Part two

 This post is part two of my boyfriend selling his townhouse to investors. 

His mom and stepfather, who are in their 80’s, have a large piece of land in Waller, Tx which is about 60 miles northeast of Houston. Kevin is able to move into the guest house until he’s able to find a place more in town. He still works for the inventory company, so he has to go everywhere for his job. Still, Waller is a bit out of the way.  But it’s nice for now. The guest house is extremely nice and cute. But more on that later. 

When he called his mom to tell her he sold it, he had her on speakerphone. Her reaction sort of shook me. She said, “You sold the townhouse?  I didn’t know it was on the market.”  (It wasn’t “on the market” as in, the MLS.). As Kevin told her more. She continued to ask questions like, “Did you hire a realtor?  Did you do the showings?  Did you have open house?”  When I heard her asking these questions, I started cringing. She…. Must not have any clue what condition the place was in. 

Kevin confirmed that his stepfather knew about the foundation issue, but maybe his mom just didn’t care enough to retain the information. I have sort of noticed that she’s one of those people that will just hear what they want to hear, even if you are firm with the exact opposite information.  So she was completely out of touch with what condition the town was in- but the upside to that is that she’s actually so out of touch that she thinks $50K is full price. When we showed her the pictures of the ceiling, she said, “Is that the garage?”  Kevin had to explain no, that’s the master bedroom. That was her mom’s old bedroom. She replied, “So it’s the garage?” 

I started having a memory of one of my cousins. My cousin Sam passed away two years ago at the age of 70 from brain cancer. His mom and my mom were sisters. My grandparents had 7 daughters and no surviving sons- and Sam was the first grandchild who was a boy. So of course, he was spoiled and no one he married would have been liked no matter who she was. He married his wife in 1981. I was only 3, so I don’t recall this, but at the time Sam had this fancy expensive car. Fancy for 1981. He sold it when he met his wife, and the narrative in my family was that “she made him sell it.”  Why?  Because she’s such an evil witch of course. 

With Kevin’s mom being a little clueless about the state of his home, I began getting scared that they’d see me that way. That I “made him” sell his house, when that’s not what I did at all. I simply called the ugly house people, asked all the questions, didn’t give them Kevin’s personal information, because I was curious. Kevin shared with me that the townhouse was his “prison.”  When I worked with him at the inventory service, the company often paid the employees to go out of town. Kevin always refused to go out of town, simply stating, “I don’t go out of town.”  The excuse he gave was his cats.  I remember asking him, “Why don’t you just have your parents come over and feed the cats?”  And that was the only time I ever saw him get pissed off. He said, “They can’t!” In a snappy tone. I wasn’t sure why, as they both still drive and are both in very good health. But he told me the other day that the reason he quit traveling was because he was afraid he’d come home to a catastrophic event at the house. Either it would be fallen down “and they would blame him” or the pipes would break and “they would blame him” for flooding. So when he called the owner of the company to tell her he sold the townhouse he also told her that he was able to travel again. I’m sure she wondered what it had to do with it, but that’s ok. 

I love seeing Kevin so relieved. I can’t imagine being in such fear all the time. 

So I in no way “made him” sell it. I simply did the leg work that he was mentally unable to do because of the mental health issues this place caused him. And then called him and informed him that he could. He was so convinced that “no one would buy it.”  He was only thinking of it in the sense of selling it for full price to an actual family. He chose to sell it. He never knew there were so many investors out there willing to buy anything. And now I’m aware of how many of them there are too- because my own social media and Google ads are inundated with them. 

The “no one will” thing is something I’ve struggled with a lot myself. I grew up with a lot of harshness around all the things that “no one would ever” do with/for me. In my younger years, there was a lot of yelling that no one would ever hire me, no one would ever date me, no one would ever marry me, if I had a product to sell, no one would ever buy it, if I had a business to start no one would ever be a client, no one would rent to me, no one would sell to me, and the list goes on and on. My life would be this huge impossibility of never being able to do anything. As the years have gone on, I have realized more and more how untrue that all is. It’s to the point where it’s even causing me a mid life crisis, and I wonder how wealthy I would be now if I never believed all of that. 

I wonder how many people out there are struggling with something because they assume “no one would”. When the person who would is just down the street or a phone call away.