If You Can’t Say “I’m Moving,” Don’t Say Anything at All

So there I was, having finally figured out how to have it all! Just yesterday this was.

I stayed up late last night doing routine money-related tasks, balancing my checkbook and so forth, not literally a booklet these days. I often do this just before going to Michigan.

I got in bed at 2:30 a.m., didn’t set the alarm, and woke up at 11:30 a.m. I had texted our realtor yesterday to say I thought I had worked out how the real estate transaction should work. She suggested that we speak on the phone today.

I made the mistake of texting the details to my other sister during the night, and there was some drama. Some rather harsh remarks were made, not by me.

When our realtor and I spoke on the phone this afternoon, I told her my plan of buying the house but hardly ever being there, and she was entirely approving. I was a little surprised. I asked her what the point is of buying a house you don’t plan to occupy and she chuckled and said genially that she couldn’t help me with that question. 

I can pay someone to mow the lawn weekly and edge it monthly, and I can pay someone to remove the snow from the sidewalk, just as the estate has been doing, but the thought of the house quietly sitting there on its own with the flowerbeds becoming choked with weeds made me feel a little sad. I remember feeling the same way about my childhood house in Ann Arbor after we all had moved out of it, while my father was still there laboring away for ten years: Did it miss us? It probably enjoyed seeing my father. If I could see my father right now, I would certainly enjoy that.

By the way, I know it sounds grand (maybe) to talk about paying people to do this and that, but remember, this is Ypsilanti, MI. It’s not like someone in Beverly Hills discussing their gardening staff. This is just doing the minimum to maintain presentability. It doesn’t cost that much there.

I ran my understanding of how the real estate transaction would work past our realtor, and then I was really kicking myself because I had it all wrong and could have avoided the inter-sibling drama entirely.

It turns out that it will be a completely standard real estate transaction: I will send a bit of earnest money, and then send the remainder of the entire purchase price of the house to the title company. On closing day, I the seller will sign, and I the buyer will sign—I think this is a first for our realtor—I just hope I and I don’t manage to get into a fight before the big day—and then the fees will be taken out and our realtor will receive her commission and each of us heiresses will receive a check.

I said that I don’t want a check; I’m already inheriting one third of this house, so why are we doing this in a way that I will receive a check? But that is the proper way to do it, and it’s just as well that I will receive a check, because this is going to take nearly every cent of cash I have. I was starting to get a little worried about my cash flow and then remembered: I’m going to get a check!

In that very conversation, I, using my fine logical decision-making mind, determined that it does not make sense to put on the market a house that I might want, even if I’m not going to live in it, so I told our realtor that will buy it and that I will not change my mind again, or if I do, I won’t mention it. (A chuckle here from the realtor.) I also confirmed that the price will be what the appraisers had come up with, and what the comps have been all along; our realtor had come up with a figure about $4000 higher when she did her market analysis, but both of my sisters are fine with using the appraised price, and I believe that will be advantageous when it comes to doing the estate’s final tax return: The house won’t have gained value.

The estate’s attorneys were going to write up the details of our unorthodox transaction, but it occurred to me that this might be an expensive redundancy; our realtor confirmed that, and also, it is not going to be a weird transaction, after all. I emailed the attorneys after the realtor and I got off the phone to say they don’t need to do that, and to ask if they have a vague idea what their remaining bills will total.

So, then, fine: buying the house just in case. My sister said a nice thing: While she said it is up to me and that she won’t be mad if I don’t buy the house (this was before I spoke with the realtor), she said she had been starting to like the idea of me buying it and us helping each other out—driving each other to colonoscopies and so forth. While she said whatever I did was fine, and did not mean to exert the slightest influence, I did feel that as a certain amount of influence, or at least invitation, toward buying the house.

So, if I have a house, which is almost certainly going to be the case, then maybe I should just occupy it. All the tasks that had melted away yesterday like the Wicked Witch of the West suddenly reappeared, piling one on top of the other like brightly colored blocks in an animation: If I’m going to do this, then I might as well do that, and if I’m going to do that, then I need to do the other.

I guess I would just as soon not fly back and forth even quarterly, so perhaps I will be on the phone on Tuesday, after all, resigning my hospital chaplain position.

One thing all this back and forth has done is to rob myself of people’s wholehearted congratulations and sympathetic joy, as they put it in Buddhism (feeling happy about the good fortune of others), because someone might be delighted to hear that I am buying a house the first time they hear it, but I can see how it might not be so exciting the third time they hear it. Honestly, at this point I am not entirely clear on which friend thinks what. My sister, who is an extremely good egg, did kindly say “Congratulations!” today (in a later conversation) as if she were hearing the news for the first time. 

I’m buying a house!