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By Dave Demerjian
Somerville Journal, August 7, 2003
Conventional wisdom says you can’t go wrong purchasing real estate in Boston. The value of my two-family house in Somerville has skyrocketed since I bought it in 2000, and when renting my downstairs apartment last year, I was swamped with responses for my listing, some actually offering to pay more than I was asking. So I didn’t anticipate too many problems when I decided to move this past spring. My longtime roommate, Nicole, was staying at the house for another year, so it would be as simple as finding someone to live with her. In Boston, land of university students and health care professionals, I figured this would be easy.
Still, I was slightly nervous. The economy was bad, and so was my personal balance sheet. Being in grad school full time meant I had zero cash flow, and without the income that renting that room would provide, I’d be heading to debtors prison in no time. I posted listings on craigslist, Yahoo! Real Estate, and Boston.com, and hoped for the best.
The next 11 weeks became a severe education in Boston’s "recession-proof" real estate market. I opened my email eagerly each morning to browse the responses to my ad. And believe me, the problem wasn’t a lack of responses. There was the gay electrician, the linguistics scholar from Barcelona, and the freelance reflexologist; the cardiac researcher, the cranberry products sales rep, and a host of other interesting, urbane people. The problem was that none of them wanted the room as advertised. They all wanted to haggle over the rent or see if I’d be willing to wait until September, or if they could move their four family members and eight pets in with them.
When I actually did meet with people, it wasn’t much more encouraging. Maria, for example, was so shy that our "get to know each other" meeting amounted to 15 minutes of sitting awkwardly across from each other in my living room, Maria munching on an English muffin while Nicole and I tried to think of something to say. Even if Nicole had decided she wanted a noncommunicative roommate who chewed with her mouth open, it wouldn’t have mattered: Maria told us as she was leaving that she couldn’t really afford the place, and just wanted to see what $800 would get her. Nicole met with Eric, the 21-year-old compulsive liar from Baton Rouge. He claimed to gross $11,000 a month, but wouldn’t fill out an application or make eye contact, offered Nicole a cashier’s check for six months if she’d just “close the deal” that night, and said he planned to operate a small "import-export business" out of the house. Nicole swore she saw him skulking around the yard later that night, and asked me to fix the back door lock immediately.
There were countless other little injustices that made the whole process nightmarish. A woman named Rosario sent me a nasty email one day asking where the hell I got off charging $800 in the middle of a recession. A creepy guy named Harry had seen the ad and kept calling to ask Nicole out. Someone named Danielle, or maybe it was Chloe, sent an email saying she’d take the room as long as I could promise there were no "shared walls" between Nicole’s room and the one she’d be renting. I got more and more nervous as days turned into weeks and the room stayed empty. Every time I left Home Depot, my orange cart filled with landlord-type products, I was reminded that though I was shelling out plenty of money to fix my place up, there was no money coming in – and no tenant in sight.
Most frustrating by far were the people who just didn’t show up for appointments. Andie wrote that she was "a totally cool, considerate person" and "very much in need" of housing for June 1. I slogged my way through rush-hour traffic to get to our 6:30 appointment, and then got a call from her at 6:25, saying that she had just found another place, and wouldn’t be coming by after all. Sally, the 29-year old marketing professional who "loved nature and reading" called to cancel our 8:30 am meeting just seconds before it was to begin, and then talked me into rescheduling for Easter Sunday, a day traditionally spent stuffing my face with ham and Au Gratin Potatoes at my parents’ house.
Sandy blew me off on Sunday without so much as an email or phone call, and I started really panicking. I spent the next three hours at the computer, looking for every apartment listing service I could find. Matchingroomates.com, sublet.com, apartment.com, easyrent.com – I joined them all, willingly shelling out he $50 or $80 required to become a premium member. I felt like I was trapped in a never-ending cycle of make appointments, get blown off, get depressed – and I had to do something, anything, before my remaining money and sanity completely evaporated.
We met Justin just a few weeks later. Nicole and I had agreed beforehand that if he seemed even remotely acceptable, which at this point required little more than a pulse and a security deposit, we would offer him the room. I’m not sure what we did right (Nicole thinks it was her strategic placement of the martini shaker and glasses), but Justin called the next day to say that he got a great vibe from us and wanted to move in. Dramatic though it might sound, I was so happy that I almost started weeping.
Justin moved into the room 87 days after I first listed it. In that time, I received and responded to 94 emails, 28 of which actually became appointments. But half were cancelled, six with less than 12 hours notice, and three people just didn’t bother to show up at all. I spent nearly $400 on classified advertising, lowered the rent twice, let a potential psychopath into the house, and came close to at least one nervous breakdown. When I see stories lamenting the real estate bubble that could potentially burst in Boston, I laugh. As far as I’m concerned, it’s already popped.
