How to Survive Selling and Buying Real Estate in DC with Online Puzzles

The moment you think of selling your house, it stops being a home.  It's much like deciding to put up a child for adoption. You have to steel yourself against emotion. I am not sure which is more painful because I've never given up a child, but I have sold a home before and the process was excruciating.

I loved my house but I always knew I would have to sell it eventually.  It's a four-level Victorian with I don't know how many stairs. While the stairs served as an exercise machine for many years - with time they were becoming more and more of a nuisance.  Then a roof leaked during a long rainy weekend when every roofer was out of town, and a clogged pipe caused flooding in the basement. Finally - it was a decisive moment - a strong wind woke me up one night and I realized it was blowing right over my head, inside my bedroom. A plastic window latch cracked under years of sun exposure and had finally given in to the force of mother nature.  All of that added to the stairs made me long for a flat. Here they call it apartment (or condo if you own it),  but the British word was more precise for what I had in mind.

No longer mine

Come spring, the time was ripe to contact that charming young agent I had preliminarily consulted last year, who knew the real estate market on Capitol Hill, and who had just returned from a vacation in Croatia. He seemed a more suitable choice than the agent who had helped my buy the house, who was a real bully.

At the appointed time the charmer arrived with a huge smile, greeting me like a long-lost nephew, and went over the sales process so smoothly and casually that details did not register. After all, what do details matter among family members.  So I did not quite internalize that I would actually be working with my "nephew's" stepfather -in-law, a nice older man, straight from a 1950s Hollywood movie.  That settled, one of the most painful periods in my life began. 

First the staging-and-photo crew came in and shoved all my personal stuff into closets, drawers and hidden corners, under beds and behind sofas.  The house stopped being mine before it even went on the market. I could dress for work in those clothes I could find, not the ones I wanted to wear. There was no hope of finding a small item such as a nail file or a postage stamp if I needed it.  Two medium-size rugs were so well hidden that they could not be found until the moving day.

Once the house was on the market, living in it was akin to dwelling in a railways station.  An army of people went through. I was only able to spend the night in it, have a quick shower, clean up and disappear till the evening. After about two weeks of this my whole system began to rebel.  First I pulled out a few rugs, then a trash can. On a couple of occasions I even dared to leave some toiletries on the vanity. It helped, but I still felt like I was in someone else's house.

Meanwhile, my charming agent completely disappeared from the scene and I was left to deal full-time with his stepfather-in-law, a Fred Astaire lookalike.  I felt like a groom who mail-ordered a bride resembling Marylin Monroe and got Greta Garbo instead.  Not unlike my previous agent, this Fred Astaire was only available to me when it was convenient for him. He showed me properties I might be interested in buying - aka flats - at the time which suited him, and he answered my mail when it suited him.  When I ventured on exploratory expeditions on my own (you can always call a seller's agent to show you a property) he would gently scold me, claiming it was not in my best interest.  Really?  I have always found that I can see and learn more about a property when I go on my own than when an agent holds my hand.  But in this business a client is his agent's hostage.

What it means is that you don't get to see a place more than once or twice before deciding whether to buy it or not. During the first visit you get blinded by the "staging", a carefully developed skill in the real estate business to present a property at its best, hide all the flaws and give you little idea of how it really is to live in it.  You are a little more discerning during a second visit, if you are lucky to get one.  But you still don't learn how warm or cold the place is during various seasons,  or whether your would-be neighbor is Maurice Ronet or Marica Hrdalo. The places that are deemed "hot" (newly renovated, in a good location and of decent size) will not wait for you to learn all you need to know.  So if you are selling your home and need a new one at the same time in D.C., you have too little time for research and you can't be picky.

My choice was especially narrow because I dislike the cookie-cutter open plan dwellings dominating the Washington area market today. You open the entry door and you find yourself in a kitchen with the ubiquitous bar and stools.  (I guess you stick your umbrella in the sink and your jacket in the refrigerator.  Shoes in the oven?)  Right next to the bar is a dining table, making you wonder why you would want to eat off a kitchen counter when a table with more comfortable chairs is right there.  And who wants to sit on a sofa and look at a sink, or a microwave oven?  Apparently everyone in Washington.

Everyone in Washington wants this

Well, maybe not everyone because my house was finally sold to a nice suburban couple who thought open-plan houses were like a bowling alley - you throw a ball and it goes right through to the other end. But the three-week wait for that couple to come along was an agony of uncertainty. Every day seemed an eternity plagued by the questions: Was I too late putting the house on the market? Are the selling prices taking a nosedive? And when the house sells, will I find an adequate place to buy in time to move into it when I have to leave the house. As days went buy, the questions accumulated and the stress soared to pathological levels. Especially when I learned that many buyers came back several times to see if they can convert my ground floor into an open kitchen with bar stools, and the sofa facing a microwave oven. Invariably, they concluded it was not possible to knock out enough walls because of the central staircase. Sleepless nights began to make me feel dizzy and my concentration at work dipped dangerously low.

I used to resent that a number of people in my office have enough time to play computer games during work, but now it turned out to be a blessing. One day, when my nerves were especially frayed, I noticed a colleague putting together a jigsaw puzzle online. I had long considered boxed puzzles and knitting as most boring kinds of pastime, something for children and old ladies - until I learned they were both soothing for nerves. So the online puzzle my colleague was passing the time with suddenly had an appeal. Once I tried it, I got hooked. For the first time in my life I began to understand my son's fascination with computer games, although his involve guns and shooting. What a wonderful feeling of gratification when you find two pieces of puzzle that fit and they snap in place! They remain silent and detached if they don't fit and, so you can't make a mistake. That loud snap makes the adrenaline kick the same way a slot machine in Las Vegas does when you hit the jackpot. And what relief kicks in when you hear the little bells tinkle signaling the puzzle is completed successfully!

Solving a jigsaw puzzle does not require exceptional intelligence, but it does require concentration - just enough to take your mind off the anxiety caused by the loss of a home base.  For best effect, the puzzle must have the right number of pieces. Too few are not enough to serve the purpose  (of soothing the nerves).  Too many add to the anxiety, instead of relieving it.  I had the best results with puzzles made up of 150 to 200 pieces, depending on the available time. Putting them together became an instant obsession, but one that helped me get through the worst of the house sale and condo purchase. The temporary habit might have developed into a full-fledged OCD if the move hadn't created a more pressing occupation of settling into a new home.

Speaking of that - the ink had not yet dried on the settlement documents, when my Fred Astaire's smile dwindled to a frown.  He wished me a cold good-bye and walked out of my life forever.  His boss, my "long-lost nephew" who had hooked me for two lucrative  deals  (his company earned commissions on both the sale of my old home and the purchase of the new one), had been out of the picture for a while.  The last I had heard from him was an email  scolding me for disclosing to the buyers some of the history of my house. I had expected at the end of the deal a communication of a sort, acknowledging that our business was a pleasure - or at least concluded - but not a peep from him. The charming agent and his family had moved on, and it appears I was not a favorite aunt.

One Down, Another One Coming

Phew! Memorial Day weekend is over, thank God! The motorcycles are gone, we get a break from the Rolling Thunder for a whole year.  So now we get a breather before bracing for the next onslaught of tourists, road closures and general chaos coming to the nation's capital for Independence Day weekend. Those who can will flee Washington and return when the dust settles down. I will be struggling to find my way to work and begging friends in the suburbs to invite me for a sleepover until the noise and crowds go away.

I still remember my first Independence Day in Washington. I was spending July of 1978 in the United States through an international student-exchange program, and my American hosts from suburban Virginia took me to Washington to attend the holiday concert with fireworks. I was impressed with the patriotism displayed on the Capitol lawn, people enjoying the camaraderie as much as the blueberries, wine and cheese, and dancing in defiance of the scorching sun. What a difference from my then-homeland Yugoslavia where none of my friends celebrated national holidays unless they were forced to, but enjoyed the days off in a private setting! 

During that first holiday in Washington, I was even more impressed with the order in which the event unfolded, with no one pushing or shoving, no trash left behind and with the smooth traffic that allowed us to return home literally within minutes.

Many moons later, I shudder at the thought of Independence Day celebration in my neighborhood because now it means having to travel long circuitous routes to anywhere I need to get. Living on Capitol Hill means having to use Independence or Constitution Avenue nearly anywhere you go, and those routes are closed to traffic during major holidays. Even walking through the area is not easy with fences allowing only narrow passages for crowds to squeeze through.  If you are not careful, you can get jammed in one of these crawling lines, unable to disentangle yourself for hours. So the best strategy is not to get anywhere near the Capitol at that time.

If only this were the sole glitch. But no, a much worse July 4 nightmare are the firecrackers. Despite the terror threat which seem to require battalions of police on the Capitol grounds, directing your every step (no "freedom of movement" here), the local police has no qualms about firecrackers blasting all over residential areas just blocks away from the congressional buildings, Supreme Court, Library of Congress and other important institutions. Noise lovers in my neighborhood acquire huge supplies of the cheap Chinese-made commodity and start shooting them off days ahead of the holiday for practice, and days after the holiday to use up the acquired arsenal. And for some inexplicable reason, firecracker consumers like to shoot between midnight and early morning hours. It is hard to comprehend why the police that force pedestrians into one particular path during the holiday events, have such complete tolerance for the indiscriminate explosions in the residential neighborhoods where many people have to get up at dawn the next day to get ready for work. Still and all, one could survive one noisy night a year (or two if you add New Year's Eve to that), but the explosions go on for at least a week and up to 10 days around July 4.   

In addition, Capitol Hill residents can expect at least one or two all-day blasting events at the JFK Stadium, with sounds carrying as far as the National Mall, but heard most loudly in the residential areas in between.  We pay such exorbitant property taxes for this?  Certainly not to feel free and comfortable in our homes. 

How did such great holidays as Memorial Day, Independence Day and even New Year's Eve turn into such dread-inspiring time for D.C. residents?   Gradually, of course. In my first years as a U.S. citizen, I still enjoyed going to the Mall with other European necomers, relax on a blanket and enjoy the fireworks. One memorable one was with a bunch of Slavic friends; a socially conscious Pole who condemned the fireworks as a "senseless waist of money that would be better spent on feeding the hungry of this world," and a Croatian one reacting to an especially spectacular fiery display: "Wow! This one could have fed all of Ethiopia," making everyone burst into a merry laughter.  The memory still makes me smile.

But we never go to the Mall any more. In fact we try to stay away from it as far as possible during the holidays.

European cities are going in the same direction.  During a recent visit to Italy after almost three decades, I was put off by the crowds.  St. Peter's Square used to be a lovely open space, amenable to leisurely strolling from one café to another.  Now it is a fortress surrounded by security gates with metal detectors.  Soon you may be asked to take off your shoes  before entering the hallowed ground.  And don't even try to get into a Vatican museum on the spur of the moment. Same goes for Florence, while Venice is to be avoided at all costs.  As my friend, an economist, noted: "That's because today there is 10 times more visitors to the same number of monuments."

Badminton anyone? Only if you can enter the park.

As the Washington D.C. area developed, what used to be a rural countryside has turned into a sprawling suburbia, where traffic is as bad as in the capital. A day trip in the country is unimaginable around holiday time because most of it would be spent in a vehicle. A weekend on the beach during the season could mean hours crossing the Bay Bridge, more hours driving through the outlet-shopping traffic outside your chosen resort, still more hours looking for a parking space at your destination, and then another hour looking for a spot on the beach.  I remember with nostalgia my early years in Washington when we used to zip to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, in the morning and return home for dinner.  

Local national parks cannot accommodate the number of visitors that would like to spend a day basking in the nature.  On a holiday weekend, you may spend hours in the car just waiting to enter a park.

So if you cannot afford days off to leave town before the holidays and return after the crowds, you may as well stay in D.C.  Most city parks have picnic tables where you are more likely to find a space than anywhere out of town.  I am not telling which one is my favorite to make sure there is a picnic table available for me next time around.

Happy Fourth!

A legion of hogs descends on DC each Memorial Day weekend for the Rolling Thunder Motorcycle Rally. This “ride for freedom” draws upwards of 900,000 motorcycle riders from all over the country who journey to honor POWs and MIAs. While the riding rally, held on Sunday, May 24, is the main draw each year, there are other Rolling Thunder events on the docket, too: a candlelight vigil will be conducted on Friday, May 22; an official vendor site, Thunder Alley, will be opened at 9 a.m. at 22nd Street and Constitution Avenue NW, on Saturday, May 23; and on Sunday evening, look for Rolling Thunder’s Saluting Our Troops concert near the Vietnam War Memorial.
4. At dusk on Memorial Day eve, the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol transforms into a patriotic concert venue. The free performance pays tribute to those who have served our country, and with a portion of the evening being dedicated to honoring current service members, there will be many opportunities for you to recognize active servicewoman or serviceman. As for the concert, it will be co-hosted this year by Tony Award-winner Joe Mantegna and Emmy Award-winner Gary Sinise, two actors who have taken on veterans causes in recent years, and it features the National Symphony Orchestra.
- See more at: http://washington.org/article/10-ways-celebrate-memorial-day-weekend-washington-dc#sthash.QxYqiZg6.dpuf

US Police: Not A Friendly Force

U.S. President Barack Obama is asking Congress to approve $263 million to reform police practices, ensure against militarized culture within law enforcement, and restore trust in policing. The funds should also pay for some 50,000 lapel-worn cameras for police officers. 

 In his announcement Monday, the president referred to "differences between the police and communities of color" and to negative "experiences" some young people - clearly he meant black males - have had with law enforcement.

I am white of European descent and regrettably no longer qualify as young.  But I would like the president to know that my experience with the U.S. law enforcement has been dreadful too.  I shudder at the thought that it could be worse if I were a person "of color."

U.S. Park Police

My first encounter with law enforcement in this country occurred soon after I moved to D.C. from Connecticut. One afternoon I drove to Virginia on I-66 and noticed that other drivers were giving me strange looks. It took a while to realize that I was a single person driving during the HOV-3 hours, which meant I needed two more people in the car. This is something they did not teach me in Connecticut where I got my drivers' license. 

 As soon as I understood what was wrong I got off the highway as did several cars before me.  A hulking policeman awaiting at the exit ramp waved his arms in the air and yelled at the top pf his lungs for all of us sinners to line up just so and await our fate. I was scared witless and wondered how could this small mistake provoke such ire on his part. What if we had done something really bad? We were going to be slapped with exorbitant fines and arrive late to our destinations - wasn't that enough punishment?

Since then, I have obtained a D.C. license and learned the area traffic rules the hard way, i.e. paying huge sums of money for even the minutest errors in judgement.  I have learned that before getting a ticket I routinely have to suffer indignities such as having to sit in the car for interminable lengths of time and suffer the harsh flash lights from the police car reflecting from my rear view mirrors into my eyes, often not knowing why I am stopped.  Only one female officer once explained to me that I cannot get out of my car to stretch because I could have a gun and pose a danger to her.  I said, "if I had a gun and wanted to use it, I could do that from the car as well as from outside." 

I have not learned, and probably never will, to distinguish all the different branches of law enforcement operating in D.C.  To me, any uniformed and armed person who has a right to stop me in the street is a cop, does not matter what branch.

One of the worst experiences I had with cops in D.C. took place a few years ago in the early hours of Christmas. My son was on a visit from the university and together with some of his former school mates we attended the midnight mass at St. Anselm's Abbey church, next to St. Anselm's Abbey School which the boys had attended. It was a reunion with other former class mates and their high-school teachers. I made my son change his jacket to look more presentable for the holiday. After the mass, the boys dropped me off at home and my son continued on to drive his friends home.  About 3:00 AM one of those boys called to say: "Mrs. Hoke, I'm afraid I have some bad news. " My heart stopped.  I thought my son had been in an accident and could have been dying or already dead.  So hearing that he was arrested and detained at a park police station sounded like good news - until I learned that he was arrested for driving without a license -- the  license that had been left in the jacket I had made him take off before going to church.

I had driven without a license many times after leaving home with a wrong purse in hand and never dreamed I could be arrested.  So I was incredulous to learn that this was the reason for my son's arrest.  I was ready to do battle with the entire police unit that kept him detained.  I retrieved my son after paying a surprisingly small fine of $20, considering how high these penalties usually are.  But I was livid when they finally dragged him before me, handcuffed!!!!  And I learned that he was kept in a detention cell until I came; this neat college boy, face still sprinkled with adolescent acne.  He was lucky I was there soon enough. 

D.C. Police love blocking busy streets to make bad traffic worse

I have a huge list of other complaints against D.C. law enforcement, but a shooting death of Miriam Carey, the woman killed by the police outside the Capitol building last year, finally brought home the frightening reality that it could have been me. 

A few years ago in their infinite wisdom D.C. authorities organized a huge fair in the middle of Constitution Avenue, near the National Gallery of Art.  The avenue is one of the busiest in Washington, it is one of the main routes out of the city and it is the street I live on. A flow of unsuspecting traffic ran into a blockade of tents, beer stands and other obstacles forcing drivers to seek alternative routes.  The only one available was 4th street going south toward Independence Avenue. It became so clogged that the traffic barely moved, and at one point I found myself trapped in the middle of a small intersection between two red lights.  As soon as the car ahead of me moved, I followed to clear the intersection. The moment I did, a police siren went off as if I had triggered a hidden alarm. Naturally, the police officer who came after me was as aggressive as they come; he slapped me with a $250 fine and held me in that quagmire of traffic as long as he could, adding to the chaos created by the ill-conceived fair. He would not listen to reason and acknowledge that my choices were to move or to block the crossing traffic, that I had to cross a red light whether I moved back or forth.

When I was finally allowed to leave, miserable and angry, he howled after me again.  I failed to stop instantly because I could not imagine that the howling was for me, so another police car joined in the chase.  For a while there I was chased by two howling police cars like a criminal in a scene from a cheap movie thriller. It turned out that the first officer chased after me because in the excitement of "catching" me in flagrante, he forgot to return my driver's license and registration card.  So the story of poor Miriam, a confused or perhaps mentally ill woman, running out of her car and leaving her child behind, reminded me of my own experience.  Like Miriam,  I wanted to get away from a terrorizing police force.  What would have happened if I had stepped out of my car and started running? I'll never know. 

But what we all do know is that a guy jumped over the White House fence and ran all the way into the president's official residence without a single shot being fired.  He is alive and Miriam is not.  Police officers very often get killed too and they have a right to defend themselves.  But is killing a person, even a criminal, the only possible defense? I hope that Mr. Obama's call for a new set of best police practices will lead to curbing the use of deadly weapons by the police. But  this particular discussion will take time and is outside the scope of this blog. 

Here and now, I want to continue ranting against the D.C. law enforcement to get at least some of the long-accumulated list of grudges off my chest.  I have come to the point where if I see a police car behind me I turn into a side street and wait for it to pass so I can continue in peace.  The trick does not always work because I live on Capitol Hill, which is besieged by police, an army of officers with not much to do except block exits from residential areas, create unexpected road barriers, issue parking tickets and generally make the residents' lives miserable.

When living in Europe and Africa, I considered the police to be my friends, people who were there to help and protect, people you hailed and asked for directions when you got lost.  I never had to pay a traffic or parking penalty, and never had an unpleasant encounter with law enforcement.

So at least initially, I believed that the D.C. law enforcement had a friendly side too. Those vague hopes were slowly but surely erased after my car was repeatedly vandalized and police officers just shrugged their shoulders about it and barely bothered to write a report.  The worst disappointment came when a "contractor" stole credit cards from me and my neighbors and used them repeatedly until the credit card companies got the wind of it.  The neighbors and I made our reports to the local police and urged them to act swiftly while the thief was still in the neighborhood and could be found. The detective in charge said that personality theft was too common and that he did not have have enough personnel to take care of our case.  Not enough with all the policemen cruising idly around Capitol Hill?

Recently, I got a card in the mail asking for my opinion about the city services.  I responded expressing my dissatisfaction with the police.  A few days later an e-mail signed by the D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier arrived asking me to indicate a convenient time when an officer could contact me and discuss my complaints.  I responded full of hope that the winds of change were coming, but the conversation never took place. I was told that the police woman assigned to speak with me was busy at the appointed time.  She never called back to reschedule.  

Cathy Lanier, D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief

So what are the lessons learned?  For me the following:

1. Law enforcement officers operating in D.C. are not your friends, so don't count on their protection.

2. The police want your money and so they go after law-abiding and hard-working citizens who can and will pay the insanely high traffic and parking fines. Catching thieves does not pay.

3. Stay away from the police cars as much as possible, even if it means taking a longer route to your destination.

4. Be prepared to deal with bullies - like those you met at school, the cops in D.C. intimidate the weak and hurt the vulnerable.

As you see, I don't trust my local law enforcement services, but they don't trust me either. The only difference is that I admit to my sentiment while they may not even be aware of theirs.

To hear more about Mr. Obama's police reform plan please click on the link below:
http://www.voanews.com/media/video/2542082.html

POST SCRIPT:
In response to this blog, I received a message from Cathy Lanier rebuking me for "inaccurate" reporting, which she suggested helps incite hostility and nationwide street protests against the police. The inaccuracy, she explained was in my failure to identify the police forces I had dealings with.  To set the record straight - I have made some corrections in the text and stressed that I have no idea what branch a specific policeman was. When I am stopped by an aggressive armed man I am too upset to worry about his denomination and it makes no difference in the final outcome for me.  I have great respect for Ms. Lanier and her tough job. I know I could never do it.  But I think she completely missed my point: her police  force as well as the other law enforcement branches operating in D.C. focus too much on penalizing drivers - ordinary citizens who make occasional, unintentional mistakes - and then complain they have not enough personnel to deal with serious crime.  Also, in my opinion, the officers' aggressive stance and excessive penalties are what creates hostility towards them - not news reports and blogs.