Real Life Gaming

The Girl and I have been condo shopping for a few weeks now.

For those who haven't experienced this yet ... let me tell you - it's relatively nightmarish. At least in this day and age where you are about as likely to hear the word "housing bubble" as much as "Baghdad" on the news. Last night, a friend of ours compared it to trying to get a website built in 1999. Suddenly everyone's an expert and nobody is a professional.

It's a total game. You have to piece together clues just to figure out what you might want. None of the realty sites want to give you a clear and honest picture of what's going. The Girl and I regularly use up to three different websites just to determine is a place is viable to get viewing. And that's not like one for a map and another one for tax info or anything ... three sites just to get information about the property itself. Simply because no one site decided all the info was worth putting up there.

The banks will try to skin you alive. They'll try convince you that actually you could spend another fifty grand or so ... if you just would look at this balloon loan. The realtors seem to have made a business by doing as little work as possible. One of our Saturday viewings the realtor showed up late, half-awake, and couldn't even properly answer all of our questions. For ten minutes of his time, this guy could have a lead which might make him thousands. But apparently that's too much effort.

And he's not alone. We've had countless questions go unanswered or phone calls unreturned. After we told Lending Tree that we weren't using their offered realtor because they never called us back ... we got an automated form e-mail telling us they'd be happy to talk to us. So happy, they still can't pick up the phone.

It's frustrating just like the thief or wizard from Zork is frustrating. Silly little villain; but still you carry on.

We've got one place we rather like and are quite possibly going to move forward on, provided I don't lose all my life in a boss battle with the loan agent I'm about to call.

All of this real life gaming has left precious little time for normal gaming. Thomas and I finally had our STOB match. While he graciously called the game close ... I would say he rather trounced me at 7-1. I got an early frag with the magmaul but I couldn't keep control of the rather precious health powerup in the middle, and it eventually got brutal. Still, it was a ton of fun and I need to get more time in the week for Metriod battles. The Girl and I were in the middle of Lawrence of Arabia (right around the part where he is riding in the desert I think) ... otherwise I would have tried my luck again.

So anyway, if I'm not around so much this week ... I'm probably doing battle with escrow.




tagged: realty, gaming