The economic downturn is officially over. You know how I know? The vacant house on our street is vacant no more.
The house I'm talking about hasn't been occupied for a long time. In fact, it's been empty since well before the Great Recession. I'm guessing it was 2006 when the owners moved out. It seemed odd at the time since home prices were still rising. I don't even think I knew what a "foreclosure" was back then.
In any event, we had an empty house on the street. I became just a little bit obsessed with it. You see, I'm the annoying guy in the neighborhood who notices when you've got a crooked shutter, your foundation planting is infested with weeds, or your front light is burned out. Just do me a favor and don't point out that I've currently got a dead tree in my front yard -- I know that already.
Soon enough, the vacant house became quite the attraction for me. At one point, it had window screens lying on the front lawn, Virginia creeper climbing up the garage door, and its house number hanging at a 45-degree angle. During a late night of neighborhood carousing, we also found out that the basement door was open. Of course, we had to take a tour. We traipsed through the house, admiring the stained carpets and mildew. We excitedly decided that we needed to convince the HOA to buy it and turn it into a neighborhood clubhouse. But, like many of our bright (read, drunken) ideas, that one never took shape.
So, there the house sat, empty and alone. A couple more years went by since our impromptu tour. I never went back inside. But, the house seemed to come up in conversation around the dinner table every few months. It gave me something to pick at and I always seem to need to have that.
Then, all of a sudden, there was activity this week. First, there were cars in the driveway on Monday when I came home from work. On Tuesday, there was a work truck with some sort of hose contraption affixed to it sucking something out of the house (I don't want to know what it was). On Wednesday morning, there were all sorts of lights on when I ran past it at 5:30AM. And, last night, there it was -- a moving truck. Our neighborhood was finally back to being fully occupied.
I guess it's nice to finally be rid of our vacant house. But, I have to admit that part of me is going to miss it.