Foreclosure: Coming Down Off the Hill

I gaze around the living room at the moving boxes transporting my life. Moving seems like such a simple thing; people do it all the time after all. Yet this move hurts. It’s only a house, I tell myself. What if you are losing it in a foreclosure? It’s just a material thing. You have your health.

But I’ll miss the trees. Will the next owner cherish them, put their hands on them as I do and thank them for giving shade?

I’ll miss the kitchen with its thick wooden countertops where I sliced fresh fruits: Kiwis, oranges, plums, peaches, grapes, for what my husband, Bob, calls “the best fruit salad in the world.” That big old brown stove where I made chili for the first time in a huge Calphalon pot, a wedding present I hadn’t used yet because the kitchen in our last rental was so cramped. And that time I was really ambitious and made tandoori chicken and stained the counter with red food coloring.

We’ve been in this house for four years; we bought it at the peak of the market--November, 1988. I fell in love with this house; it reminded me of the crystal “Magic Castle” that Bob had bought me on our honeymoon, sitting on top of a rainbow mountain that changed colors, reflecting light.

Except our house wasn’t palatial--it was more like a country farmhouse set in the hills of Sherman Oaks, sitting atop a steep winding driveway surrounded by trees thick with foliage. “ . . . and it’s south of the boulevard,” said the seller’s agent, which meant nothing to us at the time. We had been renting in Los Angeles and were dimly aware that “north of Wilshire” was a preferred location on our side of the hill.

We were first-time buyers; we didn’t have a clue, or good advice. We invested everything, didn’t even negotiate. We cringe when we remember and change the subject quickly. Our mortgage payment was so high, the television in the bedroom sat on an upside-down Pier One planter. It seemed like a luxury to buy a second TV stand.

Two months after we moved in, we bought a Great Pyrenees puppy. She was so tiny, she could fit on my lap; now she’s bigger than I am. She grew up here. I don’t think she likes the boxes and seeing us pack because she keeps hiding in the corner behind the dining-room table looking morose.

In the winter, even when we turned the heating way up, those old windows with the crank shafts that came off in your hand breathed in cold air. Bob and I would lie on the couch and snuggle under a knobbly blanket, our cold toes clefting into each other’s until they were warmed.

We rarely used the glass dining-room table and softly curved chairs that we’d felt so grown up buying. Instead we ate leaning cushions against the couch, our plates resting on the hexagon coffee table I’d bought in that ‘50s store in Melrose when you could still find a bargain.

I started writing in the second bedroom. I invested my first checks in a computer and fax and printer and modern white desks and shelves. I gazed out of the window at the trees and squirrels and bluejays as I talked to corporate execs in glass buildings on my professional AT&T; two-line speakerphone.

In April, 1990, at the age of 35, Bob left his job, and title of senior vice president/sales and marketing with the company he’d been with since college. You might call it an early midlife crisis: he’d experienced a gnawing dissatisfaction with his work for a few years but the expensive fitness club--an executive “perk”--the Saab Turbo convertible, the lunches at The Ivy--provided a thick cosmetic covering.

Each year he got a pay raise and large bonus, which made it easier to ignore the voice inside telling him it was time to forgo the trappings, time to search for what was really important to him. Until, through the years, the voice became louder and more insistent and the veneer of shiny toys had lost their polish.

His sabbatical started with a healthy severance package, which meant that the mortgage and property taxes wouldn’t be a problem for at least a year. After a few months of soul-searching, he decided that he wanted to teach children. My earnings could not cover a hefty mortgage and the property tax bills so he decided to get another sales or marketing job while pursuing his dream of teaching.

At the same time that he made this decision, the recession, which during the early months of his sabbatical had seemed like an on-again, off-again situation depending on which day you read the paper, seemed suddenly to have lodged its claw-like grip on the economy and job market. There were too many people unemployed and not enough work. I experienced a sense of deja vu; it was similar to the situation in my native England just before I emigrated to America 11 years ago when each job advertisement would net 1,000 resumes.

Bob began doing marketing consulting work but we still weren’t making enough to cover the house payments. So we put the house on the market in 1990. We didn’t think we’d have any problem selling it, paying back the bank and even making a small profit. After all, we’d fallen in love with it, we were sure someone else would too.

Strangers paraded through our house practically every day. “For Sale” signs would advertise the same houses in the area for months. Then the signs would come down and new ones would go up: from “Fred Sands” to “Jon Douglas”--from “Jon Douglas” to “Fred Sands.” Occasionally you’d see a “Sold” sign and it seemed like the brokers didn’t take down those signs until the new people had moved in; this was the best advertising they could have in a recession.

I remember reading about how selling your house was a stressful experience, especially if it took up to two months. This was after a year of having our house on the market.

Three real estate brokers and five price reductions later, we called the bank and offered them a deed in lieu of foreclosure; we’d read in several articles that most banks would accept such an offer. We’d also read that banks would be willing to negotiate lower payments until your finances improved if you were upfront about your financial situation.

We called the head of the foreclosure department and were passed on to a junior executive, the only person who would deign to speak to us despite the thousands of dollars we’d paid the bank in interest. We asked her if the bank would lower our payments. She practically laughed with derision.

We offered her the deed in lieu of foreclosure. She spoke to her superior. Her faceless boss refused and started foreclosure proceedings.

After almost two years we had one offer; it was for $100,000 less than we’d paid, not even enough to pay off our loan.

The bank is selling our house at a public auction. And everything I own is in boxes.

There’s a part of me that believes I’ll lose all the wonderful experiences I had in this house because it’s being snatched from us by bankers as hard as computers, whose soft human parts are screened off and filed away on backup disks.

I know that the only certainty in life is change, and change is good and all those cliches. But my life is in boxes and I’m losing the key to this house, high in the hills, with the steep, winding driveway.

But there’s also a part of me--the wiser part--that knows that although I’ve experienced wonderful things here, it’s time to let go; that there are more important things in life than owning a charming house in the hills south of Ventura Boulevard. Or north of Wilshire for that matter.

I’ve hidden up here for too long and it’s time to come down.