Buying Houses and Choosing Husbands

The 200 Square offices are next to an accounting firm.  There’s a jovial interaction between our teams – we try to convert them to Xero (failing) and they pop in to talk weather and the weekend (they’re accountants, at least its not taxes).

The other day one of the neighbours popped in to chat with our own indomitable Karen about house buying.  We won't mentioned Linda’s name to protect the guilty, but the two of them riffed on how buying a house is actually like choosing a husband.

You see it comes down to whether you want to marry the bad boy that provides excitement and interest, but doesn’t have a proper job or the traditional, reliable bloke with the good job and solid prospects. Do you buy the architecturally interesting, unusual house or stick with the run-of-the mill traditional home? The former you may love living in but run the risk of lower than average capital gain and bigger challenges when selling, or the later, which is boringly similar to everyone else’s home but you know will provide reliably average returns.

Of course you could buy and change. 

Taking on the task of training the husband into the image you really want is fraught with risk – just like buying a house and remodelling it.  The outcome may not be what you thought it would be and you might not actually survive the process.

In this modern world the obvious question was were we talking about the first husband (home) or the second?  There is always the option to upgrade it seems.

The ladies provided personal opinions. Some of which seemed a little out of kilter, one being married to an accountant the other an engineer – a couple of bad boys right there.

I bravely rose to the occasion on behalf of the masculine gender by suggesting it is not at all like buying a house – because it is not a one sided transaction.  The prospective husband has some choice in the matter. 

Wrong move.

For the next 10 minutes I received an “education” on how the process actually works and why men only think they have a choice.

After that I was not brave enough to pipe up with the Auckland example and ask what they would do in a man drought…

Are you in the market for a ‘bad boy’ home or a more traditional and reliable abode?  Are you chasing down a Colin Farrell or ready to get comfortable with that Tom Hanks?