Getting Roots One Square Foot at a Time

I've always wanted roots, mostly because I equate roots with home and I never had much of one after my mother died. I want to give Alex "roots so deep no one could ever pull them away from her." Because of this, I want to buy a house. I frequently drag the hub to "trippings" so we could look at houses that are within our future budget range. Tripping, or the act of showing potential buyers the properties that are still available, is too trippy a word for such a grown-up activity. Still, I'm not surprised. Showing people empty lots at noon, with the sun scorching every uncovered surface of skin, is guaranteed to dehydrate real estate agents and fry their brains.

If there's one thing all those trippings have shown the hub and I, its how horrendously expensive a good house is. The units we want, we cannot possibly pay for even if we rob a bank. The units we most likely could someday afford, we feel no connection with. Still, if there's any consolation in all this, it's that it's even more expensive to buy homes abroad. For example, I read that someone named George Lindemann Jr. paid $2.23 million for a 4,984-square-foot home on Biscayne Bay. For that price, he essentially paid $466 per square foot. The lots we looked at before ranged from P1,500 to P10,000 per square foot. Clearly, if the number game is all that is to be played, it's easier for one to buy a house here than it is for foreigners abroad.

All things factored in, however, it will take the average Filipino years to purchase a home; and there's no guarantee, even, that this home will remain standing for years. The news is rife with accounts of construction firms using substandard materials and housing units cracking or crumbling down months after the new owners move in. What a painful occurrence that must be, to sell all your goats and carabaos to meet initial payments on your house; and then your house falls down like a stack of dominoes and you're left not with a small, cozy home to call your own but a mountain of bills and months of repair work.