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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
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We have an appraiser coming to look at the house tomorrow. Some sort of refinancing shenanigans or other, I think. I'm not so good with details.
But it's got me a little bit nervous -- see, I know there are people out there called 'appraisers', and then there are people called 'estimators', or something like that. And from what I understand, what you really want is for one of those people to believe that your house is worth several tens of thousands more than it really is, and you want the other one to think that your place is a dilapidated crapshack, valued far less than its current worth. But I've forgotten which one is which.
Maybe I should pay attention to those 'details', after all. Meh.
Because now I'm all confused -- my wife told me to 'get the house ready' for this appraiser person tomorrow, but I'm not quite sure what that means. Should I dust, and mop, and put away my boxers that are draped over the television? You know, make the place look nice, wash the assprints off the walls, that kind of thing? Or should I go the other way, and rough the place up a bit, maybe drop some matches on the couches and piss on the carpets? I'm just not sure what I want here.
(But I need to figure it out soon. I really need to pee, and I don't want to waste it, if I'm supposed to be bringing the value down. Nothing says 'cut-rate flophouse' like a floorful of piddle. This stuff could be liquid gold.)
Anyway, I suppose I've got to figure this out pretty damned quick. Maybe I can half-and-half it -- clean up the living room, set fire to the dining room, wipe down the kitchen, but stream water from the sink onto the porch. That way, I can get a feel for which way I was supposed to go, and just show the appraiser the right set of rooms. That kind of ridiculous shit works on sitcoms all the time, right?
Of course, there'd still be my wife to contend with, and I'd be guaranteed to have gotten half the house wrong. I suppose I'd better ask a few more questions before I get crazy and pee on anything tonight.
Hmmm. How much trouble would that sentence have kept me out of over the years? Damn.
If it was a REALLY good sitcom, you'd have BOTH of them in your house at the same time, and the hilarity would come when each one started to drift toward the room they weren't supposed to be in, and 23 minutes into the show, you'd finally figure out that you had them backwards the whole time anyway, then Mr. Furley would come in, find you peeing on Chrissy, you'd all have a good laugh and be back at it next week.
(My old roomie's right... the Three's Company joke *does* work for ANYTHING!)
I'm pretty sure you wife would have LOVED to have read this post and seen it come to life. It is what a wife's dreams are made of or did you not get that memo? :P
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They're called tax assessors here. You want them to think your house is worth much less because they base your yearly tax on a percentage of the assessed value. In fact, in our area it's wiser to have a nice back yard and let your front yard slide a bit since all but a few random assessments are done from the street.