First off, Happy New Year! I hope your 2016 is even better than your 2015. Now on to the show!
Eventually, after everyone has patted themselves on the back for having a safe, beautiful, and vibrant downtown with a 0% vacancy rate and tons of jobs, there's another issue that will need to be addressed. I mean, you know, after crime, education, poverty, and the infant mortality rate. It's the housing stock. If you own a great house in this city, you're not giving it up for anything. That's fine and is what happens everywhere. The problem is that the houses that are left for the rest of us are...well, either too expensive or $hit. Now $hit can mean a lot of things in this post - dangerous, small, uninspired, ugly, run down, ready to fall over, currently on fire, a crack den, a squatter's hangout, etc... I know this because I've been looking for a house in Cleveland and I only really have seen 1-2 out of the over 50 we've looked at that I like. Now I may or may not be the normal dude looking for houses in Cleveland but I am pretty average. Do you think maybe there are people like me who, in frustration, turn to Lakewood or Cleveland Heights to find the right combo of things in a house and neighborhood while still being in a hip urban area close to hip urban parts of Cleveland? I do...or I wouldn't be writing this. He's what I've learned so far from my house hunting experience:
- There's a premium on safety - Money = safety and even then it doesn't equal absolute safety. It doesn't even necessarily mean things to do or access to transportation. The safest neighborhoods have the highest priced houses and vice versa. This is the 1st thing you look at when you start looking for houses in this city...and then when you see the prices you start to look at small areas that are still Cleveland but are on the other side of the highway from murder (like around the river) or areas tucked away behind a park or hidden within factories. Places not even criminals go since there's too much work to get to them or they don't even know about them. Then your parents catch wind and with their limited knowledge of the area have a full on freak out that more than likely cut 10 years off of their life. I get it, safety is important but make your urban pioneer move when you're young, single, and orphaned. It'll be a lot easier without people using logic against you.
- Since $ = safety, the quality of the house for the money suffers - I like a good old house as much as anyone. I grew up in a 3000 sq ft Victorian rebuilt from the ground up by my parents and that's what I want. I love the attention to detail and the open feeling of wide pocket doors and hard wood everywhere and push button lights and all of it!...except finding something like this for sale in Cleveland is like finding a needle in a haystack...that's as big as the city itself and when you do, who knows what your surroundings will be like? There are beautiful Victorians in East Cleveland but there's also daily murders so there you go. So then what? You settle...for a lot of orange wood and lackluster curved entryways and no window frames and 1,100 sq feet and the occasional armed robbery. That's fine with me. I have vision and the handyman skills to make things into what I want them to look like. Problem is I'll never get my money back when I sell the place so what's the point? I don't have the finances to sacrifice for the good of the city as much as I would like to do the Johnny Appleseed thing (only instead of planting apple trees I fix up sorta crappy houses not worrying about the cost).
- HUD homes are a great idea! - Except no one will loan you the money for one and you don't have $30k in cash lying around. Found that out after getting really excited about one.
- Home is where your girlfriend's stuff is - It's not JUST where your heart is because your heart is pressuring you to move and you feel claustrophobic in your current appt because your heart has so much stuff that she hearts and wants it in your small apartment...and garage...and a side room in the garage...and in the basement...and in your parent's garage...and in the basement of your rental...and in a barn in East Canton. To say I didn't think this through is sorta unfair. I didn't know the extent of the stuff and I also didn't know it would become my responsibility. I didn't think I'd have been tasked with finding a place for all of it. And I wasn't in the beginning but because there's so so much stuff and no one is willing to get rid of any of it, it makes renting an apartment impossible...which I think was the plan all along.
- No place for my tax bracket - Millennials and retirees have downtown, the flats, and Ohio City. Hipsters and hip retirees have Tremont. College people (students, workers, professors, etc...) have University Circle. Old money has Detroit Shoreway except for Gordon Square which is new money. Old empty-nesters and city worker families have Old Brooklyn and West Park. I'm sorry to generalize but the rest is the wild wild...wild...crazy dangerous...wild west. The problem is unless I want to live in the wild areas, I have to be crazy wealthy...or at least better off than the 2 of us are now...which is not well off. We can afford a $100k house in Cleveland because the taxes are awesome but it's tight. That doesn't put us in a great range. We can get a nice house in a nice area for that but will probably lose money on it and it'll probably not be big enough for "our" stuff. The yard will never be big enough. It won't be close to anything like bars or grocery stores or downtown or the highway. Sooooooooo why not live in the f'ing suburbs then!
- There are some really great neighborhoods in Cleveland that no one knows about - And for good reason. Big houses, great access to places, tree lined streets, safety, wonderful neighbors...and they don't want you driving through and discovering them and telling all your friends about them because then the criminals will know where to hit next!...Seriously. Little tucked away areas in this city that have the same mentality as Louisville, Ohio >> where I grew up. All I can tell you is that you'll almost never pass these areas in your travels through the city. You won't know that they exists if you set up your filters for your price range on the for sale websites. You'll only know about them if you're like me and are curious as to why a big section of homes doesn't really have anything for sale...and you've limited your search to Cleveland. You know, a weirdo.
- Sometimes old doesn't mean classic - We tend to think that just because old people are old they are these wise people with this untapped life experience and sweet demeanor. Well just like everything else (military, clergy, bartenders, strippers) not all of them are great. Some of them are dicks. Some of them have done a lifetime of awful things. Some of them are just broken. Houses are the same way. A lot of old houses have so much charm that they cry out to be refurbished or have been cared for by good people throughout the years because it was only logical to continue to take care of such beauty. Then there are time periods in the early 1900's where the houses that were built in Cleveland were just awful. They were put up fast with poor quality materials and uninspired designs on plots of land that were just too small...and they suck. Now they're old and no one really cares about them anymore. That means they just sit there. No one really want to rehab them and boy do they need it because they're old. No A/C, no finished basements or attics, bad carpet, cramped kitchens, small bedrooms...and on and on. So every year they lose a couple thousand off their price until they end up just being left for dead because you just won't get the money you put into it back again. Then the city comes along and tears it down...or not. There's a lot of areas where "or not" is the case. I say this -- group the houses by type and do some analysis on the situation. Or...just buy up neighborhoods, tear them down, and start over with a more urban type of today house that will stand the test of time in a mixed use neighborhood with a hip feel. Oh if I would just win the powerball... Scorched Earth! Oh and for you people who think that anything old should be saved...if it was so worth saving, buy it and save it already. 60 years of neglect doesn't prove to me anything but that it needs put out of it's misery. My opinion only goes for houses. Downtowns are completely different. I'm talking about a house that you can find an exact replica of but built backwards or with a window missing on a million different streets in this city.
- I may have realized my dreams too late in life - This is a preparation statement for all of the a$$holes who will ask "why aren't you living in Cleveland if you love it so much????!?!?!" There's going to be a day in the future when I won't live in Cleveland. I'm dating someone who's not urban and who's dream house is a farm. I wasted all my money on a Hummer H3 during the gas crisis and a house during the housing crisis and basically different ways to try to impress women so they'd look past how fat I was/am. I'm now in charge of half a football field's worth of stuff. My nice guy demeanor...before it'll put me in heaven, has cost me quite a bit of my life. I will never have the means to make the difference I want to make. Too many people rely on me to be able to just pull a 180. I'm too old and haven't really made anything of myself in life. I am this one man team to make my dreams come true and it takes much more than that and a bit of luck. With all that said, one day I'll have to be OK with giving up my dreams. Sooo....I don't really have the money to buy a house that fits all of this physical,mental, and dream $hit even if it did magically come up for sale in Cleveland or pretty much anywhere else. Such is life.
Urban pioneers...do it while you still can. Make a difference. Be remembered.
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