I
suppose owning your own home could be considered an integral part of
The American Dream. Well, not of my own personal American Dream, but of
the Vague & Nonspecific American Dream most people imagine. I
honestly don’t think I can define it, but the one thing I’m sure of is
that it doesn’t have much to do with reality.

For example, if life followed the tenets of TAD,
the “affordable” townhome I recently purchased wouldn’t have had a
busted hot water heater, urine-soaked burnt orange carpet, an ancient
& barely-functional air conditioner, drafty windows, and weird
sloping/rolling cement floors in the basement which may or may not have
been hastily constructed to conceal a temple of ancient evil. But
whatever, here’s some junk about buying houses.

Part I – Apartments
Part II – Houses

Don’t
worry about this. As you may or may not have gathered from recent
events, most mortgage companies will give credit to pretty much anyone
who wants it, regardless of whether or not they only make eight cents a
day buffing shoes at the airport. So as long as you’ve got “good
credit”, you’ll probably be able to fool them into giving you a loan.

For
example, the first few mortgage companies I applied for a loan at
denied my application. I would say this was probably the “responsible”
thing to do, seeing as I make almost no money and would even have
trouble affording an apartment on my own. However, with perseverance I
eventually found a company negligent enough to give me a lot of money.
Nice huh?

Now
that you’ve found someone to recklessly give you money for something
you can’t actually afford, the next step is to recklessly find a house.
Try to find the biggest one you can get. The bank is just going to
seize it back from you in a year or two anyway, so you might as well
live it up.

As far as what physical attributes or
characteristics you should look for, I have no idea. I can barely even
figure out how to install a doorknob; what do I know about the build
quality of homes? So if you don’t know anything
about anything, how are you supposed to narrow down your choices? Why, with superficiality and childishness, of course.

The way I approached it
was to make a number of baseless snap judgments and illogical
assumptions about things as I saw them, and to then classify those
items as either positive or negative. So to finish out this article, here’s a sample mental diary I
might’ve kept if I were visiting a house.

NEGATIVE: I see people walking around outside. It is too busy around here.

NEGATIVE: A rusty old Buick Century is parked in a nearby driveway. This must be a poor neighborhood.  
NEGATIVE: I just saw more than two teenagers walking down the sidewalk in a group. This must be gang territory.

NEGATIVE: There is a park nearby. Joyful families having fun in parks make a lot of noise, which would be annoying.

NEGATIVE: This house is an ugly color and there is a McDonald’s wrapper in the driveway. I hate it.

NEGATIVE: This yard is too big, and there are small hills. It’d be a hassle to mow this lawn.

POSITIVE: There’s
an old water tower across the street without any fence around it. I
could totally climb up it and sit and drink sodas up there and then
throw the cans off just like in the movies.

NEGATIVE: Oh my god. This house smells like urine. I’m not sure if it’s human or animal urine though.

NEGATIVE: Look at this refrigerator! It’s about three hundred years old. What a piece of junk.

POSITIVE: Hey! There are still some ice cube trays in the freezer. Would I get to keep those? I would? Niiiice.

FINAL NEGATIVE: I accidentally tracked mud all over the carpet. If I buy this house I will have to clean this mud up. Let’s get out of here.

So
there you have it. What “it” is, I’m not exactly sure. But the fact
remains that you do indeed have it. If you’ve got any questions or
comments about this subject, you could write in if you wanted to. I
think I’d read it. Just look around the site for a contact page though.
I don’t really feel like adding a link here right now. It would’ve been
right here though, if I had done it.