It was an unusually cold weekend in April 2005, with weather deciding between the snow and rain. Clouds were thick over Toronto, not your perfect day for shopping. Especially not for shopping for a house!
We found ourselves driving through the desolate area north east of town, where we haven't been before. Lately, we spent many weekends driving around and looking for the house sales centers, more to check the model houses than from the real interest in buying. As usually we were in different moods: Margaret loved touring sales centers and their model homes. She didn't mind sales people's endless pestering about everything in our lives that could make them "help" us choose the right model for our "future home". Nor did she mind their disapproving looks when we rushed by, to yet another series of overpriced model houses.
I, on the other hand, hated having to fend off the pesky sales people, taking off the shoes and wandering barefoot through the houses we can't afford, furnished and decorated with arguable lack of good taste. I expected nothing different on that miserable Saturday, when we rushed into a sales centre to hide from the wind and snow mixed with rain. The centre was just open, they had no model houses to show, all there was to see were designers' drawings, floor plans and a model of the neighborhood. Not in a hurry to return to the weather elements outside, we, for change, paid attention to the salesperson introducing the community plans on the model. It was a promising plan with parks and walking paths, forest, playgrounds, and more. We allowed the salesman to lure us inside to check the house models posters hanging around the centre and the strangest thing happened! We found a house, or rather, we found a picture of a house we'd really like to have. Conveniently, there was a mortgage specialist on site, who quickly went through the numbers with me and convinced me we could just make the mortgage requirements. Barely, but still, we could pull it off. And, before we both really realized what happened, Margaret and me were sitting in the small office within the sales centre, signing the papers. There was no thinking, re-thinking, re-calculating and all other "re-things" people normally do before tying such a hefty mortgage around their necks. We just closed our eyes and signed. As a colleague would tactfully put it later, we signed our lives away without thinking twice. Funny thing, there was an awe in his voice when he said it.
Then, for almost a year, nothing happened. Our house was supposed to be built by the end of August 2006. We had a brief burst of excitement when, in spring, the construction started in the farm field where our future home was going to be, only to be put down by the explanation: the houses being built were not on our street, but the street behind. Our street was still under remnants of the corn field. Later, we got a letter informing us that the move-in date has been postponed for 4 months. Although we were told that was going to happen by everyone who ever bought a new house, it still deflated our enthusiasm greatly. In the meantime the model houses were built and we visited them often, dreaming aloud about furnishing our own house soon. Finally, a row of holes was dug along what was to become our street. I never thought a hole in the ground would make me so happy, but this particular one became the basement of our home. We spied on it every weekend from the upper level of one of the model houses, until there was another row of houses built in between, obscuring the view. We drove by several times and were always sent away by the security on site. It was becoming really difficult to check the progress of our own house, for which we already paid 10% deposit. There was nothing to do but wait.
It seemed that everyone else involved in our house-buying waited until the very last moment, too. The mortgage broker wasn't returning our calls until two weeks before the closing date. Then, finally, everything happened at once, overwhelming us in a flurry of activities: the mortgage papers were signed, the lawyer engaged, the house inspection date set, etc. Late in December, the builder rushed to finalize the deal before the year's end. On December 29th, the last workday in 2006, we found ourselves waiting in front of the lawyers office to close the deal. Two hours later, with no sign of the lawyer, we started going through the emergency scenario we didn't really have. Our apartment was cancelled, we had no place to stay and nowhere to go. The lawyer's assistant recognized that we are both quickly reaching the heart-attack point and finally tracked him down. Alas, he forgot about the appointment and decided to start the New Years holidays a day earlier! Cornered and ashamed, he showed up in 15 minutes. We moved into the house in the afternoon.
