Karma

I don’t like fucking with Karma. It’s a bad idea.

I’m not saying I believe in Karma, but I’m not saying that I don’t believe in Karma. I figure if I play both sides of the coin I won’t be tempting Karma to come around and kick me in the nuts to show me how real she can be.

It’s like ghosts. I take absolutely no stand on ghosts, spirits and the like. Because if I say that I don’t believe in ghosts then I am positive a ghost will show up and haunt me, which is one of my biggest fears. Fruit that flies on it’s own freaks me out.

So I tend to do what I think is the right thing with the hope that good things will come around. For example, I choose not to get involved with Britney and now Karma has rewarded me by not giving me trailer trash crotch rot.

However, now I find myself in somewhat of a conundrum.

My wife and are continuing to look for a house to buy. Let me recap for everyone so you can fully appreciate my position.

The Hoss Family lived in Dallas, TX. For some reason that I don’t think we really understand yet, we decided that we needed to move to Kansas City. We don’t know anyone here. We have no family here. Words like “adventure” and “family drama” came up and so we decided to move. Let’s go, let’s live a little.

Hossmom got a new job and a promotion and off we went.

We put our house on the market and got lucky. We sold it within two weeks and everything was going well. Now we have to buy a new house in our new city. While we are shopping for a new house we are living in a rent house. I have 2 kids, 2 dogs, 2 cats and Hossmom packed into a 1000 square feet of ghetto loving. The term “motivated buyer” is an understatement for us.

Which finally brings us to my current discussion on Karma.

We are looking at buying a house that was recently foreclosed on. I’m excited, it’s a great house. It’s big enough for planning world domination but still has that down home feeling. And it’s somewhat in the country so I’ll be getting back to my roots and Hossmom can listen to my stories about riding hogs and handpicking squash.

But it’s a foreclosed house and I just have this feeling that I’m pissing off Karma somehow.

I know that it’s not my fault that the home was foreclosed on but I just feel a little creepy benefiting off of someone’s misfortune.

I feel like that I have forced the previous owners, with 2.5 kids and a lab and probably a great apple pie baker, into some trailer park living with there mother who happens to dabble in meth on the side. And I’m taking their house.

I know that it’s not true. I did nothing to facilitate their inability to pay their mortgage. It’s the system that screwed them, not me. I’m just using the same system to have a little cha-cha dance over their ruined credit reports. Thanks for the house, get out. Pancho’s is having an all you can eat buffet for 5.99.

All in all, it’s creepy but the more we look at houses the more I discover that misfortune is what seems to drive the real estate market.

Houses become available for a variety of bad luck moments that happen in people’s lives. We have looked at houses where people died (not in them), foreclosed homes and the all time boon to the housing market: divorce.

That is the driving force for people moving. If I move into a house where the people were divorcing, am I inviting bad luck into my marriage?? Am I setting myself up for a nasty divorce where I get to be one of the first males in history to request alimony? Ok, that would pretty cool. I WANT HALF! K-Fed is my hero.

And what if I buy one of the houses where one of the people died? Do I get haunted, kind of like in Beetle Juice? I’m not saying I believe in ghosts, but you know my policy on this.

So maybe it’s not so bad that I’m buying a house that went through foreclosure. At least I can assume that the family is still together, probably selling rock on the street, but they are still together.

And they will get back on their feet, I’m sure of it. They will have to take out some rivals, of course but if you just make a few examples of a couple of people the rest will take the hint and then whamo! the street corner is yours.

Its while I’m wrestling with these inner demons and trying to rationalize myself buying this house when I remember another important lesson of real estate. Very simply: every one is trying to fuck you over.

I’m sitting here feeling bad for the family and hoping that they are ok. We met with the real estate agent and to be thorough we asked for a history of the house, price wise.

Well, it turns out that this house was bought and then 3 months later they tried to sell it. The only problem that I see with this is that they added 75,000 dollars to the price they bought it for. Now I’m not an expert, but given today’s market, it is hard pressed for a house to appreciate that much in 3 short months.

So I asked if any improvements were made, maybe it was a couple trying to flip the house. The answer is of course, no. It’s the same as when they bought it. This gets me going a little as I look at the history. Of course there were no buyers because I’m assuming that other people did the same thing we did and checked the history of the house and knew it was way over priced.

You can see the price drop each month, sometimes each week as the house remains on the market until it finally reaches within $3,000 of what they bought it for a year ago. And it dawns on me: there is the cause of their foreclosure. They were hoping that some dumb ass would come along and bid for this thing without doing his research. They would float the payments for a short while then walk away with a pile of cash thanks to someone else. In short, they were hoping to fuck someone else over.

As the house sat on the market they couldn’t afford the mortgage and whamo! foreclosure.

Now I don’t feel so bad, they brought it on themselves. They were hoping to over extend some other poor family while they sipped martinis and flew around in their leer jet dropping puppies on the poor.

So screw it, give me the house. I shall cleanse this house like the little hobbit chick from Poltergeist.

But I won’t do anything about the ghosts, if they exist and are there, which I’m not saying they are. But if they are there, they can stay. Unless they are not real.