the science of buying things

Today at some point in the AM, offer #2 goes out. This place is further outside of our original 'boundary' of sorts. The dream was to (is to?) find something that allows us both to get to work without driving, or at least not HAVING to do so. The reality is that those houses fall into two distinct categories: too expensive or excessively shitty. The latter varies between slight disrepair and decrepit/abandoned with a lingering smell best described as 'did someone die in here?' The former are often in Irvington or Sabin and would limit us to a diet of ramen and cat food and burning our neighbors recycling for heat. So, we expanded our search.

As Portland is a land of neighborhoods, we are now looking in places like Piedmont. Saying you live in Portland without at least stating your quadrant or, more preferably your neighborhood, is such a vague generality it would be like saying 'meet me in Powell's by the books' without even hinting at genre. Regardless, I am still pretty shocked at the prices, but they are at least in the realm of possibility. It is interesting because even if those neighborhoods, you generally are looking at lackluster schools, the occasional derelict home (it is just a rarer phenomenon, not an absent one), and middling crime rates.

I can only compare this to Florida where the houses around an area pretty much dictate the quality of the school and neighborhood associations dictate that you will keep your house up. The 'neighborhoods' there are usually just tracks of homes with names that often call up memories of what was there before the homes went in like 'Cypress Manor' or 'River of Grass' or what have you. All homes are of a similar age, general size, and general price. It was not common to buy a million dollar home next to a $200K one. Here, it isn't common either, but it is a distinct possibility. Also, that million dollar home could be just a few blocks off a busy intersection or a downright dangerous neighborhood. Its just hard to assimilate here vs. there for me sometimes.

I would write more, but work beckons. Hopefully today I dont have to spend 5 minutes wiping blood off my shoe with clorhexadine like yesterday. Sometimes my job is just like that though (and all the stranger for it).