A few weeks later, we got a call from Michelle. The owner of the house, who was sometimes referred to as the unofficial “Mayor of Bernal Heights,” had allegedly only gotten offers from contractors who wanted to tear the house down and dramatically transform it into a McMansion. She had rehabbed the place herself, had close relationships with her neighbors, and didn’t want to see her baby become a soulless giant on a street of modest homes. She’d spotted my name on the sign-in sheet.
We wrote a syrupy letter gushing about how we fell in love with the house the moment we saw it and that we’d be honored to live in a place so lovingly restored. (We didn’t mention the $25,000 in foundation work we knew it needed, or that the “new” roof had five layers of shingles on it, or that the so-called plaster walls were really just poorly installed drywall.) I wanted to put in a low-ball offer, but after our long ordeal Michelle recommended bidding everything we had.
And it worked.
The instant we gave up trying, a house was presented to us. It made me wish we had quit six months earlier. Now all we had to do was arrange financing.
We made an early morning appointment to meet with Jimmy the mortgage broker at his office in San Jose. But it was deadline day, and Traci couldn’t show up late at the small magazine where she worked as an editor, so she dropped me off in the forlorn parking lot of a cinderblock office park, circa 1950, where Jimmy did business. I planned to walk to the university where I taught, located about a mile away, after the papers were signed.
“Is this place even open?” Traci asked after I kissed her goodbye. She was reluctant to leave me there in the parking lot. The nearby streets were clogged with early morning traffic and a greenish-yellow smog was already collecting around the distant hilltops, bolstering my theory that San Jose possessed all the unsavory attributes of Los Angeles without the glamour, money, or excitement of the movie industry.
“It’ll be fine,” I said, trying to sound confident. “I’ll call you later and let you know how it goes.”
The door to Jimmy’s office was locked, so I knocked and a secretary opened it almost instantly, startling me. I turned and waved to Traci, who was looking back at me from the edge of the parking lot, a worried expression on her face. She waved tentatively and nosed the car into traffic. Inside, the office had the feel of a fake place of business in an infomercial—a collection of bland, brand-new office furniture, a suspicious absence of papers, files, or clutter of any sort that might indicate actual work being done. It smelled like plastic. It’s the sort of office you might assemble if you had three hours to set it up. I felt like I was in a David Mamet movie, about to get conned.
The secretary picked up the phone and announced that a client had arrived. A harried-looking guy in a black suit, a red shirt, and a loud tie burst out of a nearby door. He looked a little like Conan O’Brien gone to seed. This would be Jimmy. “Hey, man, it’s too late now,” he said, his reddish hair flying around in the flurry of activity. “You snooze you lose. You were supposed to be here an hour ago.”
I had a moment of panic. I thought I was early, not late. Had I somehow ruined our chance for a house because of tardiness? “I’m Gordon Young and I thought I had a 9:30 appointment,” I said, my voice quavering.
“Oh, Gordon, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry about that. You’re early. I thought you were my other appointment, who’s late. Come on in.”
I glanced at the secretary and she smiled reassuringly, just the way a seasoned grifter would smile in a Mamet film. I noticed Jimmy’s face was glistening with sweat. I thought of Ralph, the responsible mortgage broker with his sober calmness and his woody, well appointed office near city hall in San Francisco. Now I was out in the sticks of San Jose dealing with shady characters. I seriously considered walking out, but I told myself that Michelle had recommended Jimmy, so he must be legitimate.
We were working our way through a stack of loan application documents that I had only a rough understanding of—Jimmy pointing and talking rapid-fire and me signing—when he let out a low groan. I looked up, and he was grimacing and clutching his chest. Sweat dripped off his chin. I have to admit that my first thought was selfish annoyance: Don’t have a heart attack now, you inconsiderate bastard! I’ll have to find another mortgage broker. But my humanity overrode my lust for home ownership. “Jimmy, are you all right?” I asked, standing up and putting my hand on his shoulder. “Should I call 911?”
He offered up a weak smile and shook his head. “No, it’s okay,” he gasped. “This happens all the time. It’s just acid reflux.” He pointed to another spot with his free hand, the one not planted on his sternum. “Just initial here,” he croaked. His face was still contorted, like a marathon runner toughing out that last five hundred yards before the finish line. I would have signed anything at that point just to get out of there. We finally finished up, and Jimmy rose unsteadily to his feet. He offered his hand, which was wet and clammy. “Piece o’ cake,” he said. “I’ll be in touch when I hear back from the lender.”
I stepped outside into the nearly empty parking lot. I heard the door click behind me, no doubt the secretary locking it. I imagined Jimmy and the secretary celebrating, like Paul Newman and Robert Redford in that scene from The Sting when they pull off their big scam. I told myself not to be so paranoid. With the bright California sun shining down on me, I wiped my hand, still slick with Jimmy’s sweat, on my pant leg. I was one step closer to home ownership.
In the end, Ralph and Jimmy were both right. It was not a sound financial move for us to buy a house in San Francisco, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t get a loan to do it anyway. We moved into our new home shortly before the Thanksgiving holiday in 2004. Sergio, our big cat, inspected the place while Traci and I stood in the living room holding hands. He cautiously sniffed every corner, then calmly turned and sprayed a wall in the living room. He was marking his new territory. Thus, our first truly domestic act as new homeowners was screaming at the cat and mopping up pee. Too late to back out now.
We were surfing a wave of dubious, if not toxic, mortgages that would eventually help bring the world financial market to its knees. At least the lender bothered to verify our incomes, an annoying step that many would eventually dispense with altogether. But Traci and I certainly had a financing package that would have made my grandfather shake his head in disgust. No money down. An interest-only adjustable first mortgage for $446,000 with a low teaser rate that would balloon after two years, plus a second home equity loan at 7.25 percent that was instantly maxed out at $105,000. The plan was for the property to appreciate on paper enough for us to refinance before the two years were up. The $25,000 that would have traditionally been part of the down payment went toward shoring up the foundation of our magical unicorn cottage where fairy sprites danced on the banks of the fish ponds, which almost immediately began to crumble, the picturesque river stones sliding into the murky water to reveal the black plastic liner beneath them. Discolored drywall chipped off the bedroom walls because that section of the house was rotting from the ground up, a result of the foundation problems.
Every few months we’d get a letter in the mail announcing that our mortgage had been sold or that a new servicer would be collecting payment on the loans. There was Aurora Financial Group, CitiMortgage, Sierra Pacific, and a highly reputable outfit called No Red Tape Mortgage. I’m leaving out a few others because I lost track of them all after a while. But our original plan did come to fruition. In May of 2006 our house was reappraised at $705,000, which just happened to be the exact value we needed to get a new thirty-year fixed rate mortgage serviced by Wells Fargo Bank, albeit one with a ten-year interest-only grace period before the real payments kicked in. The appraiser who somehow hit that magic number was hired and compensated by our new mortgage broker, named Justin, also suggested by Michelle. (Jimmy was apparently no longer in the picture; I imagined him singing songs like