Molino Vega 9 & The 24-Hour Prada Rule
Episode 06:26:2023 - Prompt: Home Pt. Two
Where Home took me…
Last week I wrote about our quest to buy an abandoned, foreclosed house in the south of Spain. I didn’t realize the story would need two parts, but it did…
The New York Times published an article in the Real Estate section about how Americans Escape to Europe for the Good Life on The Cheap. (Article is gifted for ease of access).
They showcased expats who found “amazing” deals in Spain, Portugal, and Greece.
If anyone thinks $300,000 is “on the cheap” in countries where the annual salaries are around $15,000, they need to get out of Red Hook.
My price range for buying a house is from the late 80’s.
The same way my price range for renting never exceeded $500/month, even when I lived in Soho (Broadway between Prince & Spring) in the early 2000’s.
If I stuck to my price, I’d either get it or I wouldn’t, but I’d never regret committing more than I could afford.
I learned this test of restraint at the first Prada store that opened in Soho in December 2001, a block from where I lived.
I brought my friend E. with me just to look around.
The interior design alone inspired me.
And then I saw a purse… or shoes? I don’t remember but…
My credit card was burning up in my pocket.
“Why don’t you wait 24-hours. If you still want them, you’ll have no regrets.”
Ah, E. So practical… and he had money from a tech windfall, so he knew.
I never went back to buy the shoes at Prada.
And I still don’t buy what I can’t afford at the moment of purchase.
This is Part Two of HOME.
When you see something no one else wants…
Spain reportedly has 3.4 million empty properties as a result of multinational financial speculators like Goldman Sachs, Blackstone and others.
They bought up real estate, raised the rent, and kicked people out.
In an effort to repopulate these empty homes, Spanish banks took over foreclosures and lowered prices to stimulate buyers.
HOWEVER, an intermediary body stepped in - they call themselves an Inmobiliaria - a real estate company…
But what they are is a plague.
This real estate hedge fund’s role is to check the buyer’s purchasing power… to control Money Laundering.
As if all of these empty properties and unfinished superstructures weren’t caused by global MONEY LAUNDERING. (It deserves all caps).
Here we were, trying to by a €53,000 home (my 1980s price point) that’s been abandoned for 11-years. The other half of our current home, and they asked questions like…
“The titular buyer is 84-years-old. Why does she need a new house?”
My blood boiled… that’s AGEISM!
And we told them so.
Twice we went through the process of trying to buy this house.
It took 3 years.
Every financial transaction any of us made in the previous two years was scrutinized by an anonymous “gestor” at this company with hundreds of 1-star reviews claiming fraud.
I created fool-proof layouts to illustrate the connection of the two houses, wrote the narrative of my mother wanting to finally connect them for her family.
With perseverance & the help of a bulldogged good friend, we got the keys.
(The New York Times needs to update that “Americans on the Cheap” feature.)
Today, we celebrate my mother’s 85th birthday in our new home!
YOUR TURN: If you didn’t write about HOME last week and want to go back to write a two-parter: CLICK HERE.
If you wrote last week and want to share Part Two, by all means.
If you have a single Home story to tell, that also works.
Where does HOME take you?
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Twenty-seven years ago, I was driving down 95 South from Dulles Airport toward Richmond, heading for Williamsburg and Busch Gardens with my children. Jessica was sixteen and David twelve. Virginia’s lush greenery lined the highway, and traffic swirled around us. Then something wondrous happened. All sound and images faded except for the trees and sky. I smelled and heard their colors, hues of green and blue. Time and space seemed suspended. A gentle breeze from an unknown source caressed my face and raised the hairs on my arms. I relaxed my hands on the steering wheel. An inaudible, deep voice boomed inside my head. This is home. This is home. Hearing that voice—the loudest I’d ever heard—I woke as from a reverie. Who? What? How? I asked. The reality of 95 South returned. I told Jessica and David about the voice, what it said, and my astonishment. This is home? We live in Texas; we’re on vacation. I don’t remember my children having any reaction, except maybe, “Oh, Mom...” Compared to Busch Garden’s Loch Ness Monster and Big Bad Wolf roller coasters, the voice I heard and the time lapse I’d experienced probably didn’t seem like a big deal. But it turned out to be a very big deal. Seven years later, I was living and working in Baltimore—and falling in love with a man from Virginia. Yesterday, we celebrated our seventeenth wedding anniversary. This is home. (Scene excerpted and adapted from my memoir Wisdom Builds Her House, releasing in early 2024)
We built our last family home when I was nine. The wall intercoms and the huge open floor plan seemed luxurious and there were ten acres to explore. In hindsight, it wasn't extraordinary, but it was nice and it was home. Mom was fastidious and always updating the décor to the height of suburban eighties fashion. Dad started his own award winning business. On occasion, others lived with us for a while. It was always welcoming. When I moved home to have my son, we lived in my old room until we began renovating the enormous basement to build an office on one side and an apartment on the other. We had already built a small “Tudor” cottage in the front yard for me to paint and teach art classes, which was going well, but the business had some hiccups that heavily impacted the family. Mom went to work in retail. I had good commissions but not the time or energy for DIY projects so the house started to deteriorate. Eventually it was under foreclosure and we were scrambling to decide what to salvage and rescue, as water was spraying out of pinhole leaks in the copper pipes along the ceiling in our disastrous, unfinished living space. It makes my heart ache to think that that is what my son recalls as home, and even more so to know that he still drives back to look at it and mourn, hoping to buy it back one day.