Vacuosity

Home free

I did it. I bought a place in Winnipeg.

That was the final blow; there's no turning back now. What follows is a retelling of the harrowing days prior to that monumental event.

I flew out on Tuesday morning, 9 am, or thereabouts. Erin drove me to the airport; the trip in itself was a comedy of errors. Neither of us truly knew the way, we didn't know what terminal to go to... you get the idea. Of course, we chose the wrong one. I had to jump a shuttle from terminal two to terminal three. When I finally arrived, they told me that it was too late to board.

"You have to be here at least twenty minutes ahead, or they can refuse you entry to the plane," the forcedly polite Rep told me.

"But the plane doesn't leave for twenty-five minutes!" I said.

She checked her watch, frowned, and radioed the plane. Alright, I was on. When I entered, the entire plane was staring at me. What a gyp; my fifteen minutes blown in a less-than-dramatic entry to a small carrier plane to Winnipeg. Heads turned as I walked down the aisle. Whispers fluttered to my ears, as well as some not-so-quiet comments. I heard "That's him, right there! That's the guy!" quite loudly and clearly. I didn't care, I was happy just to be aboard and almost seated.

Fortunately I had one of the few three-wide seats with only two people, so the leg room that was lacking in front could be made up out the sides. I noticed my row-mate was missing a hand. It looked as though it had been severed cleanly at the wrist. I had two hours in which to ponder that mystery.

My arrangements with Brad (Nance, not Usherwood) were that I would land, head to where I was staying, and call him from there. I had planned to stay at the local backpacking hostel which, from the web site, seemed quite nice. Later, when I told the girls that a lot of work had been done on it, they asked, "The building?" "No", I said, "The picture."

The place was an absolute hole. It was in rough shape to begin with, but add on the fact that the beds were nothing but 3/4" plywood sheets with a thin foamie for a matress, jammed five to a room smaller than my dining room, and you've got hell for a home. I high-tailed it outta there, down the street to a bed and breakfast that had still some space. On the walk there, I got a sinking feeling as I passed the dingy houses and the broken fences. A sign read "There are NO drugs, money or alcohol in this house!" That wasn't terribly encouraging. Neither was the other handwritten sign that read "NO TRESPASSING". This on a street where I had a couple of listings to view later that day. Then strangely, as I crossed the river, I was suddenly in a beautiful part of town.

The bed and breakfast was incredible. It was an absolute mansion like something straight from Gone With the Wind. Ornate woodwork, huge bedrooms, fireplaces and ensuite baths, I could barely believe my eyes when I entered. My bed was large and comfortable; firm too. The home-cooked breakfasts were a treat, as well.

Brad met me at one-thirty, and I have to say that he was not what I was expecting. From our phone conversations, I pictured him as a late-thirties, paunchy sort of guy, balding and very salesy. Brad was not like that at all. He is a mid-to-late-forties, high-energy guy, but not the leasy bit pushy. He is remarkably down-to-earth and very patient. Also, he's small, has a full head of curly, grey hair and seems quite fit.

The whole time I was there Brad was incredible. He drove me around all day on Tuesday, despite a the fact that he was managing a small disaster with another sale at the same time; a broken furnace/price reduction type of disaster. Anyway, after a full day of looking, he invited me back to his place for dinner so we could keep scouring the listings. He had a full understanding of the time constraints I was under and worked hard to keep us on schedule.

His family is great; he has a wife and two girls, late teens. They were all warm and receptive so it was easy to feel comfortable, despite the fact that I was sitting at the table, sharing a meal with a family I had only just met that day. Brad had to go out for a while at one point, and he told the group that I would stay and search the listings. I remember thinking that it was strange for him to leave me in his own house, with just his teenage daughter. I remember thinking that I wouldn't leave me alone with her, not that I seem like the type of person that would do anything to harm her, but I just wouldn't allow for the most remote possibility. I wondered whether it was just different there, if people are more trusting, or if I'm that transparent, that people I've only just met see me as utterly harmless, or if Brad just had a moment of carelessness. I expect it was the latter, since after what seemed a minute of urgent whispering, the plan changed, and the mother, Carol, stayed behind.

We looked all day on Wednesday as well. I noticed that Brad never once tried to influence my decision. He always reserved judgement on the houses, but strived to answer the questions that I had honestly and accurately. We stopped for lunch at a little Polish restaurant, that had delicious food. I'm not a fan of perogies, but I would go back for a second helping there. When John Candy was in Winnipeg with the Argonauts, he would always order takeout from there, or so the story goes. When we knocked off for the night I was still unable to make a decision. I hadn't seen anything yet that seemed perfect; something I wanted to make an offer on. Brad wanted me to start thinking about a decision. He had only a couple of hours on Thursday that he could spare to take me hunting, and we still had to go through the offer and negotiation process. I told Brad that I would go home that night, go though all of my notes, and chose two or three that I wanted to revisit. By this point the stress was wearing me down, and I knew that it was trying Brad's patience too, though to his credit, only the perceptive would have known.

That night I took a walk through the downtown area: Maryland, Simcoe, and Home Streets. I wanted to get a real sense of the degree of danger in that area, whether it was actually unsafe. I didn't get any sense of danger, not real danger, anyway. I even walked into dark alleys and the back ways, inviting trouble a bit, but none came. I get the sense that if the crime truly is higher there than Toronto, it's mostly just a nuisance to people, rather than a threat to their safety. People are not getting murdered and mugged by the thousands. Interstingly enough, I did see a long-haired native transvestite at the local Mcdonald's.

Taking that walk did two things for me: it reconvinced me that moving is the right choice, and it helped me decide that despite the fact that it seems safe, that area is not for us. I went back and restricted my search to the 4C area, the North End, which is a more traditional residential area. As I read some of my notes to Julia, one house, the big one, sounded much better than the way I remembered it. I began to wonder why I had discounted it in the first place. It was back on the list to see on Thursday.

Thursday morning, after our discussion about the lack of homes I was thrilled about, Julia phoned with a list of new houses to go see. I tried to explain to her that I couldn't see a whole lot of new places, I had only two hours with Brad that day, and needed to come to some sort of decision. Besides, the houses all sounded great in the ads, but weren't much different in reality. I had learned to look not for what the ad said, but what it didn't say. That is, if it didn't say "Newly renovated bathroom!", you knew that the bathroom was old and ugly; if it didn't say "Updated electrical!" then it was still running and 60 Amp service. Still, Julia was desperate that we try to get into one last new place. Brad agreed that we would try to fit it in.

It turned out to be nothing special. And I was similarly uninspired by another home that I had gone back to see a second time. Then I went back to the huge house on Cathedral.

Please bear with me while I digress about garden gnomes. They have become a bit of a private joke for me ever since I saw the movie Amélie. There is a hilarious subplot where she steals her father's garden gnome, sends it around the world with an flight attendant friend who mails Polaroids of the gnome in famous locations back to Amélie's father. At the 24-hour, one of the riders carried a gnome in his backpack, and I smiled with approval of his homage. When I returned to the big house, I noticed a garden gnome by the front steps, the only one I had seen the entire trip. It seemed like a good omen.

When I walked into the front foyer area, it actually took my breath away a bit. It seemed a touch majestic. High ceilings, 10" baseboards, old-world railings, it had all the character of a turn of the century home. I began to feel good about the place, and looked at it with the additional context of all the other places I had seen. I felt the personality of the house, and it was friendly. I thought about the lives of the kids growing up in that house, and it made me happy. When we left I said to Brad, "I think this is the place."

Greg, my old boss uses a term I like; it's "post-implementation rationalization". That's sort of what I do. I have to just feel whether something is right. Once it feels right, the logical, practical explanations and justifications of why it's right will follow. The house felt right, and the more I thought about it, the more sure I was.

It was listed at $69, 900, but that was more than we were planning to pay. I talked to Brad about putting in an offer around $58 000, hoping to land somewhere in the low sixties. He explained that putting such an offer, a "lowball", could potentially damage the negotiating relationship. After I thought about it, I realized that I was trying to play by Toronto rules, where $10 000 is only about 5% of the asking price. There, to drop 10 K would be to lose up to 20% of the asking price. I could see why an offer like that might not be taken seriously. I followed Brad's direction and went in with an offer $63, 000, verbal only. The listing agent did her best to appear affronted, but said to write it up.

For the third day in a row, Brad introduced me to a favourite local haunt: Bread and Circuses, a local bakery and café. We sat down there and prepared the offer over some fine dark roast and an excellent date square. What followed was an afternoon of stress and boredom. I returned to my room at the B+B to wait for the response. I waited and waited and waited. A half an hour after the offer had officially expired, the offer came back at $66 500. Hmmm. I felt "high-balled".

"Would they take $65 000?" I asked.

"I don't know," Brad said, "Would you like me to tell them that that's as high as you'll go?"

"That's a fair statement," I said, "I don't know if I would." In the time that followed I realized that I would, of course, go higher if it were necessary; a difference of fifteen hundred dollars shouldn't stand in the way of the right house. But that was after the hard moment of decision. I waited to hear whether they would accept it. After 45 minutes, the answer came back; they would. Brad had handled the negotiations so well; he knew my price, and negotiated it.

Friday morning was a frenetic couple of hours. There was home inspection to arrange, there was a certified cheque to have prepared, there were a myriad little details to finalize and secure. That everything got arranged seemed only by divine intervention.

Brad had been telling me about a fantastic bakery run by a group of ex-Hudderites. True to form, he brought some whole-wheat cinnamon rolls for us, and sent a loaf of bread home with me.

When he dropped me off at the airport, I told Brad that I couldn't thank him enough. It was true. I was so thankful for how kind, self-sacrificing, considerate, professional, patient and skilled he was. He had been my personal chauffeur for three and a half days, worked the deal for me, taken a genuine interest in helping me, and delayed his own departure on Friday to see things through (though he was too polite to mention it). Amazing.

He even got me to the airport on time.

posted by David @ 8:30 p.m.