July 14, 2006

It bothers me tremendously when people tell me they're worried about not being on — and it is an awful phrase — "the property ladder."

It means they don't yet own a house in cities like Toronto and Calgary, where prices are absurd to start with and are looking to be Alice in Wonderlandish by next year.

Perfectly sane people then tell me with glee that they have bought an awful house in a disastrous neighbourhood that little do they know has been targeted by flying termites. Hark thee, I long to say. An awful chain of misery has begun to flay your back and where ye fall, there shall ye be buried, or something along those lines.

Don't buy a house. I've been through all this and the suffering has yet to end. It starts with the usury of the mortgage. It continues with the widening yellow stain on a ceiling. (When you were an apartment-owning couple, you gaped at the ceiling a lot, but you didn't see it, if you know what I mean. Now you see it and you think paint and roof repairs. That's tragic.).

Then you notice that all the furniture stands at a slight angle, which means your foundations are shot. You had 25 years to pay off your mortgage, 30 if you're in Toronto, but borrowing to fix the ailing beast you purchased takes you up to 35. Your yet-to-be-conceived children will be old by the time you pay for a house that hates you.

There's nothing uglier than a new Toronto condo tower, but that's only on the outside. On the inside, you've got a new place for which you feel no affection but which you have a chance of owning outright. Sure, the kids have no place to play but kids can be trained to enjoy a view. Yes, you do like it, little Jimmy!

I'm writing this because I've had a terrible summer with my house and it's still only July. It reached its climax on the weekend when I filled my washing machine with laundry and poured liquid detergent into the little drawer that comes with front-loaders. The liquid spilled onto "my" carpet. (This is the essence of homeowning. Everything becomes "my" instead of "the" and that's unhealthy.) I grabbed a rag, got down on my hands and knees, mopped the drip and got up.

Naturally I smashed my head into the knife-like corner of the drawer and fell to the floor screaming in pain, liquid running down my face. It was blood and it flowed for three hours. (I left bloody rags all over the house to arouse my husband's alarm and concern when he came home from work, but later, I tidied them up. My cleaning disorder came with the house.) I must have had some kind of concussion. I know what I'll do, I thought. I'll have wine with my painkillers. Then I sat down, poured some more and e-mailed my girlfriends for advice. My head had started oozing clear liquid which I assumed was brain juice. I'm sorry to report that I licked it out of curiosity.

My doctor e-mail friend in Washington told me it was plasma. But they bring you plasma, I said. This came out of my head. So it must be brain juice. Then I had to lie down suddenly, for a day or two.

Owning a home means injuries. My hairdresser, who worked around my disgusting scab, told me she had been making her four-poster bed when she hit one of the posts with her head and knocked herself out. My husband cut his own fingertip off while pruning the weigela, was whipped in the eye by Virginia creeper he was trimming off the brickwork, the children had poison ivy, drunks broke our hedge (yes, this can be done) and heaved a boulder out of the rockery before they vomited and left, and we've had so many Christmas lights stolen that I now hang huge elaborate balls of red LED lights from the second floor. It only occurred to me later that they looked like giant nipples that can be seen for a kilometre.

You don't have these problems in an apartment because you don't have four-poster beds, gardens or anything to show off to the street. You have you. Soap on the floor of the communal laundry room is not a crisis over which you crack your head. Life is less elaborate. You don't care, really. It's not your place. You're renting. The years ahead are full of possibilities. How nice that would be.

When you own a house, the years ahead are full of failures. For you will have men in to find themselves unable to fix things, although this is not apparent until they leave. Electricians, handymen, carpenters, carpet-layers, painters, window installers, eavestrough cleaners, blocked drain drillers, driveway cementers, tuckpointers, chimney cleaners, furnace inspectors, appliance repairmen, fence-builders, joist supporters, tree loppers, lawn specialists, log men, cable repairmen, phone installers — I've known and come to hate them all.

Only two people have ever been consistently competent: my computer guys and my plumber. Of course, I'm not telling you their names. My plumber used to be a concert pianist in his native Bulgaria. Not much call for that here, so he took up pipes. This is why I get so angry when people slam immigrants. I have never encountered a competent Canadian plumber, although I have adapted to them. Just turn the shower thing to "cold" when you want "hot," the man told me.

But the worst thing about owning a house is that it's easier for stalkers to find you. I have had problems with e-mailers before but this is a slightly different case. I've been stalked by a woman long-term and to my horror, just found out that she has moved into my neighbourhood. I cannot tell you how much more frightening this is when you live in a house, on a bus route no less. I had to sew emergency curtains for my porch so she can't spy on me. There are new blinds in my writing room.

I know what you're thinking. She isn't stalking you, Heather, it's just the head wound talking. You're low on brain juice.

Possibly. But all my problems would be somehow more erasable if I wasn't rooted in a house I had bought, paid for and literally dug myself into with rakes and spades and hoses.

As for the property ladder, may I point out that it doesn't make the faintest difference to me that my house has soared in value because I'm not selling. It will only help me when I'm dead. Soaring house prices just raise my property taxes. I don't mind paying this, as I'm a socialist. But what care I for theoretical profits? The kids will probably sell the place when I fall off my twig. All they'll remember of this house is the weird bloodstains. All I'll remember is the tears and the sweat.

If you don't get on the property ladder, you won't fall off and hurt yourself. Think about it.