And the last one falls

So a bit of news from the Ohios is that the last of the "First Time Home Buyers Club" for 1993 has listed his house for sale and plans to move into a downsized condo.

Back in 1993, Cookie decided to buy a house.  I had never owned a house, but I worked for a company that trained mortgage lenders.  I had sat through so many seminars I was qualified to become a broker myself.

If I planned it right and bought in the right area, I could have walked into a nice house for a $2,000 down.  Back then, Mortgage lenders had something we called "Red Line Money".  These were programs, set aside to help mortgage companies and banks get loans to houses in neighborhoods where they didn't have many loans.  The idea was, that they would do just about anything to get first-time buyers to buy a house in a neighborhood where they were short mortgages.

So I found a ramshackle place near Ohio State, in a neighborhood that could have tipped the wrong way.  It had 1,200 square feet, one bath and it was only 60K.  So I jumped.  My mortgage PITI was $500 a month, even.   Of course, it needed a ton of work, but we got it there when we sold it 19 years later, and it was lovely.

But then my friend Marty wanted a house.  She was an attorney, so why shouldn't she get in on the action.  And she did.  Same program, different neighborhood.

Then George got in on it.  "If Cookie can do this, why can't I?"  And he did.

Finally, Mikey got in on it.  He bought a real monster in an "Up and Coming" neighborhood. Mikey hit the jackpot.  That neighborhood skyrockets in value.  And the former drug den became a very nice place.

We sold, to move to "Charm City" (A terribly disappointing name for a place that offers no charm, no charm at all.) in 2012.

Marty lost her mind, lost her job, and lost me as a friend in 1999. "NO!" she ordered me at the last.  "You can't choose your husband over me!"  Wrong.  But she hung onto his place until 2017 when she stepped up to "new" place in German Village.

George died - cancer - and his sister sold that house in 2018.

Now Mikey has announced that he has sold his pile to a couple hipsters who paid $800,000 on a house he picked up for $98,000.  Of course, the hipsters won't have to shovel out piles of hypodermic needles like we did when he got overwhelmed with it all.   But then again, Mikey is seldom home, never cooks at home, spends his weekends away at his "summer house" (read that as "camper" in a "park") and he doesn't need a 4,000 pile to take care of.

So the last one of the group falls.

And word also came today that yet another friend has listed his place for something smaller, now that he's divorced from that witch he married ten years ago.  (If you are reading this Helen, I never liked you.)

So, the "Old Order Passeth."  It makes you kind of sad, and it's another reminder that you can't go home, or to your old friend's houses, again.