The Second Home

When was it I first thought it would be a good idea to become a landlord? I remember, we were launching our youngest toward his 2nd year at the state university in Trenton, NJ (TCNJ), and I had become disenchanted with the stock market. So, when we sold the big house to downsize to the South, I convinced my husband it would be a great idea to "invest" in a property for our son while he was in college. Then later we could sell it and maybe make a profit. I read about people doing this all over the country in our newly acquired AARP magazine! My husband was trying to placate me since moving wasn't really big on my list of things to do; also, he knew that many musicians end up coming home to live in their parent's basement. So we bought a really cute bi-level home a few blocks from the college. I would kid around with my friends - "Never thought I'd own a vacation home in Trenton," I'd say with a smile. And then stardom reared its ugly head and my son, the full-time rock musician and part-time college student, succumbed to the pleas of his band and the big time label. He dropped out of school.

We sold that cute little house after only one year and did make a tidy profit. But I was on a roll, and started looking for a second home for our daughter and her medical school buddies. Real estate had become an obsession. Really, I should have gotten a license! So while we found and later fired an architect to build our "not so big house" with a view, I scooped up a hundred year old brick home, a foursquare sitting prettily on a dead end street in the middle of town. Within walking or biking distance from the medical school, and two blocks from the pedestrian mall. It's like a little bit of Europe in the Shenandoah valley; swanky restaurants, outdoor cafe's, trendy bars, and tiny boutique shops, gelato, theaters and music joints, and even an ice skating rink. Perfection! Except that this old house needed alot of love. We had to gut the basement and turn its unlivable studio apartment into a one bedroom and completely re-build the upstairs kitchen, it became a money pit from the word go, but I loved it. Because in the back of my mind, this high ceilinged little gem would be our retirement house. Someday, when we could no longer drive, we'd live here!

Why am I writing about second homes? Once my daughter and her friends graduated, we've managed to keep this 2 and a half bedroom house with a cute basement apartment full of graduate students. The rent is very reasonable and I am a non-profit type of landlord - I call it my social services experiment! Because in the middle of all this wedding planning the downstairs tenant is marrying her MD/PhD fiancee and moving upstairs, and a friend of theirs is moving into the basement apartment and there's a leak in the shower, the ice maker doesn't work, and a door won't shut, and....that's what I'm doing now. A friend once told me that owning a second home only means more house to clean. She never told me you'd be running out in the middle of the night to replace all the fire alarm batteries, only to find out that that annoying, repetitive buzz was coming from a beeper in somebody's short white doctor coat!

Just read a good movie review in the Times: "But being both a winner and a mensch is not such an easy task." I believe I'm overdue for a laugh, so Dinner for Schmucks will be on the menu this weekend! I so love Steve Carell. And PS, yes, it is LOL funny!