The first time we visited the house, we pulled up to find our real estate agent attempting to jimmy the lock on the front door with a $2 hammer and a bent screw driver.  He had already mangled the lock so badly that the key would no longer fit, so the hammer and screwdriver were his best hope for letting us see the inside of the house.

“HUD changed the fucking lock.”

His sleeves were rolled to his elbows, and he looked like an eager salesman that had followed a client into the sauna.  His hammering and twisting at the door rang loud through the neighborhood, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it should concern me that no one seemed to notice or care that this man was breaking into a house.  Asa played in the weeds and ran circles around the overgrown tree in the front yard while we sized up our realtor and the situation.

We met the sweaty realtor on one of our weekly expeditions to South Central.  When we first started entering the lottery for the Teacher Next Door program, we didn’t know better, and we would visit every listed property, only entering the lottery for the houses that we liked.  The realtor taught us that this was a losing strategy.  “Enter for every house listed.  This is a game where you have got to play the odds.”  The streets then, like now, were full of ‘For Sale’ signs.  He was showing an adjacent property to a different couple when he noticed us.  As soon as he wrapped up matters with his other clients he beelined to introduce himself. “So how did you find out about this listing?” he pointedly asked.  A broad grin broke across his face when we told him that Susan was a teacher.  “Helping teachers is my specialty!”  We talked a bit and gave him our contact information. Then we didn’t hear from him for three months.  I assumed he wasn’t organized, and had forgotten us.  When he finally called back it was to tell us that he had won us the lottery.

The realtor was a useful scoundrel.  At the very least, this seems to mean that he was entering Susan’s name into the lottery at the same time we were, which would violate the rules of the program.  However, after watching this guy break into the house, I could imagine him entering the lottery fifteen times, using every possible spelling variation for Susan’s name-Susan Ferguson, Sue Ferguson, Sewzan Furguson, Sozen Forguzen.  Who knows?  The man played by a different set of rules, and he knew how to work the system, which was great when he was on our side.  Later, when he would try to railroad us into a 14% ARM with every imaginable prepayment penalty and pitfall, we would realize that this man was a predator.  “One-stop shopping!  I earned you the right to buy this house and now I will lend you the money to close the deal.  These government programs create hurdles that traditional banks aren’t willing to leap.  I’m the only one that can guarantee that you get into this house.”  He was mostly right.  When we started looking for loan alternatives, most lenders were not willing to do the extra work necessary to comply with HUD’s program.  I finally told the grifter that we would sooner pass on the house before I would sign up for his 14% ARM.  We eventually found an honest lender willing to stretch a bit to earn our business, but I have no doubt, as I survey the swaths of foreclosures in our neighborhood, that the dream homes of many poor families had been financed under usurious credit terms set up by scoundrels like our realtor.

*BAM!* *Clank*

With a final blow of the hammer, the lock finally spilled its guts onto the front porch.  “See?  You’re in good hands with me!  I’m going to take care of you.”  The jimmied security door swung open, and we walked inside.

The first thing I noticed, hanging from the ceiling, was a giant blistery titty swell haloed by a ring of black velour, water damage from a leaky roof.  Mold, my building systems professor had told me, would be my generation’s asbestos.

“God damn,” groaned the realtor, watching me eye the swell.  “It looks like the house needs a new roof.”

Water damage was just one of many problems.  The carpet had been pulled up, exposing a warped and uneven patchwork of cupped boards, plywood repairs, bondo scabs, and a maze of prickly staples and bent finish nails.  Both the front and back doors were gone, with only breezy security doors to keep out people and feral cats.  The master bedroom door was gone, though its bent hinges still clung to their frame.  The rest of the doors were missing knobs and splintered around the latches.  The mangled and missing doors would remain a mystery until a neighbor told us how the police had raided the house, kicking in the doors and herding the occupants out to the curb.  Many of the lights didn’t work.  We flipped one switch, and two of the working lights shorted out, leaving the acrid smell of electric burning.  There was no water heater.  The kitchen walls next to the abscess were a stove might go were camouflaged orange with layers of splattered cooking oil.  Cabinet drawers were missing.  The cupboards were full of rodent droppings.

The toilet worked perfectly!

The realtor had never been to the house, so it was a tour of the obvious.  “Here are the washer and dryer hookups.  See?  The water runs.  Here is the master bedroom, and here is your bedroom little man.”

“What about the mold?” I asked.

“That is nothing that can’t be cleaned up with a little Clorox and white paint.”  He had just confessed to hiding mold problems from other clients.  The real mold wasn’t on the surface, where we could see it.  It was in the rafters, walls and insulation, emitting new spores with every rain, spores that would take root in our lungs and enter our blood stream.

The back yard was more weeds and a matrix of cracked concrete, dirt and asphalt.  No fence or gate blocked entry to the yard, so it was littered with broken glass and condom wrappers.

At this point the realtor, tired of pretending that he knew anything about the house, said, “I’m going to the dollar store to pick up a new lock.  You three can stay here and check out the property, and I’ll be right back.”  He left us in the house.

“The mold is a big problem, and the roof needs to be replaced,” I said to Susan.

“The floors are dangerous.  Did you see all of the nails?”

“Yeah, and the place stinks like mice.”

“Can we do it?”

Asa was exploring the tall weeds in the back yard, already dry and gone to seed.

“We can do a lot of it.  We will have to hire some help.  It is going to be a lot of work.”

“So you think we can do it?”

“I think we can.”

“I do too.”