The Once and Future Homeowner

At some point within the next 36 hours I will no longer be a homeowner.

I believe in the concept of homeownership and in the benefits. I consider myself a homeowner. I've been sitting here this morning trying to remember how long it's been since I didn't own a home and realized, to my horror, that my actual history has been very roller-coasterish, as has so much of my life. Of course, given my marital history, this will not surprise you.

FOMC and I bought out first house in 1972, following the completion of his Master's degree. His family had a construction company and they gave us the house at cost. The list price was $27,700 and it had 1,447 square feet. As I recall, our mortgage payment was around $100 dollars a month. The house was in Oviedo, Florida, east of Orlando. We lived there about a year, until I became pregnant with TJ and we wanted a little more space and to be closer to family. Then we bought house #2 on Lake Sybelia Drive in Maitland. Our third purchase was a condo in Sarasota when we moved down there for a church job. When FOMC decided to go back to school, he said he wasn't going to work and we were going to sell the condo and live off the equity while he got his doctorate. Alas, he dropped out of the program after a year, saying they weren't teaching him what he wanted to learn. The equity was gone and so was our marriage.

A couple years later I remarried—an IBMer in Montgomery Village, MD. I was earning about $20K and he was earning about $60K, but he expected me to pay 50% of the mortgage. I demurred, so had no financial interest in his home. When that marriage broke up, I rented. When John and I met, he had a home, but was renting it out while he house-sat for friends for two years. When we broke up, I bought a condo in Baileys Crossroads, VA, for a year until I realized I had made a big financial mistake. I rented until I met husband #3 and moved into his home in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. Again, no financial interest in that house. When that marriage broke up, again I rented.

John and I got back together, he implicitly proposed as we were making application for the mortgage for our fabulous house overlooking the zoo and Rock Creek Park. He bought me a house instead of a big ring. I've been leveraging that purchase ever since. I turned it into a fabulous Manhattan style condo after his death, then into my share of a million dollar foothills home in Tucson, then into the Continental Ranch house and the Chula Vista house, which will go away today, at the cost of $44K.

So that makes a total of eight houses. That's not quite as many as I had thought, and not as long a period of home ownership as I would have thought. I didn't bore you with all the periods of home rental (I hate renting. I never feel settled when I'm renting. I can't really live unless I own.)

So the ownership era that began with John's proposal in 1996 ends today—a span of 12 years—and begins again once I pay down these debts, accrue some savings, and figure out what I want to do next.

But, oh, how relieved I'll feel when I hear that the title agent in Tucson has recorded the documents for the Chula Vista transfer!