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Sithestate and Sithmath
Fri, 24 Jun 2005

It seems to be accepted to not rant in public, but you know.. it is awfully good for the nerves ;) But first -- its going to be 34 degrees celsius today here in Toronto, feeling like 41 or more with humidity. Nice. Last night our sithestate agent took us to see a house in a pretty exclusive area, and gave us the guilt-session of the century when we didn't have any interest in it -- it was a very attractive house but just small and weirdly shaped and with a price-tag to make you swallow your own eyeballs. We don't need some expensive place in an expensive area...

We tried to get away with "its too small" but that didn't deter her sith mind control tricks, so I elaborated and just ended up all frustrated -- "the rooms aren't any bigger than the ones in our current house" (and our current house isn't really big though its big enough for us!), "I don't care about exclusive areas or not" (we both grew up in working class neighbourhgoods and turned out okay!), "I can almost reach from the front door to the back wall", "I can see into the master bedroom from the front door" -- and all of this for an enormous price, when really it doesn't get us anything over our current little house except bragging rights about some exclusive area (and I'm not one to brag.) On the back of my mind I was thinking "great, you go into debt like mad so that everyone you know will think your a rich snot" (we're neither) and how to explain spending so much dinar for such a tiny place to others of the same mindset like family and friends -- we're all hard working modest people who don't respect spending piles of money we don't have frivilously. So as you can imagine, with this sithestate agent trying to twist our minds into buying it got very frustrating. "In my professional opinion, this is the house to get" "to raise a family in", etc. Well, I don't doubt it has nice schools and is a nice area, but I just don't see the attraction and boy she was ticked.

It took awhile to formulate my thoughts on why there was no click here and in other places -- and I think I can summarize thusly -- you can buy an old buggy of a car and park it in the nicest area, but its still a buggy and you still have to drive it. A nice but unsatisfactory house, regardless of the area.. is still unsatisfactory. (We're not the sorts to rebuild half the house or add another floor on top while we're there. No time, and no patience. Finishing a basement or the like sure (love to!), but no serious construction is worth it on top of an expensive place. A cheap place, sure, you can invest further money in since it was cheap to begin with..)

The analytical half of my brain breaks it down into this triangular model:

To me, the place we saw last night violated two of these rules -- home (it was too small and weirdly shaped despite a beautiful and large lot) and value (enormous price for a small place? silliness!) Earlier on we almost got interested in one nice place, but it ended up violating the area rule (by being too far from everyone we know, and the things we like, and being a slightly goofier commute to work etc.), but was a great value and great home. Maybe we should've taken that one since it only bent one of the rules... well then again, it bent the value rule too, so hell with it :)

I think its a good model: great places in crappy areas fall out; great areas with bad places fall out. Bad value.. falls out. Perfect.

So what do we want in a house? (it differs to everyone of course, so you have to stand firm. Most people buy in the first or second day out with an agent apparently, but I worry they get what the agent wants and not what they want. The agent doesn't have to live there, folks, so don't let the sith mind tricks get to you.)

We want a nice detached house in a nice area, with an okay price. Is that so much to ask for?

Evidently so -- we've been looking for many months over a couple of years. Our poor sithagent :)

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