A house finding tip

Earlier this week, I had to fly to Houston for work. (I wasn't particularly impressed by the city, although I will admit I didn't get the chance to do a thorough evaluation.) All the same, when I found to my dismay that my return flight was delayed due to thunderstorms, my heart sank like a pebble in water. However, far be it from me to get thwarted by life's petty ways. With a mad dash to the opposite end of the terminal, along with an element of hair-pulling (my own) and cajoling (the ground staff), I managed to wrangle myself a seat on an earlier plane. So I was in a pretty self-satisfied mood when I boarded this flight, which probably was what caused me to lean over and greet the passenger next to me.

Usually, I just leave co-passengers on their own, although I'm bursting to have someone to yak with, just because I assume they're bursting for quite the opposite. But this time, I was filled with an air of such jubilance and general joie de vivre, and that's not the moment for strangers to remain strangers. So I leaned over and said "hello!". Not a tentative hello. The kind of hello that precipitates further conversation.

Turned out the chap was in the real estate field. So immediately I told him about wanting to buy an apartment next year. "Will the market correct itself?!" I asked. I wasn't asking for honesty. I just wanted to hear that I'd be able to afford something in the city. But he told me about Williamsburg, and described the area, and somehow, during the course of the conversation, convinced me that that's where we should be looking to buy.

Why listen to a stranger? Perhaps because he was in the real estate business? Perhaps I trusted him implicitly precisely because, as a stranger, he had nothing invested in our future? In either case, the thought of Williamsburg started playing on my mind. So I looked it up.

And here's a tip for anyone looking to buy an apartment in this area. Start looking in Manhattan first. Look diligently and tenaciously enough, for long enough, to get sufficiently disillusioned. Then look wherever else you want - and suddenly, the world seems so much a more welcoming and luxuriant place. Seriously.