Gimme Shelter

Have you ever seen one of those "As seen on TV" products and thought: "I came up with that idea years ago!" Well, I just had that experience with a book. My husband and I have been trying to buy our first home for years. It has been nothing like I imagined it would be. I always thought buying our first home would be exciting, maybe even fun. Not even close. It has been one of the most frustrating experiences of my life. Fortunately, I came across Mary Elizabeth Williams's book Gimme Shelter: Ugly Houses, Cruddy Neighborhoods, Fast-Talking Brokers, and Toxic Mortgages: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream. I could have written this book. I should have written this book. Her story of her experience trying to buy her first home is so similar to mine, I feel a kinship with her. Like me, she is a well-educated, middle class American in a dual-income marriage. Like me, she lives in an area where the cost of living is extremely high, which makes it very difficult for a middle class family to purchase their own home. But also like me, she has an intense desire for her own home. As she says: "Of course I want a home. I'm American; it's encoded into my cultural DNA." As her desire grows to set down roots for her growing family, she begins to explore their real estate options. She quickly finds out that the influx of wealthier residents to her neighborhood and the expanding housing bubble has priced her out of all but the tiniest, grimiest, housing options. While exploring different neighborhoods, she also explores the various kinds of mortgages that are available to first-time buyers, and how the sale of some of these mortgages to unqualified borrowers has caused the mess we are in right now. Although it's a frustrating process, her humor and her strong relationship with her husband seem to sustain her, and it makes for a pretty good story.

I will concede though, that Williams definitely has it worse than me. She lives in New York City, and the housing prices for a tiny apartment are astronomical. It's hard to comprehend paying that much money for a home. And, I also learned that when you live in an apartment or co-op in NYC, you will pay a monthly maintenance fee. This is not new information to me, but what I didn't know was that the fee can be $600 or more a month! Can you imagine? Just the thought of that makes my eye start twitching.