Twelve Black Code Monkeys

Housing in the DC area has, as anyone in the know will tell you, has gotten completely insane. No, it’s not like New York City where you can’t even FIND a place to rent. It is more just in terms of buying as opposed to renting. I remember back several years ago when some of my coworkers were first starting to buy places. Some of these people were just out of college, and I’d been out of college for five or six years by then and I was not at all ready to delve into the market. Part of that was my love for gadgets and my inability to actually hold to a budget. The people who bought then saw their property take off like the dot com bubble, but unlike that bubble, there’s yet to be any popping in this one, if it can even be called a bubble. First time home owners now find themselves having to either settle for something very small, something very run down, or something pretty far outside of DC. Prices have basically doubled for much of the market over just four or five years. Part of the issue seems to be a decreasing number of houses on the market, or at least houses that are relatively close to downtown DC. The other part is that interest rates are still extremely low, in fact pretty much at the lowest they have been, at least in the last 50 years I think.

Luckily, my wife was one of those people who bought her condo a while back. Not that long ago – only three years – but long enough to see a decent amount of equity built up. Without that equity there would just be no way for us to afford looking for something bigger in an area that was relatively close to the city and in a good neighborhood.

We started looking a couple of weeks ago and immediately saw a house we loved in the Pimmit Hills neighborhood of Falls Church, VA. We put what we thought was a really good bid down of $22K OVER the listing price. Yet, as it turned out, we were only in the “middle” of ten bids on the house! Moreover, seven of those ten bids waived inspection contingency! We actually wanted to do this ourselves but couldn’t bring ourselves to waive this without the ability to do a pre-inspection.

So, when we went looking again last weekend and decided we really liked this one place in Vienna, VA, we wanted to submit a bid that would match the craziness of the market, while of course not being over what we felt we could afford. It ended up being more than 20% over the listing price!

For some reason they would not let us do a pre-inspection of the place. Pre-inspections, for those unfamiliar, are used by some prospective home buyers in this market so that they can be reasonably assured that there aren’t serious things wrong with the house that aren’t visible to the novice. The idea is that if you can get some assurance that there aren’t big problems, this gives you the confidence to waive your inspection contingency, which of course makes your bid much more attractive to the seller than those that have not waived it. An inspection contingency, for those who have yet to go through the home-buying process, is just a clause in the contract that says if problems are found in the house that require repair, the person selling the house is responsible for making those repairs (and paying for them) or else the buyer can walk away. Without a pre-inspection and without an inspection contingency, the buyer has no insurance at all that there might not be $30K, $40K or more in additional hidden costs. Of course the buyer can walk away after making a winnign bid on the house (if their subsequent inspection shows serious, expensive problems with the house), but then they forfeit the “earnest money” or “binder” security deposit that is customarily put down with the bid, and which is usually a considerable amount of money.

Our lack of success the previous week, the disappointment in the face of all this work trying to find a place that met our criteria, actually going out and looking at all these houses, lots of searching online, etc., all of these made us determined that our next bid should have an extremely good chance of winning. Still, the problem was that we didn’t want to fly blind by going in without any pre-inspection or waiving the inspection contingency. Many people, as it turns out, wave this contingency whether they are able to pre-inspect or not, and so we would have immediately made our contract one of the lesser attractive ones by including it. Our agent then came up with an ingenious solution! We submitted an inspection contingency, but it was one that stated that we would take on the first $10K of potential repairs needed. Even with this, the owner and her agent wanted us to remove it, in which case they said the house was ours. We still did not want to eliminate it completely, so we finally upped it to $15K, and this did the trick.

This all took place very quickly! We saw the house on Saturday, met with our agent on Sunday evening, but the contract in on Monday morning, and were told we had won the bid by about 5pm on Monday!

The house, as I mentioned is in Vienna, VA, a place that I actually lived for almost 3 years and then moved out of to live with my now wife in DC. The house is across from a small park and actually not far from the house that I moved from, which is still occupied by friends who are buying it from the other friends who had rented it to us.

On Wednesday we did a home inspection and from that it seems like we are in pretty good shape. There are only a couple of things that really should get attention sooner rather than later, but these should amount to well under $1000 to fix. As it turns out, there are a lot of old appliances that work perfectly well, but they are at the end of their life expectancy, so we will probably be budgeting some replacement appliances in the coming months/year, if we don’t decide to replace some before we actually move. We have about a month between closing and when we will probably move, so this will give us a chance to make some minor or even some major fixes while the house is still empty. We are also considering a few improvements to the house, including finishing the basement, knocking out a kitchen wall and putting new counters/cabinets in the kitchen, etc. Probably most if not all of these will wait for a while and the appliances will be more of a budgeting priority.

As we did the inspection, I felt like I was learning a lot. I grew up in an apartment a few blocks down from the Empire State Building in New York City, stayed in dorm buildings in college and grad school, and even after coming to DC, the majority of my time has been spent in condos, garden apartments, and townhomes. Maybe a total of 3-4 years of my life has been spent in a single-family house, and those were generally group houses where we had landlords that did most of the work in the house. So, although I’m excited, and at the same time I’m a bit terrified about delving into this very demanding endeavor of home-owning! As it is I often feel like I don’t have enough time in the day, and now I have a whole new set of things to learn, and then actually do! So, fixing things, renovating stuff, etc. Then there’s the back yard. It’s pretty big and it’s been nicely maintained by the current owner, but I need to get knowledgeable about this stuff quick or I feel like it’s all going to go to pot! And that doesn’t even take into consideration the ambition I have of setting up an organic garden. I’ve gone looking on Amazon.com for books on gardening and home repair and thankfully there looks like there are some very good ones out there, but as a slow reader, I feel like I need to start reading now, and keep reading every spare second I can get before we actually take possession of the house!

We actually take possession on May 1. However, we probably won’t actually move in until June. The reason for this is because we want to sell our current place first, but we can’t sell it at the moment, partly due to some painting and cleaning, and partly because our building had a fire in one of the basement units which is being restored currently. The unit is in the front and is still boarded up, though, and the soot from the fire still coats part of the façade, so we are afraid with this first impression, many people may just write the place off before giving it a fair shot. We think, hope, this external work will be more or less complete by the end of April, so we hope to sell the condo in early May, then we will have a few weeks to pack and to get some stuff done at the new place. We may get the hardwood floors refinished, put some carpeting in the basement; get some new appliances, etc. But of course a lot of this is dependent on how much our condo sells for, because that’s where the money will be coming from! We do not want to go into additional debt for stuff that doesn’t have to be renovated or replaced…

So, that has been my beginning in the whacky world of home-owning. Here are some pictures that we took when we were doing the house inspection. You can click on them to get a larger image:

Back a few months ago a coworker of mine was talking about this Mexican place that she went to a lot for burritos. Since I don’t eat grains or beans, and since this was before the huge onslaught of low-carb everything, I just assumed it was similar to other Mexican/burrito places I’ve been where one CAN make special requests, but you end up with something that is not very edible or just too little food despite being the same price. Then one day last fall I was dragged there at some and my assumptions flew out the window.

For those who don’t know, Chipotle is the name of a chain of stores that sells burritos, tacos and such. It is actually owned by McDonalds, or so I hear, but they don’t advertise this in any way. Everything about this place is progressive and kind of the opposite of McDonalds. I actually read Fast Food Nation a few years ago and was so appalled at the state of the fast food industry that I vowed to only eat in one of these places in an emergency, and in fact that’s basically what I kept to until last fall.

Here’s what changed my mind, at least as far as the food:

Chipotle is no nonsense. They display the basic whole ingredients (nothing processed, manufactured, etc.) in front of you and make everything within view.

The ingredients are excellent quality in terms of appearance and taste.

Choice! When you order anything, they ask you which ingredients you want. You either ok or reject every single option. This makes it easy to customize things and even to play with different combinations of ingredients each time you go, trying to create different tastes, etc. This also makes it so easy for those who are picky eaters or those who are on specific diets. These folks don’t have to make a special request and get a funny look.

Two words: Burrito Bol. This is a Burrito without the flour tortilla, good for people who have gluten (wheat protein) sensitivities, or those on low-carb diets. Of course every time I order one of these, the folks behind the counter automatically start to put rice on it and EVERY time I have to quickly say “no rice, no beans.” I go there with other low-carbers who do the same, so I know they are getting these requests often, but it seems that they still view rice and beans as an essential part of the bol, and just assume that these will go in, whereas with almost everything else, they specifically ask you if you want X or Y.

The price is nice. You really get a lot for your money. No, it’s not the dollar value menu, but for a burrito or burrito bol, you pay between $4.75 and $5.75 for the basic set of ingredients, and even without rice and beans, it adds up to a lot of food. I often feel full for 5 or 6 hours after a meal! The one ingredient that will cost you more money is the guacamole, which is excellent. I believe it costs $1.50 or so more, but it’s worth it if you like the stuff - it is not the processed stuff that I can’t stand but simply mashed avacados and herhaps some herbs and spices. I will usually leave it off because it makes the meal that much richer and heavier as well as being more expensive, but when I know I’m not going to be eating again for many hours, I sometimes go for it. You can also get extra meat for something similar ($1.50 or so), but honestly the amount of meat that they give you is plenty, especially combined with salsa, cheese, sour cream, lettuce, green peppers, onions, and the optional guacamole.

Good Meat! Chipotle offers free range pork from the Niman Ranch and Bell & Evans Chicken, which is a minimally processed chicken that is carried by Wholefoods. In New York and Chicago they have Meyer Natural Angus Beef, which is “Certified Humane Raised and Handled” without antibiotics or hormones. It may or may not be grass-fed, but is probably grain-finished. Anyway, my attitude is that what Chipotle is promoting is a more natural, less factory-farmed meat, which can only be a good thing. I think this is something to be commended and supported.

I can’t vouch for Chipotle’s labor practices, which was one criticism of Fast Food Nation, but at least their attitude towards food seems to be fairly progressive, so I would hope this is echoed at least a little in other spheres.

The other thing that got my attention when I first started going was that they have music in the background, good music. For example, I actually heard music from the Soundtrack to Until the End of the World. Other than this, the music played seems to be mostly latin, jazz, and world-type stuff.

It’s all about the beer! Yes, they actually serve beer here - it’s almost like being in a fast food restaurant in Europe. It’s not really about the beer for me, as I’m not a huge beer drinker and the vast majority of the meals I have here are lunch meals on work days, so I actually haven’t taken advantage of this yet, but it’s nice to know the option is there.

In addition to salt and pepper, they have original Tabasco pepper sauce and Tabasco green pepper sauce on the table that holds the silverware and napkins. Many people take these and just put them on the tables and leave them there. Perhaps I’m imagining it, but it sometimes seems as if these sauces have been made a bit milder than they normally are. I wonder if this is because they are afraid of someone loading their burrito up with so much hot sauce and then basically passing out or worse from the shock, and then suing them for damages! In any case, this would be one of my few criticisms of Chipotle, but it is a minor one, I think. I would also love to see some of the other Tabasco sauces. Probably most appropriate would be their new chipotle sauce, after all, but also their habanero and garlic sauces would be a great addition.

This is definitely the only fast food joint that I patronize right now and one that I recommend folks to try. Of course if you don’t like burritos, fajitas, or tacos, it might not be your ideal place. Then again, I suppose you could always get a burrito bol that just as some meat and rice, and green peppers and onions, and maybe some beans as well if you like them - they have both black beans and kidney.

Chipotle seems to have a bunch of locations spread out around the country, but not a large number. Luckily the DC area has quite a few. I think I’ve eaten at seven different locations here, including two within walking distance to our apartment in Adams Morgan. We will soon be moving to Vienna, Virginia though, and the closest one will be 2.5 miles away, so definitely less accessible! It is a chain, though, so the uniformity of the product is both a good and bad thing here. You will always get pretty much the same thing (as long as you order the specific combination of ingredients), and the surroundings are also very similar from store to store - a kind of industrial minimalism combined with Aztech-inspired works on the walls. There are some differences in the layout of the locations due to the space that’s being rented, but there isn’t a big individual character to any of the locations. Think of the differences between different Starbucks locations, although with Starbucks the size of the place can range from say 500 square feet, or even less in some locations to larger places that could span over 1000 square feet. Rather the main difference from Chipotle to Chipotle seems to actually be the customers who patronize a given store. For example, the store on Wisconsin Avenue near American University in DC is full of students (or at least people who look like students). Other branches have families with small children, older people, really the whole gamut.

I don’t make it a habit to eat out a lot, but it is really nice to be able to get a relatively inexpensive meal that you feel fairly good about health-wise. When we’re out of food in the house and don’t have time to make anything for lunch, this is generally the THE place I’ll go, unless of course it is completely out of the way from where I am or where I’m headed.

Whether one uses the more bohemian term “design” or the more bourgious term “marketing” you definitely do get a sense of a well-thought-out scheme by which Chipotle presents itself, and its products. Their website carries this a bit further by offering a very lively and fun Flash interface. I wouldn’t say this exactly matches the experience one has at the restaurants, but it is a very nice website nonetheless.

Hmmm, can you tell I like this place?