by Vikki Warner
† Not what happened.
Buy High, Sell Never
Upon first viewing, the house on Penn Street was filled with contractors and day laborers of varying degrees of professionalism. A husband-and-wife team was tasked with painting the foundation and the garage doors; a stable of plumbers milled about, occasionally yelling from one part of the house to another; an alarming number of discarded Dunkin’ Donuts cups obscured every surface. The current owner, Al—a profane house-flipper in a track suit—was holding court, trying to direct the chaos. There was a huge, old car in the driveway, and a lady with her scruffy little dog told us she was living in the car, in the driveway, until she got a place to stay or the house was sold.
Not exactly the kind of staging one sees on HGTV.
The house had just been put on the market. James and I were just about the first to see it, and we did so on the realtor’s whim after we flatly rejected the other houses he showed us. It was three floors, built circa 1912, with a basic Victorianish exterior and a few surviving charming details, but it was obvious that the piss had been beaten out of this place over the years. We viewed the aluminum siding, with its slightly icky dual tone (light green on the first floor, white on the top two) with open revulsion, but decided it was not as bad as lowest-of-the-low vinyl siding. The street the house sat on was ugly, but it was very close to downtown. It happened to be a neighborhood cleanup day, and happy, joking kids skewered litter into bags.
Once we got inside, it became clear that the house was in the throes of a brutal renovation. Anything with character was on deck to be ripped out and replaced with cheap, bland, made-to-fail building materials purchased in bulk. We’d stumbled onto an old (though tarnished) gem, with an elegant, winding staircase, high ceilings, wood floors, and marble fireplaces, and it needed to be polished, not hollowed out. As it stood, the house felt like a shell, harshly gutted. So many rooms without a finished surface among them—pipes sticking out of walls and floors, old wallpaper half-removed from bowed plaster walls, a veritable history of linoleum decor in ripped layers upon the floors. We somehow found this refreshing rather than overwhelming, as if it provided the blank canvas on which we could project our personalities.
I was personally offended that a nice, simple old house with history would soon be just another drop-ceilinged, industrial-carpeted craphole in a city already filled with them. Al was “fixing it up,” he said, so that it would be trouble-free for a landlord—less to maintain or even think about, wasn’t that what I’d want? Who needs crown moldings or old wood floors when they’re just going to need upkeep? “Why bother making it nice,” he said, “when you’re just going to rent it out to a bunch of slobs?”
But Al played along with my whims, amused at my youthful enthusiasm. Over the next few days, as our discussion continued, he agreed to cease and desist on the popcorn ceiling finish and the wall-to-wall Astroturf, but I’d have to make an offer, and soon, because he needed to get the show on the road. I liked the house and thought I could make it some shade of what I wanted. I didn’t love the look of the neighborhood, heavy with graffiti, litter, and concrete, but this was the closest I could get to downtown that was in my price range. I used my favorite mantra, “I’m sure it’s fine,” to sweep any misgivings under the rug. I felt like a real grown-up boss lady even talking about buying a house. The feeling was intoxicating. I minimized the house’s many shortcomings, and played up its charm and age in my mind, just to ratchet up my comfort level and make this a doable “project” rather than a dreadful maze of expensive chores.
Al had the house listed at $275,000. Feeling as detached as if I were playing Monopoly, I talked to my real estate agent (henceforth “the Unrealtor”). He believed the house was solid, although he admitted it needed some work. He thought the neighborhood was “on the upswing,” and I should “get in now.” (I really wasn’t into becoming a mogul—I wasn’t very interested in appreciation, of the eventual selling price, of building a low-end empire. But explaining my unambitious real estate aspirations to a guy like him, whose money was made by buying and selling buildings, did not compute.)
I settled on offering $250,000, contingent on the immediate cessation of Al’s prior renovation plans, and including a note about his consulting me before making any major moves. (This plan would save Al money, because he’d be skipping some major projects—carpeting, windows, interior painting.) He countered with $260,000. I said $255,000. We settled on $257,500. At the end of May 2004, in a haze, I signed the purchase and sales agreement, including a list of repairs and improvements to be made before the closing. The Unrealtor egged me on, latching on to my irrational excitement, practically pushing the pen along the paper. My hand moved accordingly, but my brain was mired, sluggish. I handed over the deposit. James and I high-fived. And we promptly went home to the apartment in Boston and continued to pretend this whole thing wasn’t real.
In unguarded moments, I asked myself what the fuck I was doing. I’d just dropped an initial $7,500 deposit, knowing that the options then became (a) buy the house or (b) lose the cash. I’d felt that foreboding hand of fate clamping down on me—the one that told me to just do this and everything would suddenly become clearer—as soon as we started looking in earnest. Coming from Boston, where a similar house would have cost double or more, I thought Providence and this house were a bargain, although I had friends who’d bought there a few years earlier for many thousands less. But again—this had to be the time. I couldn’t wait. I’m the kind of slow plodder who completes the task at hand, even if it means my own demise. I wasn’t going to back out.
If you live in New York or San Francisco, you snorted some really good cold brew through your nose when you read the purchase price of my house. I know, it seems filthy cheap. It’s a big three-family apartment house with a garage, a driveway, and a yard. It’s in a centrally located (if not pretty) neighborhood of a hipster college town with really good food. But make no mistake, this was midbubble pricing. Ten years earlier, you could’ve bought three gorgeous houses on the west side of Providence for $257,500. My mom knew it, and in her no-nonsense tone she said, “Are you nuts? A quarter of a million dollars?” But I was not in the mood for cautionary guidance. I was more interested in paint swatches and antique furniture.
In a certain sense, I bought the house partially to keep it from being ruined by Al’s plywood henchmen, and partially because I felt I had to grab at something—the chance would be gone so quickly. To my mind, there was no time to thoughtfully consider all the angles. I liked it, yes, but I also felt a bit desperate in this early 2000s environment of rapturous homebuying. Being told that “it’s going to be on the market for a couple of days, at the most,” I panicked, and I played along.
The details of the transaction were hazy. There would be a period of renovation, during which Al and his scrappy assembly of uncredentialed workers would put in toilets and stoves and fridges and finish the house more or less to my specifications, which were simple and not much pricier than the plastic and cardboard junk they’d been planning to use. Al never would have agreed to anything expensive, but I had my eye on some low-cost materials that didn’t look so janky. Then, after appraisals and inspections and a final, illustrious walk-through, we’d all attend the closing, shake hands, and get this deal signed and my money vaporized. I got that part. But the rest of it—rates and terms and FHA requirements and loan types and points and closing costs—I barely even tried to understand. I dreamily figured it would all work out. (Reminder: I was twenty-six.)
The Unrealtor—a relative of a friend of a friend—was clearly afraid of Al. Federal Hill has a deep, notorious history of Mafia connection—it was for decades the very public base of operations for organized crime in New England. Men were shaken down in the five-and-dime and shot as they tucked into plates of linguine at the lunch counter. Corruption and violence were part of daily life. The Family infiltrated and manipulated local politics, business, and law enforcement until the nineties, when t
he local boss and twenty of his associates were indicted; a severely weakened mob moved back to Boston. Today, the last bastions are quietly disappearing from Providence, although everybody knows where the leftovers are. Think: less murder, more gambling and money laundering.
Though I highly doubt that Al had a connection to the actual mob, our real estate agent seemed wary of his hard-ass demeanor and old neighborhood accent, so he was overly jocular and obliging toward Al, taking me out of earshot so he could gently coach me not to complain or ask for too much. I had to do most of the talking. Luckily, though Al was vulgar and aggressive in his other business dealings (his cell phone conversations made frequent use of the word cocksucker), he was a pushover when faced with a little lady with silly, stupid, delightful ideas about maintaining the style of the house instead of turning it into a soulless dormitory.
I kept my parents apprised of my progress, leaving out some of the sketchier bits. They were supportive enough of my decision to buy the house, but they were clearly baffled by my making this risky move, and by the amount of money I’d be borrowing. They gave me good advice, and they certainly let me follow my misshapen dreams, but didn’t say more than they had to. My mom now admits that they secretly hoped I would give up on the whole thing. I can’t blame them. They must have asked themselves why I would buy this difficult house in a neighborhood so different from the one I grew up in; why I wasn’t getting married and buying a place with my husband; why I couldn’t relax and let these big life decisions happen in order; why I was with this guy who wanted me to buy a house but couldn’t contribute much actual money to the cause. “Whatever you do, Vik, make sure that house is in your name only,” my mom warned.
By this time, James and I had been together for six years. He worked part-time at a bookstore and had a one-step-forward-two-steps-back kind of art career. He really pushed himself artistically, but he was disorganized and discouraged. He always seemed to work for dipshits who promised great things, but then couldn’t pay. Much of his work consisted of highly detailed, technically flawless pen-and-ink illustrations and screen prints of deranged demons; they were funny and intentionally trashy, in the style of eighties gross-out comics. But they featured too many pimply butts and flaccid dongs to get very far with rarefied art buyers who had cash to burn.
James had no money. In fact, I’d been paying his rent in the Boston place on and off for years (yeah, I know) since he’d been laid off from a dot-com startup that made fancy websites and promotional videos—a company which seemed to foretell its own demise by naming itself Fiction. Instead of paying into the purchase of the house, we agreed that James would provide labor—he had in the past worked on his brother’s roofing crew and done some carpentry—and maybe throw in a few hundred bucks when he had it. He’d also get us a really good deal on roofing and windows, which the house sorely needed, via said brother. Being stubbornly proud of my ability to buy this house pretty much independently, I told him I wasn’t worried about being responsible for paying most of the bills. I had faith that I could generate and save money when I needed to. Somewhere in the reaches of my subconscious, I also knew that letting James shirk accountability meant I could continue to claim my status as the long-suffering girlfriend: the one who did all the work, paid for everything, and never complained. I got some mileage out of being the saint in the relationship—the counterweight to his testy and conflicted tendencies.
But buying PennHenge also felt like the first step on my own version of a badass path less traveled. Until this point, I’d dutifully attended college, and then grad school, and I’d had one job or another since I was fifteen. I’d been a saver and a planner, a good girl with punk leanings. I’d never gone on a grand journey of self-discovery; no semester abroad, no epic backpacking trip, not even a cross-country drive. I was firmly planted, all business.
Now I was in my midtwenties, with no inclination toward marriage, and a negative maternal instinct. Buying a big, messy house with broken windows and a decaying foundation seemed, if not the smartest plan, definitely the most apropos thing an Independent Woman could do with her nest egg. And being a landlady? Hell yes. I would be the doyenne of the place. I’d start my own little punk house, and I’d find a ton of like-minded people to share the house’s (eventual) charms. Every Sunday, we’d eat a vegan dinner of veggies plucked from our own garden, and we’d drink home brew and laugh by the fire pit, with our little cassette boom box blasting away into the wee hours.
Feeling pleased with my new risk-inclined self, the one who did not slink away from a challenge involving manual labor, I moved onward with the plan. I was actually going to buy this thing. I continued to visit PennHenge once or twice a week while it was being renovated by Al’s crew that summer, dropping in unannounced and pointing with feigned authority at things I liked or didn’t like. The Unrealtor continued to get mush-mouthed in Al’s presence, so Al and I started dealing with each other directly—not the way it’s supposed to work—a real cop-out on the Unrealtor’s part. Battles with Al were won and lost. He found me a beautiful antique gas stove for the third floor, but he refused to upgrade the bathroom—which had a summer camp vibe, with its flimsy plastic shower stall and tiny sink (plus a door that opened onto the back of the shower stall from the next room). Al gave in on the black-and-white kitchen floor tiles I liked, but he wouldn’t cave on nicer cabinets. He’d say, “Now didn’t that come nice?” when showing off some newly finished detail; when circumstances prevented perfection, he’d squeal, “I hadda do that!” At every turn, we tussled. I knew I could only get so much, and that it would be up to me to fix a lot of things on my own dime later.
Meanwhile, the mortgage proceedings hit a snag, and I was forced again to confront how much money I didn’t have. I was turned down for an FHA loan, which meant I was required to put up another ten grand, and I couldn’t do that and have a single dollar left for moving, painting, and readying the two rental apartments. James—clearly as convinced as I was that there was no turning back—called his older sister, an unerringly patient woman who’d done well for herself and wanted to see the rest of her family equally set up. He talked her into letting me borrow some cash. From her point of view, it probably seemed that James and I would be together for decades, get married, have children (why else would we be looking to buy a house together?), so she wanted to help me (us, him) out. Maybe she felt bad for me because she knew James couldn’t contribute. Whatever her motivation, with that I sunk further into laughable debt. I shielded my eyes from the amount and trudged on.
On August 4, 2004, the day after my twenty-seventh birthday, I became the official owner of PennHenge. In the days leading up to the closing, I hired a roly-poly, mustachioed home inspector—the cheapest one I could find—who, with his teenage sidekick, reported that the windows were shit (not news), the roof was tragic (indeed), and the plumbing was “Mickey Mouse,” contractor parlance for “not installed by professionals.” Pluses: the walls were “sturdy as hell” and built by people who “knew what they were doing.” He wasn’t overly worried about the basement, the walls of which would disintegrate into your hands with a stern poke. There were toxic piles of moldy red-brick dust at regular intervals along the floor. He said this was common in Providence—humidity is unkind to old houses—and looked awful but didn’t pose much of a problem. Structurally, that is. “Just don’t breathe it in,” he advised.
I had hired the cheapest inspector for a reason—so that I could ignore the problems that a more meticulous person would have brought to my attention. Anyway, within an hour or two I had moved on to zealous ramblings about area rugs and paint colors, and any problems of a structural (and therefore un-fun) nature seemed so lame as to temporarily disappear.
Al and I did a final walk-through, where I pointed out a few small things to be repaired before the papers were signed. And then there was nothing to do but await the closing.
The closing took place on a very hot day, and through a miracle of scheduling, I had also agre
ed to a job interview that morning at a magazine in Boston. I remember thinking, halfway through the interview, that I should slow down, that my interviewer didn’t need to know every detail about the house and this big transition I was making and why I wanted to live in Providence—a whole state away—which was commutable but probably not an ideal location for their entry-level staff. I was loud; I was overheated in every sense of the word. I sweated through my trusty interview suit. I knew as I walked out the door that I would never be walking back in.
Then it was on to the main event—screw this job stuff, just let me buy this house! The closing happened at a small-town law office north of Providence. I changed out of my interview clothes in the car, took a couple of steadying breaths, and walked in. Al, the Unrealtor, and a host of lawyers and assistants, all seated around a beige conference table, turned to assess my entrance. Clearly having learned nothing from the morning’s interview episode, I immediately began babbling, already well on my way to sweating through my fresh clothes despite the corporate-level air conditioning in the office. Quickly, an unthinkable number of very important, unintelligible papers were put in front of me. It would have taken days to read all of them, so I relied on the lawyers in the room to tell me what I was signing. I made clever jokes, congratulating myself on my ability to be funny even in a room with a bunch of lawyers. Damn, you’re charming, I thought, then, hold on—did I just catch that guy rolling his eyes at me? I’m certain they discussed my unfortunate cocaine dependence after I left, but my high was all caffeine, stress hormones, and neurosis.
Driving off in my purple Honda, though, I couldn’t have cared less about their forms and the lawyers and motivational wall art. I felt a fierce and thrilling delight at what I had just done, like I was flipping the bird at all of convention, because now I’d get to see this project through. Whatever the outcome, it was mine. After four months of dealing with Al and the Unrealtor, I was ready to see them back off and—for our purposes—cease to exist, so that James and I could get this experimental aircraft off the ground.
