Oz: Here for It, #363
Hi! It's R. Eric Thomas. From the internet?
Hi!
Hello from beautiful Provincetown, a place so magical and so dear to me!
Well, actually, hello from the Daily Provisions cafe in Boston Seaport five days ago. Yes, that's right, I wrote this newsletter in the past, which does seem to tempt fate a bit.
Me, thinking about what I want to have for breakfast tomorrow
What if Beyoncé releases a new album between Wednesday and Sunday and I fail to comment on it?
What if Earth suddenly loses gravity and we all end up on Mars and everyone's like "uh, hello, there are greater concerns than your little jokes and asides, babe! Hello! There's no grocery stores on Mars so we're all trying to remember the plot of that Matt Damon movie right now, okay?"
What if I win the lottery? (This wouldn't change my newsletter, to be honest, because if I won the lottery I'd be so cagey about it. No one would know. Not saying I wouldn't spend the money. Honey! I'd order an Uber to Mars! But the benefit of being a gay of the clinically insane variety is that people expect me to spend like I'm Auntie Mame all of the time, especially if I don't actually got it like that. "Of course he ordered a case of a random champagne he had at an art museum in Atlanta. He has no children and his first crush was the cartoon fox Robin Hood. What else is he supposed to do with his time?")
Speaking of spending like Auntie Mame, I would like to continue talking to you about buying a home, a thing I did once, and tried to do again last year, but ultimately did not do again. (Yes, the people love stories about things that potentially could have happened. Like when someone describes a very long dream to you!)
Buying a home, in my experience, is like a Wizard of Oz adventure where every new person you deal with on your journey is operating at a wildly different frequency. Showing Agents, for instance, are like salespeople at Sephora. Charming! Fun! Will compliment your sweater and give you a tip on making a smokey eye. They want you to like the house but ultimately, babe, who cares?
Buyers Agents always have a million calls going and they say things like "roof decks are trending downward." And I nod and I say, "yes, I have read some articles of the sort," even though I haven't. Every time I talk to a Buyers Agent I feel like I need to go home and google "Now what exactly is going on?" (A thing I frequently google for many reasons.)
My favorite personality in the home buying process is the mortgage person. Now that is a kook! First of all, who are you? Everything about buying a home feels like a scam but it definitely starts feeling like a scam when you email your W-2s to a stranger who has a magic program that will show you how poor you are in graph form.
(I tried to get a mortgage from PNC, a place I'd gotten a mortgage from before, and a grumpy man with a Boston accent called me on the phone and told me to e-mail him my tax return. I was like, darling, surely this is not the path. And then he never got back to me. The application is just sitting on the PNC terminal "pending" for a year! In the words of Marvin Gaye, "GURL WHUT????")
My actual mortgage guy was great but wow was I not prepared for this part of Oz. He works all the time? Like 24 hours a day? I asked him a question on the weekend as we were preparing to make an offer and he sent me a response via video message at a birthday party for a child. (It wasn't confidential information.) To this day, I don't really understand what this job is or how one comes to be in it. It feels like going on the Dark Web or meeting someone at a party who says he's a Day Trader. Okay, well I'm a Night Walker. Now what?
My other favorite person in the home-buying process is the Title person. Her name is always Shannon and she's either 52 or 21 and she lives in New Jersey no matter where you buy your house. You will never meet her and when you talk to her on the phone, the room has the vague sound of dusty cubicles in a mostly empty office. Shannon is the person who sends you the serial killer letter that has instructions about how to wire more money than you have ever laid your little fingers on. Do know the letter I'm talking about? It always looks like this:
There is no way more secure way to do this on, like Venmo or something? After telling you where to wire your life savings (TODAY!!!!), the serial killer letter always has HUGE warnings about the prevalence of wire fraud. And it does cause you to think, "hm, what you're describing sounds a lot like what's happening now. I am receiving a letter from a stranger demanding money. Should I go to CVS and buy gift cards and read you the numbers?"
(I really hope this is a common experience because otherwise I sound insane. I googled it and found an example that is still less deranged than anything I've received.)
Shannon, if you're reading this, one suggestion: too many font sizes. First of all, this letter always looks like it's a copy of a copy of a copy that's has a file name like "SERIAL KILLER LETTER_v2_approved_1997_SHaNonn Millbury (Jersey City Office).pdf" And this document has sentences in every possible font size. Like a parade. MADNESS! Utter madness!
Anyway, I rent.
This week on Asking Eric
roof decks are trending downward,
Eric
