I have been looking at real estate here in Los Angeles for several months now, in search of the perfect “no one will bother us” piece of property. If you’re wondering why I’m doing this, I can only explain that we bought our place to be an investment property (not to be the place we were going to live forever) and it’s now ready to become that at any time, I just need to find us a new place to live.
This is turning out to be more challenging than I thought, unless one of you has a helicopter that Stephan can use to get to work from the top of the mountain where I would like to construct a UNABOMBER-like cabin, because this is what it’s going to take for me to get some peace and quiet in the greater Los Angeles area. In case you’re wondering, yes, I’ve looked in Calabasas, yes, I’ve looked in Topanga, and yes, I’ve looked in Malibu, and I have been unable to locate something that fulfills everyone’s needs and still enables Stephan to not have a two hour long commute. Anyone have any ideas? I would like to live someplace that is like Carmel and has fruit trees, and where I'm not so close to my neighbors I can hear them answering the phone and taking a shower. Is that asking too much?
I don’t know why this is taking so long, with the possible exception of the fact that this is Los Angeles, and so everything is still very overpriced and usually comes with some kind of catch, like a celebrity lives next door (NOT A GOOD THING, BECAUSE CELEBRITIES HAVE NO REGARD FOR THE LAW), or the owners of the house request that you move in and that they live in a “guest apartment” in the basement where they promise not to bother you, or some other nonsense that probably sounds just fine when they come up with it, but that makes you roll your eyes and wonder why you even bothered to drive all the way out to look at it in the first place.
Yes, I know this makes me sound cynical. But, I DID just say I was looking in Los Angeles, right? Capital of cynicism and douchebaggery and the loud cellphone conversation? Sometimes, literally, the “catch” is such a catch that I find myself laughing out loud, right there in someone’s living room.
Here are some examples of this phenomenon. I’m going to try to stay out of trouble by not describing the properties themselves, only the “catches.”
1. “Oh, didn’t I mention that our next door neighbors have a kennel?”
2. “The owner is friends with Olivia Newton John, and when she moved, he bought her bathroom and had it reassembled in his house, piece by piece.”
Note: I believe that someone needs to tell this realtor (and possibly this owner) that ONJ’s bathroom is NOT a selling point, and in fact, might be a detractor. But, I am just reporting the facts as I observed them).
3. Me: “Wow, that garden is nice.”
The Realtor: “Oh, that’s actually the neighbor’s garden. No one ever sees him, but he’s really obsessive about the garden, so the gardener lives on site.”
Me: “On site like in the house?”
The Realtor: “No, on site like in the garden.
(I look out the bathroom window to find I am two feet away from the face of the gardener. He waves.)
4. Realtor: “This house used to be owned by a member of the Jackson Family.”
Me: “You….don’t…..say.”
5. Realtor: “The owner is going through a divorce, and so she’s letting her dogs poop in the yard and not cleaning it up on purpose. You have to try to see past the poop. And watch your step.”
