas around Ithaca. Ithaca, Corning, Elmira - that area, where Steuben, Chemung, and Tompkins Counties kind of are all jumbled together in the Southern Tier region of New York State. And maybe we could be roommates or something?
Maybe I could actually hang out with IRL friends?
Egg wasn't very supportive of my idea to eventually move out. Kept saying that if I ever did that, I'd have to remain close by in case she needed me for something, because it turns out I was only useful and worth existing if it was for her sake. I had to always keep her in mind. And I said that I might not be able to do that. What if I find a place and it's four hours away? Maybe I end up meeting someone and we move to a completely different part of the state?
"Try to not do that. Try to remain close."
What if I don't want to do that? I'm no longer a kid and I don't want to live with her forever.
Usually parents can't wait for their kids to leave the nest and roost elsewhere but Egg was very much against the idea of it. Everyone else could leave, that was fine. So why was I the one discouraged from doing so?
Asking such a question was frowned upon. Probably because Egg didn't have a real answer. Why wouldn't a parent want their kid to move out?
Control.
I found it funny that this woman—who threatened many times to kick me out of the house and didn't give a rat's ass if I ended up homeless and died in a ditch somewhere—didn't want me to leave and live somewhere else. And the fact that I was expected to do all these different things for her in addition to maintaining regular employment? I didn't understand. I especially didn't understand when she would say that these things were for my benefit or something "mutually beneficial" because I struggled to see where the "beneficial" came into play where I was concerned. In the end Egg was the one who made out like a fucking bandit and I ended up being both victim and villain in the noxious story she no doubt tells to whoever will listen.
It just wasn't normal.
to be continued...