It's July 4th, and you are not free
on "freedom from / freedom for" and the boundaries around the home search process
It’s not that hard to buy a house. It’s much harder, however, to buy the right house at the right time in the right place for the right reasons. Ohhh yeah, and at the right price. Decision-making, then, is at the core of what makes the real estate process so complex and difficult. Saying “yes” to the right house (and not the wrong one) and “no” to the wrong house (and not the right one): it’s harder than it looks!
Wisdom, then, is what is needed — not merely tips and tricks to solve what is, fundamentally, a pretty straightforward transaction. And wisdom, rather than technical advice, is the basis for this newsletter and my whole outlook in this field as a Realtor. As I’ve said time and time again, my goal is to be a worthy guide in your process, not just a clerk in your transaction.
It’s then with some irony that I’m choosing today — July 4th, American Independence Day — to introduce a series I’m titling “All the decisions you cannot make.” In other words, all the ways you do not have free will in the home buying process. You certainly have a will, no doubt! You must make choices, and your choices certainly matter! But your capacity to freely choose what you want as a home shopper is severely curtailed by factors out of your control. Even the factors within your control are mightily stacked against you.
Why start with such a contentious topic, Wes?! Well, in short, because of this: believing that you do have the power and means to make the perfect decision in finding a home is ultimately a burden. Thinking that you can get this process perfectly right is a recipe for shame, frustration, discouragement, and even depression. There are forces beyond your control at work in this process that are waaaaay too powerful to be overcome by willpower and pluck. So when things go wrong (and they will), if you think you have a free will to get it right, then you’ll blame yourself for your failure. When in reality, those other forces at work may just be more powerful than you. That’s not your fault! Instead, I’ve found it helpful to reject any sense of a “free will” in this process and instead acknowledge our limits.
Consider the Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
In acknowledging and understanding our limits, there is freedom! It’s an ironic and paradoxical stance to take, I suppose, but one that I’ve found healthier in the long run.
I cannot think of a spicier fight across the ages of philosophy and theology than whether or not humans have “free will.” I’m mostly sidestepping that brawl in favor of simply articulating a few lessons I’ve learned that will hopefully help a discouraged or perplexed home buyer navigate their feelings and experiences. But of all the discussions offered from philosophy, I do find the “freedom from / freedom for” distinction hugely helpful.
Freedom from / freedom for
I just finished a rewatch of Andor, the Disney+ Star Wars show. It features one of the all-time-great prison-break storylines, capped off with an all-time speech delivered by the immortal Andy Serkis. Fantastic show, strong recommend!1
But the conundrum facing every prison-break plot is stated no more clearly than Bloat, the puffer fish from Finding Nemo:
“Now what?” What ought one do after achieving freedom from bondage? What are we free for?
“Freedom from” is essentially the removal of encumbrances or oppressions that hamper flourishing. It is, for the most part, what we mean when we talk about freedom and liberation. July 4th is a celebration of “freedom from.” It is reflective: looking at given realities of bondage or imprisonment and struggling for their removal. “Freedom for,” on the other hand, is prescriptive: articulating a future trajectory of action or becoming that may not yet exist. As you can probably guess, it’s much easier to agree on questions of “freedom from” than “freedom for.”
A cornerstone of the American Dream as typically articulated is to have one’s own home. Is the dream of owning your own home a matter of “freedom from” or “freedom for?” Does home ownership liberate you from oppression or control? Certainly! I’ve written about it, read here! Or is home ownership mostly a vision of a life well lived: a method of casting one’s decisions into the future formally, structuring and platforming a life to be aimed in a specific orientation?
It’s both. That’s why the idea of buying a home remains so intractably attractive even despite how difficult it’s become. Very few life decisions offer as much power in both “freedom from” and “freedom for” terms.
Rather than arbitrating or even dictating specific actions that homes are by design (or formally, in their physical structure) destined to produce or direct, think of a home as a canvas on which you paint your vision of “freedom for.” The affordances of one or another home may lean more towards conviviality or isolation, sure, but never purely or immutably. You, the inhabitant, have the power to (the “freedom” to!) shape and use your habitat, your niche, your home, to produce the kind of flourishing you desire.
As a Realtor, I mostly work with the “freedom from / freedom for” question in the home-buying process. I don’t work quite so much with folks on the home-occupying process (interior design, feng shui, the Gentle Art of Death-Cleaning, etc.). So over the next few weeks, I’m going to walk through how I see these questions of decision making and (un)free will for home buyers, specifically in these contexts:
Institutional and government interests (i.e. lenders, government incentives, corporations infiltrating the market and buying up homes to drive down supply and inflate demand)
Work, wages, and finances (wage labor vs reproductive labor, the quest for free time vs being house poor)
Architecture, ability and disability (how the shape of our environment makes a good life easier or harder)
Cognitive biases (why making wise decisions in snap scenarios is so difficult, strategies to beat our monkey brain)
Emotional health (the discouragement, frustration, anger, malaise of finding a home)
Responsibility to others (making a decision on one’s own terms vs. the terms of someone whom we care for)
Aesthetic taste (overcoming our disciplined appetites when they trap us)
Moral, spiritual, and religious commitments (coherence with our larger life commitments around eudaemonia, faith, ethics, etc.)
Again, our goal is to
This may sound stiff and stuffy when laid out in this manner, but fret not! I’ll try to ham it up with pop culture, memes, etc. My goal is to dive straight into the toughest contexts of frustration and pain in the home buying process and give you tools to navigate these experiences before they trap you. The gravity of these issues demands a certain minimum level of seriousness on my part as a writer, so bear with me. I’ll try to at least produce podcast episodes weekly as well, so you can listen if you’d rather not read.
Hope this helps! Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks!
What Wes is into
Andor, the TV show. Star Wars for adults. Star Wars without the wizards and deus-ex-machina Force. This show is a minor miracle. I’m endlessly fascinated by the question of how those without power beat those with power,2 and Andor is an extraordinary exploration of this question. Andor’s answer to “freedom for” is fantastic. [SPOILER] In a show packed with a seemingly endless bounty of incredible lines, my favorite comes in the final episode, spoken by a dead mother to her living adopted son from beyond the grave:
“Tell him, none of this is his fault. It was already burning, He's just the first spark of the fire. Tell him, he knows everything he needs to know, and feels everything he needs to feel. And when the day comes, and those two pull together, he will be an unstoppable force for good. Tell him... I love him more than anything he could ever do wrong." -- Maarva
Linen and ramie clothing. In the heat and humidity, I feel sticky most of the time. In the last few years, I’ve adopted the strategy of buying hot weather protection in the same way I shop for cold weather protection. I wear a down coat to shield me from the winter chill -- what’s the equivalent for the summer heat? What materials and garments can passively protect me from the hotter and hotter seasons we’re going to experience from now on? Linen! Ramie! Lightweight, high breathability clothing! Worth the investment -- and it is an investment.
New Kensington Community Development Corporation, NKCDC. A local non-profit working to stabilize and fertilize the neighborhood of Kensington. I’ve grown increasingly discouraged at the efficacy of the local government’s involvement in Kenzo, and instead I’m more and more encouraged by what I see happening with organizations like NKCDC. Long-term real estate development centering the needs of long-term community members. Affordable housing built at scale. Grant funding applied in the context of an overarching strategic plan. Multiple on-ramps for community members of different backgrounds, abilities, and skills. Of course it’s not perfect! Of course there’s plenty of drama and struggle! But the alternative -- the government alone, or for-profit corporations instead of non-profits -- is unthinkable. I’m on the board of directors! Check NKCDC out, check out the Kensington Plan process, donate, volunteer, pray, do whatever you can to get involved. Organizations like this give me courage even when the rest of politics gives me despair.
Peace,
Wes
If I’m being honest, I don’t understand why Disney allowed this show to be made...? It’s about how a rebellion against an empire might organically grow and organize. Not like Disney has any imperial tendencies or structures, no worries!
or those systems (not just people!) with power