That's My Bix!

The housing market in Wisconsin is bonkers right now. No, seriously, it’s bonkers. We are seeing houses that sold in fall of last year going for 200% what they sold for just 9 months ago. We found a house that sold three months ago now back on the market, no changes, no improvements, asking 45% more — can you imagine making an investment with a 45% return that is legal?

And the worst part is that the asking price? In a regular real estate market, most of the time the asking price is the top price — meaning they’re starting out with a number that they would LOVE to see. It’s optimistic. However, right now? The asking price is the opening bid — and houses that go on the market on a Friday have an announcement that you need to get your best offer in because they’ll be making a decision on Tuesday and there are no second chances.

We’ve now been outbid on four different houses in rapid succession. Each one we offered asking price plus closing costs. Each one had several competing offers and ours was typically the lowest, often by more than 10%. Each time has been an excruciating mental exercise that falls flat on its face.

The chagrin is that we know this is a real estate bubble — we KNOW that it’s going to pop, so all of those houses are going to be rapidly deflating back to their more usual Green Bay pricing. A friend who works in the industry said that all of his clients corporations were freeing up cash reserves, preparing to make a killing when the bottom falls out in the third and fourth quarter. Another friend’s financial advisor told her to rent something for a few months, or even house sit, until the market flips, because it will, and it will be legendary.

All of these realities are intellectual — we know there’s nothing we can do, and we know that, as expensive as it is to live in Las Vegas, it is financially smarter than paying even ten grand more for a house than had we waited just a bit longer. And the numbers we’re crunching — it’s not just ten grand. More like a hundred grand.

As with all things, your bank account rarely shouts louder than your heart. Knowing we’ve been able to GTFO really since April when it became clear that I no longer physically had to be in Vegas? It hurts. It stings. It’s like a scorpion zap to the brain. And of course, with the pandemic, it’s not even like we can ENJOY what Vegas has to offer. There are no seafood towers at Bouchon. There are no fun ethnic markets to explore. There are no weird little desert towns to check out on the weekends. There is just the inside of this house and our tiny postage stamp back patio and bit of gravel that subs in for a yard.

And the worst part? Everyone wants us to move back to Wisconsin. “This is why you need to move back to Wisconsin,” they say, and point out whatever reason that Vegas is a human hellscape. Text messages. Marco Polos. Emails. Chats. Facebook messages. My mother’s annual phone call for my birthday started with “Happy birthday! When are you moving back?”

Friends, we know. WE KNOW.

And it feels like I’m constantly rebuffing friendly helpful suggestions, but the truth is, we’ve thought of them already. Yes, we’ve looked at houses thirty miles away — it’s the same problem. Yes, we’ve looked into buying a house “for now” and selling it later or becoming a landlord in the future — it’s still the same problem of overpriced housing on a smaller scale. Yes, we’ve looked into renting a house for now. Not only are there very few places available right now (because landlords are seeing the market on fire and are putting their investment properties ON THE MARKET) but what’s left are shithole houses that aren’t what we need or even can live with, and again it comes down to making a stupid spend with our cash — for instance, most don’t allow pets, or only allow cats or only two pets. Well, we have three pets, and for those who allow three pets, those landlords are currently asking a $2K “fee” for pets (no, not a deposit, a FEE to have your pet walk through the door, regardless of whether they shed or anything else) plus additional rent on top of that, none of which you ever get back. Yes, we’ve looked into buying vacation property and living with it for now (that was the house on the riverfront that we got outbid on) then using it as a second home later. Anything you can suggest, we have thought about it, done the mental labor and research, and it doesn’t work. IT DOESN’T WORK.

I know that these suggestions come from a good place of trying to help — please understand that I have explored EVERYTHING. You know me, right? You know that if there’s an obstacle, I’ve already come up with like seventeen potential strategies to get around that obstacle? Trust me when I say, we literally have explored every option. We’re smart people. We’re clever. We aren’t afraid to throw money at a problem if the probably is worth the cost of admission. And this problem is absolutely making us both physically sick. Making jokes about this move or prodding us to work faster is not funny. It’s honestly really stressful.

The expectation is that it’s not happening until the end of the year. So unless you know of a secret midcentury modern house that isn’t going on the MLS and a sweet original owner just wants it to go to a nice couple who won’t cut down the acres of hundred year old oaks and maples, please ask me about anything other than when we’re moving back. But when we know, you’ll be the first to know, I promise. I promise.

I started teaching a remote section last week — it’s kind of nice because my name was put on the section kind of late, for complicated academia reasons, and as such, the class is only at about 80%, which doesn’t seem like a huge underfill, but every class I’ve taught in the last three years has been full to the brim, with students begging to get in above enrollment caps. In fact, I typically have one unofficial auditor in the wings too.

I’ve been recording video lectures for them and putting together a lot of recordings for them to download and listen to while driving to work, exercising, folding laundry or whatever. I have no idea if it’s valuable to them, because they never talk to me or react other than doing their assignments. Hopefully that will change this week, as I recorded this week’s lecture and, while encouraging them to not do a research paper on a serious, scholarly subject but rather do something that is nerdy and fun to argue, I revealed something I’ve never shared publiclly.

Here’s the thing: English 102 research papers barely count for anything. It’s teaching you how to write a research paper, how to build and support an argument and how to do citations using academic genre and rhetoric conventions. It can be kind of dry stuff. But sure, you could write about something super impressive-sounding and try to cure the ills of the planet — like tackling income inequality or pollution, but hey, you think you can do that in under 5000 words? BE MY GUEST. I’d wager that you can’t, though, and that will weaken the paper. So, fine, maybe you narrow it down — maybe you look at the income disparity between the CEO of a specific hotel chain and its janitorial staff. Maybe you argue a way to reduce garbage on a college campus through installing hydration stations and eliminating plastic water bottles. Cool. Cool. Also, zzzzzzzzzz boring.

I mean, if you’re going to spend your entire rest of your college career writing that serious stuff, why not write something fun in this class that only matters because it’s teaching you the form? Why not argue that Ross and Rachael really weren’t on a break? Why not build the case that Tony Soprano didn’t die in the series finale? What about an entire paper about how Rose was underserved and misrepresented in the most recent Star Wars saga? Or prove that food that is cut in triangles tastes better than food cut into squares? Or that cats are the best pet? SOMETHING ELSE! SOMETHING FUN!

Also, even at 80% capacity, I don’t think I have it in me to slog through 20 papers about whether face masks are effective barriers against COVID-19.

So in the course of my adlib lecture, I talked about how my own major is English with an emphasis in American literature after 1950 and narratology, but I also really like real estate. And I like local history. And I also really like true crime as it relates to that local history. So if I were to spend four weeks researching that, it wouldn’t even be a chore. In fact, I revealed, I have done exactly that — and have spent hundreds of hours building a murder map of Green Bay, detailing the location, year and homicide details of every murder I can find, going back to the city’s first documented murder in 1871 (which incidentally happened on the very block where I used to live during my senior year in high school, when I met Esteban).

My murder map secret is out. Here you go. Enjoy.