Hovel Hunters International, Ep. 9. A Crummy Little Trailer in Grand Bend.

Some crummy little trailer.

I got a tip about a trailer for sale at $15,000.00. It's probably not worth that much according to the info. Assuming I could sweet-talk my way into a private debt, rather than bank debt, I still don't want to pay too much. I still don't want to take advantage of some little old man of 98 years, either. Yet old George was king of the low-ball offer in his day, a real horse-trader who bought and sold quite a few crummy little houses in the area, including Kettle Point, and now he’s just outside of Northville. All of them sat on leased land.

I lived up there in 1997-98, and it is damned dark and cold in winter. The people that owned the place were truckers. When they went away for ten days or two weeks at a time, I was completely on my own. My dad was still alive, and I ended up going to Sarnia every two or three days to see him…I had a few friends in town. Stuff like that.

From where I’m sitting, this trailer is forty miles up the lake. The easiest way to get there is two-lane blacktop. To take the 402 might seem faster, until you turn off and go through places like Forest or Parkhill, or whatever. In winter, the place is a ghost town with maybe eight hundred residents, in summer it's a party-town with ten, or maybe twenty thousand on holiday weekends. You would need a very good, very economical car to go back and forth, as I know absolutely no one up there. I don't hunt or fish, I don't own a boat and I don't have a snowmobile. I don’t X-country ski or anything like that.

It's a given that the ODSP is always going to freak out, no matter what you do and that is a consideration.

Where did you get the down payment? That would be their first question. But, theoretically, on a private sale, you could give sixty days’ notice on the apartment, and then you have the next two, three ODSP payments that you could use for a down payment, also whatever fees apply to the actual park when you move in on day one. They would want post-dated cheques or more likely automatic bank payments. You also have to live in the meantime, and to make a down payment of much over $1,000.00 seems pretty unlikely.

It’s nice country up there. There are the dunes, Carolinian forest, and the Ausable River cuts through the backbone of the county in the area of Arkona and Thedford. There are parks, trails, and campgrounds and conservation areas. There are public beaches, golf courses and other amusements. There must be some literary group or other culture up there.

What I remember about Grand Bend is that the grocers are very suspicious. They'll take a five dollar bill into the back room and scan it with microscopes to make sure it's real. When you get home and open up that ground beef, the centre part is all grey inside, as it was getting old and they re-packaged it. Who's the fucking fraud now, asshole...???

The Foodland in Forest is a much nicer store, albeit a long drive.

Looking at the pictures, there’s quite the variety from one lot to the next in some of these little parks.

The other thing is my own lifestyle—there are three food banks in Sarnia. I use the Shared Services Centre downtown for photocopying. There must be similar things up there somewhere, but it’s going to be a long drive because the little park in question is out in the boonies. My mother, step-dad, brother, nephews, sister, aunts and uncles and cousins either live in Sarnia or they live at the other end of the country. I don’t see all that much of them, but at least they are here.

According to my information, the monthly costs including lot fees, heat, power, phone, internet, and insurance, would run about six or seven hundred a month. There’s not much slack there when you consider an ODSP pension of about eleven hundred a month. It’s been sheer hell trying to keep the Trillium Benefit coming in. If you're late with the tax return, the HST rebate shuts down as well...

And you still have to buy the place, somehow. No one is going to sell you a trailer for fifty or a hundred bucks a month. Not when all they have to do is wait, knowing that sooner or later, someone with an actual job will come along, make an offer, and then the thing is sold. They have their money and they don’t have to worry anymore.

Anyways, I’ll keep thinking, keep looking and who knows: something might turn up.

Thank you for reading.

Hovel Hunters International, Ep. 8. The Big Pipe-Dream.

Rustic. A fixer-upper.

Here at Hovel Hunters International, spring is in the air and we’ve been looking at that beachfront, retirement lifestyle.

Our first photo is of something quite rustic, but the strange thing is that we thought of quite a few things one could do to it to make it more attractive and yes, livable. That might include a proper porch and deck for the door at the side. It might include a really good-sized plastic prefab shed at the back, assuming we could still get our sailboat out of there, which is visible in the picture. These lots are pretty narrow, and you probably can’t get it out using the other side, as there might be a fence with only two or three feet of clearance. We could run a little flower bed up along the left side of the house, and contain the driveway within clearly-defined limits. We could put in some nice bay windows and a real small metal stove or fireplace. We could paint it a different colour or change the style of siding if one had the time, the money, a few tools and some minor skills. A big Florida room on the one side would really open it up, and this one doesn’t look too mobile anyways, although technically, it could still be done. But you’d be opening up a big hole in the side to do that. (That only makes sense if you’re going to make the whole thing look pretty.)

Throw some trusses up there and make it look like a real roof. This one at least has some length to it and therefore some interior space, which is important on a long winter’s day.

Sure, it’s a big pipe-dream, but if you don’t dream, what the hell.

I've actually been in this one, which was for sale a few years ago for $27,000.00 as I recall. It was quite nice inside with the usual park model layout, i.e. long and skinny. This was actually wider, as compared to some others and much more attractive. Walk in the front door, to the right is the living room and kitchenette. To the left is a hallway leading to the bathroom and two bedrooms, one of which is quite small.

At the time, I went to the bank and spoke to a very nice lady. She told me I could get (even on ODSP, the Ontario Disability Support Program pension), a mortgage of $30,000.00 as long as I put $15,000.00 down. I could qualify for a line of credit to the tune of $12,000.00 or boost my credit limit on the credit card to a whopping $7,500.00. That was about the time when I began to doubt their collective and corporate sanity, (what, are you, nuts?)  but that government cheque rolling in each and every month apparently counts for something. Reliability, perhaps, hopefully within reason…but what do I know, I’m not a banker.

You can't get a mortgage on a trailer because it's portable. There is no title and deed to the land, and lot fees can be stiff at an estimated $400.00 a month, plus utilities. A few years ago, this one was going for $34,000.00 or thereabouts. The thing is, you're fifty metres from the beach and that counts for something.

Ultimately, you’re out of an apartment in mid-town, and into a trailer or park model near the beach. You own the trailer, presumably, (or you are making payments of some kind.) You sit on leased land, and there is always some possibility of the place being closed, shut down and then you got to move or you lose your big ‘investment’.

As you can see, this one is for sale. It's also barely thirty feet long at a quick glance.

Again, only fifty metres to the beach.

The initial impression is perhaps a bit nicer than the first one, but this one is just way too small.

Many park models have a built-beside room, and many have some kind of a deck or a shed.

My buddy Rick says trailers are a real tornado magnet, when of course what we’re really looking for is a different kind of magnet—you know, a pussy magnet.

Snork.

Thank you for reading.

Hovel Hunters International, Ep. 7. Possible Versus Plausible.

So, are we still looking for a house? That is a very good question, but on some level the answer is still probably yes.

I’m also still looking for a cabin in the woods, a cave up in the hills, a spider-hole in the ground, a camper, an RV, a really good tent, backpack and walking shoes; or even just a yurt out on the steppes somewhere.

(He’s looking for a good horse, ladies and gentlemen. That’s what I think. – ed.)

Unfortunately, it has to be in the Province of Ontario or the pension suddenly becomes null and void. Why that should be, I don’t know and there is no one that can properly explain it—not even anyone with the Province of Ontario.

Since I know just how hard it was to buy and maintain a $50,000.00 house on an ODSP benefit of $930.00 a month, (at least in this town), then I guess I got a rough idea of how hard it would be to buy and maintain an $80,000.00 house on a pension of $1,128.00 per month, with a bit more in book sales and part-time work. Also bearing in mind just how fucking hard it is to get Trillium Benefits and sometimes the HST rebate out of the good, kind, decent God-fearing Christian-Canadian volk over at the Canada Revenue Agency.

The first property is on the south end of East St., and it is apparently listed at $69,000.00. You can see that it is a storey and half frame house of wartime vintage. They’ve put on an addition and bumped up the roofline in an attempt to gain some space. The door on the front of the one-car garage is a patio-type slider. What that means is anyone’s guess without taking a walk-through. I don’t plan on doing that anytime soon. A house would have to really grab me—not even so much curb appeal, as in the structural or design sense. This one ain’t too good in that regard.

But buying someone else’s real bad reno job isn’t on the cards at this point. That's because I wouldn't have the finances to do anything about it. That includes emergency repairs, and all of that sort of thing.

The second property isn’t even listed. Supposedly, this one’s going for $80,000.00 The tip is that it’s for sale by owner. Again, not much curb appeal here, but in this price range that’s asking for a lot. The lot appears to be about thirty-five feet wide. It’s probably a hundred feet deep or so. The house is set well back from the sidewalk, which is better than being right on the street. There is a one-car garage. How much house does a single male actually need? Not much, arguably, but I’m the one being asked to sign on the dotted line and this one doesn’t grab me enough to ever want to take a walk-through.

The simple answer is that I understand the benefits of home ownership. I recognize the wonderful results of the power of positive thinking and neural linguistic programming. 

It's a little more cheerful when the sun is out.

Unfortunately, Tony Robbins isn’t the one paying the bills around here.

I am, and that makes a big difference in what is possible—or even plausible. I also understand the value of location, location, location. South East Street isn't quite so desirable as Nelson St., no matter the price or what the building actually looks like.

Thank you for reading.