#3 Casting my net

I had the idea that I would buy something in or near my neighborhood, the neighborhood in which I'd spent most of my adult life (aside from 8 years in the suburbs). I thought I'd buy something cruddy I could gut and remodel. I had big plans. Like many things, the plans didn't exactly pan out as I'd imagined. Surprise. The first house I looked at I loved. It was small but I could add on, I thought. Unfortunately the city historical society had other ideas. Then began a series of disappointing viewings of houses of a variety of sizes, in various neighborhoods, in an assortment of states of decay, unworkable for manifold reasons. Over the past 6 or so years I've looked at hundreds of properties online, and physically looked at scores of them. I only really ever considered 2 or 3 properties enough to even look at them again. I hate to bother the real estate agent to go see something a second time when I'm pretty sure I'm never gonna buy the damn thing. Even when the real estate agent is my sister, or perhaps because.

I looked twice at a spectacular condo across from Juneau Park that was stunning and perfect in many respects. It even had a temperature-controlled wine storage facility and the private humidor room. Which is great if you go in for that sort of thing but the condo fee alone was $1,200 a month. I'd have been impoverished.

Another needed easily $100,000 worth of structural work. And I had it professionally appraised, this was not just my opinion. It needed new plumbing, electricity, all new windows and some sort of landscaping work so that the basement didn't flood through the windows every time there was a hint of rain. Eventually it was bought by the lawyer for the Bucks, or Brewers or some damn sports team.

I looked at a 700 square foot houses with vinyl interior walls where the owner emphatically told me she would not sell it if I wanted to tear it down. The inside was filled with picture of Pope John Paul II. I figured that I'd tear it down anyway and had an architect draw up some plans for me. If you like flying buttresses this was the house for you. It seems that instead of listening to me when I talked about what I wanted, he was high on crack. I abandoned the idea and the house remains unsold.