Chained and liberated

 Lutherans, it seems to me, ought to feel most at home with technology. Martin Luther explained the paradoxical "Freedom of a Christian" thusly: "I am a perfectly free lord of all, servant to none," he said, and also "a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all."

With each new technology, those behind it optimistically predict our liberty increasing by leaps and bounds. An unintentionally funny 1978 print ad for email showed bright lines shooting all around an office and a startled executive, like the little gold tracks that follow Tinker Bell in the movie Peter Pan. By the time a plurality of people started having desktop computers, futurists were enthusiastically promoting a "paperless office."

We might use a lot less paper -- my last two jobs have allowed me to chart interactions with residents and patients on the computer -- but we're far from paperless. And email, so quickly hailed as a time saver, did not take long to turn into a burden. Articles promote tips and tricks to help harried individuals thin out their email inboxes. Some email services let you select a whole page's worth and delete them at one shot, if you wish to be so cavalier.

Likewise, voice mails. It used to be they were a convenient alternative to calling someone over and over and just missing them. Now we play phone tag, and many people (I'm among them) infinitely prefer to receive a text message. It's like having my own personal secretary. The information is all right there, and I can deal with it in a reasonably prompt fashion. When the phone rings, by contrast, I have to drop what I'm doing and answer it. Sometimes the caller wants information I can't give them at the moment because it's stored on the phone I am on.

So - technology sometimes means we are "subject to all."

On the other hand! Technology is helping us immeasurably in the selling of one house and buying of another. Our Realtor in North Carolina sends an email via Docusign, and we electronically sign everything and send the papers back. Ditto the papers on the house we are buying in Virginia. It's not the same service, it's a similar one, but I'm not sure I will actually lay eyes on the Realtor until we close. Maybe not even then. 

Just now, I used an app on my phone to photograph documents and send them to the administrators of my church-based retirement account, from which we are drawing the money for the up-front costs of buying the house. In just a few seconds, I got a check mark on my screen. I didn't even have to mail the documents to Minnesota, wait for them to arrive, and wait some more for someone to process them.

Without the technology, selling our house would mean multiple eight-hour round trips between Newport News, Va., and Greensboro, NC. That's where the "perfectly free" part comes in. For all its leg irons, technology sometimes proves quite convenient. 

Just don't get me started on faxes.

Buying and Selling

 I don't know what makes a buyers' market vs. a sellers' market. I imagine it might have something to do with consumer confidence, but that's only a guess. What I do know, though, is that we are in the midst of a crazy sellers' market.

In the summer of 2019, the hubs and I decided to sell our home of six years to move closer to work. We had no idea, of course, that COVID would eat my job and that we would end up moving to another state, but I digress. Our next-door neighbor was a Realtor, and so with his help we put our house on the market. That was in mid-August. After what felt like dozens of showings, and the usual weird complaints ("too many doors"), the house finally sold, for a good six thousand dollars less than we were asking. We didn't lose money on the deal, but when the dust settled I think we made something like $36.

So here we are in March 2021. When we moved to Virginia, the hubs stayed behind, packing up the rest of the house and bringing the belongings up in shifts. Once he moved out for good at the end of last month, the same Realtor put our house on the market. It will go fast, he assured us. There is hardly any inventory out there. 

We found the same situation, incidentally, in looking for a house to buy here while we waited out the six-month lease on our apartment. I saw a sign in a yard that said, "Just listed," so I called the agent. "It's under contract," she said. The day it listed, someone made an offer and the seller accepted. We quickly learned not to get excited if Zillow showed a house that had been listed for more than a week. Invariably, our Realtor would learn that it was already under contract.

Back in North Carolina, our Realtor flipped the metaphorical switch and our house went live around noon on Tuesday. By the next morning, there would be nine showings scheduled. Turns out we would not need them. We had priced the house for $7,000 above what we paid for it, on the Realtor's advice, knowing that it was a sellers' market.

Is it ever.

Within 26 hours, we had three offers. The one we accepted was for nine thousand dollars above our asking price, which I had thought optimistic.

Meanwhile, after looking at seemingly every house for sale in our price range in the area, we found a house that we loved. Built in 1930, it is sturdy and functional, solidly built, with a fenced back yard. We sat on pins and needles while the seller pondered our offer, which was a hair under list price. 

This morning, word came that the seller has accepted. Break out the boxes.

Many of the houses we looked at were perfectly acceptable and perfectly bland. We rejected one because when we drove through the neighborhood on a recon, the Levittown-ness of it gave us both the willies. Other houses looked bigger in the pictures. I still can't forget the charming doll house that would be ideal for the person with no possessions. Seriously! It was beautifully staged - and there was no room for anything except the furniture. Another house, built in 1912, was too cramped-feeling, but I admit the claw-foot bathtub almost sealed the deal. A third house would have been perfect in another neighborhood, one where there wasn't a vacant lot across the street. As a capper, when we stepped back out onto the porch, a resident of the neighborhood drove by, his car window down, arguing fiercely with himself. 

I don't know why the seller of the house we chose is selling. I do know that in addition to lots of wood flooring (we have dogs), a gorgeous laundry room/sunroom, and a gas stove, the house has that indefinable character. It has individuality. It was the first one we walked into in which we felt at home. I could imagine C.S. Lewis strolling down the stairs, pipe in hand, to lean against the fireplace mantel.

So it's been a busy week here. It took a whole 26 hours to sell our North Carolina house. On the other hand, we got lucky in being able to buy the house we wanted. Here's hoping that we won't have to break out the moving boxes again for a long time.

Falling for Free

It seemed too good to be true when I saw it on Facebook yesterday. A post, apparently from Pepsi-Cola, saying that in celebration of its 100th anniversary, it would give a mini cooler, a gift card, and Pepsi products to anyone who shared and commented on this post. It was the quality of the cooler that made me skeptical. It wasn't one of those little vinyl coolers but a metal mini-refrigerator, freestanding, quite nice. I didn't give it much thought as I scrolled on by. Saw two more this morning. One purported to be from Hyundai, saying that one person, of all the people who shared and commented on its post, would win a new car. That seemed more realistic. One chance to win. It still seemed unlikely. Not five minutes later, a similar post from Little Caesar's, promising free pizza to everyone who shared and commented. It seems that this is the latest marketing technique. No one will win anything by sharing these posts except the companies, who will get lots of free advertising. Why are we so quick to accept the idea of something for nothing? Not much these days is truly free. Occasionally, a retailer will offer a buy one, get one free deal, but it seldom nets more than a frozen dinner or a canister of cooking spray. Yet when we come across such offers online, we tend to fall for them much more readily. In the early days of Facebook, a persistent post said that Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, would give money to anyone who shared the post. What possible motivation could he have for doing that? Microsoft was already a behemoth, dominating the computer industry. Maybe it's because so little is truly free. The scarcity is what tempts us. The worst that is likely to happen in sharing a Facebook post is that the organization gets advertising spread all over Facebook. But too often the offer of something for nothing is a scam. We're told something is free, then asked to pay shipping and handling fees. If it escalates, a scammer is draining our bank accounts, often from the other side of the world. I suspect that I will see more similar posts before this particular fad dies down. It's a little disappointing to see how many people appear to be falling for it. Incidentally, Pepsi is a lot more than 100 years old, having made its debut in 1893 as Brad's Drink, invented by Caleb Bradham, a druggist in Wilmington, North Carolina.