Opinion | Do you want to be happy? Do not try to buy a house

With interest rates on the verge of rising and many restless pandemics people desperate to live in a shaky something that just looks like a house in name, people are still buying homes in Toronto, the suburbs and small previously unheard of villages called Wetslog and Brianburg.

Apparently the desperate search is still news. I really need to extract the old word “desperate” in favor of “dare”, do not mind “rash”, “hair brain”, “respectful” and “foolish.” And these are the prettier ones.

Even though the inflation rate reached 4.8 percent in December over the previous year, which means that the fun years of negligible interest rates will soon begin to end, nothing seems to dampen the demand for home ownership.

The heart wants what it wants, and is it not uncomfortable that it was Woody Allen who said it about his wife’s young adopted daughter. The infamous Soon-Yi is now 51 and Allen can not be happy about it. This is what I mean by domestic dreams.

Sometimes it seems like the desire to have children, something most people will want to do, regardless of the hardships. Parenting locks you in for life; at these prices so can your mortgage.

I will not argue with you, just name a few things you can consider, though you will not. First, birth control is quite reliable. When it turns out it’s not you, you have options. At least in Canadian cities you can get an abortion, but you can not withdraw from a home offer.

Second, have you met children, so sweet yet so expensive and tiring, who pull on the attention cord that finally blows, and where is the passion gone, that first fine indifferent rapture that produced the whole structural mess?

Years go by. Buyers will still have a massively burdened home whose value may have fallen sharply, with children, who will then have their own children. Only yesterday I spoke to an investment adviser who suggested that the market downturn does not matter because we can always sell our once too expensive house (which was bought a scary few months before COVID-19) at a huge profit.

But I do not want to, I said. I want to stay there.

There may come a time, she said, when those children will not let you die there alone.

Oh, I think they will, I did not say badly.

We have traveled far from our original dilemma. I encouraged you not to rush to real estate. It makes you less agile in a world where change is brewing like a passing shooting. It sticks you to a bad job, it pinches your winding room, and the fixed costs are borderline counterfeit.

Stay in your rental and have a wonderful life. Do a lot.

Real estate stories are scary. I will not discuss the recent CBC story over the St. John’s wife who bought a $ 168,000 bungalow in 2020 and discovered that she was in fact buying a renovated, detached garage that had suffered from a major fire.

The story did not mention the sellers and without a living target I could not get a head of steam up over her disaster. When buying a home, of course, you should check if it has ever had back-and-forth doors.

But she hired a home inspector. He did not notice it. Nowadays, brave people regularly bid on homes without a home inspection. For some reason, it’s legal.

Home inspectors were once like lawyers, never without a job. Now their work is as fragile as everyone’s. Can’t they do better work faster, with the same instinct that drives the best police detectives, the kind that are always at war with senior command?

I do not like it, Home Insp. Gadget can say on a mysterious walkthrough, the only kind of inspection with which a brain-brain bidder can now get away. Something does not feel right. Do you smell gasoline? Why were those rooms shaped like car service places?

He knocks down a wall very low. I hear laxative crack sealant. And this house is suspiciously square.

We bought a home with only a look-after purchase by an inspector our agent used regularly. He missed important things, but we liked the place anyway because it had merit.

I was also under the impression that the seller was a Buddhist. I did not base it on anything. I am now aware that the Dalai Lama does not take a stand on missing fate plans.

It was not good, but it is much better than the houses we looked at. I now remember every detail of them, just like you will never forget your worst summer job, memories like salt stains.

We’re in a pandemic. Nothing works right, nothing. Your self-control is now slim. Interest rates are rising, infertility is beating, parents are sick, China is threatening, Ukraine is shaking, a specific Omicron order is gaining ground, anti-vaxxers are yowl like Yankee wildcats, heat waves are getting hotter, freezing continues.

You need a place to hide. You need to have your bolt hole.

But our problems are big collective problems. When you buy that house and its luggage, you are on your own. The purchase may feel like a personal masterpiece. I have my doubts.