Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.
~ Charles Dickens ~
Last year this time our next door neighbors to the left of us (let’s call them the Lefties) put their house up for sale. They had decided to move someplace smaller, having discovered, as we all do who own houses that are ridiculously large, that cleaning and maintaining a BIG house and chasing three small children through all the cavernous rooms is simply not worth it. Within a few weeks the neighbors to the right of us (let’s call them the Righties, which is not an indication of their presumed political leanings, even though they did sneer at my Kerry sign) also had a For Sale sign out front. We started to feel a bit unloved (we really don’t have a rusting washer or a sagging davenport on the front porch) until we found out that Mr. Rightie had been transferred to the left coast.

As soon as the last whack of the mallet driving the Righties’ For Sale sign was heard, the real estate market collapsed with a resounding “WHOOMPH”. Both houses languished, despite the fact that they are in a great location, are beautifully decorated, and are only a few years old. We heard through the guy who does handyman jobs for us that the Lefties had an offer on their house after it was on the market about 3 months and we expected the requisite SOLD! sign to be tacked up. That didn’t happen and nor did the Lefties appear to be making any plans to move. When spring weather allowed us all to be outside again, we learned that they had indeed had an offer, but that the building inspection had turned up some disturbingly expensive items.

Our neighborhood was built during the late 1990s and another housing development gobbled up farmland across the street a few years later. During the ensuing years we had watched as a handful of houses had been stripped of their stucco and had their exteriors rebuilt from the wood sheathing out. “How horrible,” we murmured to each other. “How terrible to have your house uninsulated and exposed to the elements for more than a month.” We heard rumors of a class action lawsuit against the builders of the other development (on the heels of other charges similar to those that might be filed against Tony Soprano). “Thank god that’s not us,” we whispered.

Too soon, we exulted in our exemption from incorrectly applied stucco and inexpertly built window sills. The Lefties had found too-thin stucco and wood rot all over the exterior of their home. Because they didn’t have to move, they decided to stay and leave the expense of correcting the flaws to another time. The Righties didn’t have this luxury and found even worse damage to their house. Ultimately, they would drop the price of the house by $231,000 AND put $150,000 in escrow to cover additional costs of the corrections that would have to be made. The new Righties are now having the exterior fixed – the process has been going on for about 6 weeks and looks about 80% complete. They will end up spending almost $200,000 to correct the damage and have a new exterior correctly applied.

The builder of our house (who built our previous home as well) has since retired, moved to Florida and is living on his boat. He dissolved the corporation that was used to sell and build the houses, so there is no entity we can look to for compensation. Our insurance company (a fucking good neighbor they’ve turned out to be) just laughed and laughed when we told them about the damage.

We’ve hired a building inspector and hope to have the results of the tests in a couple of weeks. The equity we have – had – in our house has been wiped out and we can only hope for a resurgence of the real estate market.

I can just hear people commenting as they drive by, “How sad. We’re lucky that’s not our house.”