The mortgage broker sounds like she cares. Through my sniffles, she listens and nods and hands me tissues as I confide to my new BFF—though for the life of me I could not recall her name then and I cannot now—“I’m getting divorced.”
“Oh dear, I know all about that.”
“I just want to keep my house,” I tell her. “I can’t lose everything. You know?” I blow my nose for the sixteenth time. “Allergies.”
She nods understandingly and begins to work magic on her calculator.
It was a good time to sell a house, but not a good time to buy. The bubble on the housing market had not yet popped though our break up had sent me spinning like a rapidly deflating balloon.
“Will this be a no income check loan?”
I shake my head. “Left me for one of my former students. She works in a coffee shop. Can you believe that?”
“Primary residence?”
“She’s not even attractive.”
“You have excellent credit.” She recognizes how hard I’ve worked. She can see my credit score. I blink at her gratefully. I worked hard at my marriage too.
My new BFF shows me figures with lots of zeros behind them. I try to count them but I can’t see through the tears in my eyes.
“We’ll figure the closing costs into this. You should invest your money. I mean at 1.9% you’ll make more from your investments.” My head agrees with her, as if I know exactly what she is talking about, as if I know what I’m doing. I don’t even have investments.
“I’ve had to go on anti-depressants.”
She looks so sorry for me. “Why not take out another 100,000.00? Do you have any loans you want to pay off?”
“Student loans.”
“Good. And a car?” I have an old clunker that runs and shake my head. “Credit cards?” I shake my head again. I stopped using credit cards a few years ago.
“So we’re talking just 1.9% on 360,000.00 dollars.”
The fog over my broken heart rapidly dissipates. “Three hundred and sixty?” I gulp.
“The assessor says your house is worth 460,000.00,” she reminds me.
“But it’s not even finished. The upstairs has plywood floors.”
“Then take out an extra 100 grand and finish it!” My new BFF encourages me. She calculates how much my monthly payment will be, while I try to fathom the sums we’re talking about. It’s not like I earn six figures. I’m a teacher.
“You could finish your upstairs, do the landscaping, finish the basement…” It is all so tempting. “Real Estate is only going up.”
My eyes have suddenly dried. Despite being vulnerable and broken hearted, I still have enough sense to take going into serious debt seriously. “On the flexible rate, how high can it go in one year?” I sniffed one last time.
“Never more than three percent! And your first year won’t go above 1.9! You’ll be saving money….” She sounds like infomercial. “You have nothing to worry about.”
Didn’t my ex tell me not to worry too?
“So should we add that hundred thousand?” my former BFF asks.
“No.”
“Fifty?” No. “Thirty?” No. “Twenty.” No. No. No! It takes all of my strength to stick to the minimum it will take to buy the house from my ex, as much as I would love to blow a hundred thousand on flooring, painting, shingling, landscaping, solar panels, new shoes, a trip to Paris, some sexy corsets and stockings… I do not give in.
Thirty days later, when I sign the closing papers, my BFF isn’t there. It’s just some guy I’ve never met before and the office is feels Friday empty. Four years earlier, when we built the house, there were brokers and attorneys, a whole table of people sitting around signing and copying and congratulating us. It was so exciting to become a home owner, now it is lonely and scary. I sit across the table from this man I don’t know, in the Wamu office on Main Street in Southampton, and sign on one dotted line after another. “You should have taken out a larger loan,” he tells me.
“No, I should have kept my work life separate from my personal one.” I never should have introduced my ex to one of my students. I also should have been more diligent on getting them to confirm the closing costs because by the time the transaction is done I feel fleeced.
Outside of the office a line of traffic heads into Southampton, Mercedes, BMWs, SUVs, pick up trucks, an electric car. Since we were never legally married, signing these papers is the equivalent to finalizing our divorce. I had a house in the Hamptons, a job in Savannah, Georgia, and a total of $50.00 dollars left in my bank account. I spent $10.00 of it on a bottle of prosecco and raised a glass to the house that is now mine. I had bought our dream house and lost our dream, gotten divorced and married a subprime mortgage all one day, and near as I can tell my ex and my mortgage are a lot alike—both expected more from me than I could give.
My ex used to say, “in a relationship there is your story, my story and the truth,” but there are four stories told in the end—your story, my story, the bank’s story and the empty debt in between. That emptiness is my definition of subprime.
Go to next installment on Blog: 1.9% adjustable
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