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My wife and I have this eternal argument. She feels I don’t have the same intense interest in shopping for a home as she does. And of course she is right. Like the typical shallow male that I am, you can stick me in most houses and I’ll adjust. My main concerns in life are sports and food and there is little room in it for condos or townhouses or whatever is being shown on Home and Garden Television. According to my wife, the reason I adjust so easily is I don’t do anything around the house other than finger the TV remote. And of course she is right again.
I don’t know American Standard from "American Idol." I don’t lose any sleep because my windows are not Pella. I would like an automatic ice maker on my refrigerator door because no one refills the tray when it is empty, so I am not without my parochial interests, but I’m told they always go on the fritz. I don’t glory in my ignorance. I wouldn’t mind living in a house where carrying the laundry up and down the stairs is not a full-time job (when I remember to carry it), but I confess that otherwise I am satisfied quite easily.
I recognize we have reached a point in our lives where we have outlived the inconvenience of our current home, but I take no joy in going through the weary process of house hunting. This is why I hate the TV show "House Hunters" so much. In case you haven’t seen the program, it revolves around couples being shown three homes for sale by a real estate agent. At the end, they elect to buy one. Viewers then see the couple six months later. The duo seems to have found eternal happiness, probably because the homes are always beautiful and affordable with nary a leaky pipe in sight. The creaky premise is that there is no place quite like home. This ignores the fact most homicides are committed in the home (or at least it seems like it).
House hunting is the female equivalent of porn. Where males like to view sex between beautiful bodies, women are more inclined toward a prurient interest in houses. Men dream of Heidi Klum; women dream of a condo at The Ritz. The perfect home seems just around the corner, ready to fulfill their every fantasy. HGTV operates on the theory that the perfect lifestyle is waiting just beyond Gatsby’s green light. If Comcast were smart, it’d charge the ladies $7.99 to rent each episode of "House Hunters." While the guys are watching "Sorority House Coeds," the women could view a visit to an airy cottage in Tuscany.
We have all been brainwashed into believing the American Dream can only be realized through home ownership. In Detroit, where the median value of a home is down to $7,500 (you read that correctly), you might ask how is that dream working out? One person’s misery in today’s housing market is another’s bargain.
Our tax code is famously biased against renters in favor of homeowners. If the White House really wants to do something about the inequity of our system, it would abolish the tax deduction for mortgages. But there would be rioting in the streets. The middle class would sooner give up its firstborn than its mortgage deduction, yet there is no valid reason for it. The deduction is left over from the time when all interest was tax-deductible. During the Reagan Years, when Congress and the president compromised in cutting the top tax rates, the interest deduction was abolished except for mortgage interest.
Even now, in an effort to get the housing market back on its feet, the Obama administration is offering a $7,500 tax deduction for people buying a new home. In Philadelphia, if you buy new construction, you get a 10-year tax abatement. Notice no one is rushing to help out renters that are disproportionately young and less likely to vote, so politicians are in no hurry to curry favor with them. If you are single and a renter, you’re really screwed in America.
I don’t hate homeowners. I am one. But as someone who can’t change a light bulb because I don’t know where my wife keeps them, I have no business owning a home, except that’s what middle class people like me do. And then our wives watch the Home and Garden Channel and curse the day they married us.
