Cape Cods

I won't bore you with details about "escalator clauses," in which you offer tens of thousands over the asking price in an auction against other bidders and even provide "concessions" such as foregoing the inspection and appraisal. (True.) Nor will I go into the exorbitant housing prices - $350,000 gets you a rowhouse in a "transitional" neighborhood - or the fact that the realtors are prohibited by law from telling you anything about the schools.

I'll say only that there is no exuberance, only irrationality.

---

Schlepping through open houses was so wearying that no tray of chocolate chip cookies or bowl of peanut M&Ms could reinvigorate us. We trudged through colonials, Cape Cods, ramblers, split-levels, contemporaries, and Tudors, assessing their windows, examining their furnaces. We evaluated kitchens and their appliances, backyards and their drainage, bedrooms and their closets.

Along the way, we became fluent in real estatese. "Charming" means small. "Dazzling" means purple walls. "Potential" means fixer-upper. "Fixer-upper" means dump.

After awhile, we became jaded. Driving into neighborhoods, we'd gaze at the beautiful homes - this one a graceful old stone manse with a wraparound porch, that one a magazine photo of textured stucco walls and majestic front steps - and know that "ours" would be the squat, characterless red-brick ranch on a treeless lawn.

When we did find a house worth considering, it was bedeviled with questions: Why do they have windows that don't open? Can we live with plumbing that causes the shower pressure to halve when a kitchen faucet is turned on? Are we making too big a deal about an electrical fire?

House hunting is not just about finding a house. It's about identity. What type of person are you? Social or private? Suburbanite or urban dweller? And, regardless of type, is your decision best for your family?