Sorry, but that quote has been on my mind a lot lately.

You see, I’ve been approved for a mortgage for a ridiculous amount of money and technically I now own a flat.

I can’t move in yet, because the bathroom in the primary bathroom is a concrete box with exposed pipes, and there is no kitchen, only a natural gas pipe sticking out of a hole in the wall with yet another pipe and hole in the floor where the sink is supposed to go.

I don’t know when I can move in, because putting in a kitchen and bathroom is going to be both expensive and time-consuming.

I have an “interior designer”, who is a friend of my cousin, and he’s going to draw up some plans and tell me how much everything is going to cost and then I will probably QQ a lot.

But I’m not QQing over the fact that I technically own a flat now, which my animal brain is interpreting as being that much closer to having my own home, and therefore security.

In a way, I understand the twisty logic behind “I do not own my home; I have a mortgage”, because yes, if I am not able to make my mortgage payments, then I lose my home.
The flat is part of a condominium, which means hefty built in fees every month, and I will also be in trouble if I can’t make the payments.
Note here: almost all property in cities in Taiwan are part of a condominium setup. It’s just how things are here.
Then there’s property taxes and utilities and all that before we even talk about the day to day survival stuff like food, water, and air conditioning.
And if the housing market bubble collapses, I might be upside-down on my mortgage, which would really suck in terms of choices available.

Yes, all that is true.
But still, there is an incredible amount of relief in knowing I have somewhere to retreat to.
If mom’s having another one of her “must pick a fight, or I can’t settle” phases, I could go camp in the flat, even if I can’t afford to fix it up yet.
If mom and dad have another shouty fight and I am getting a panic attack, I could theoretically up and leave.
If dad is seething in the background and mom is giving everyone the silent treatment…
(y’all might be seeing a pattern here)
There’s no way it can be sold out from under me without my knowledge or permission.
It might be a terrible fight to keep it, but I’d have agency.

Such agency as we have, in our society, where capitalism has us under its boot, yes, but more agency than I’ve had since becoming disabled.

There is an incredible amount of privilege here, to have qualified for a loan, to have gotten approved for it (there is a government thing going on where they give out mortgages to first time home owners for a much lower interest rate than usual, with a more generous payback time of 40 years, and three whole years without needing to pay the principal, and they had to throttle back on mortgages approved because of the rush and resulting rise in housing prices and apparently the banks are out of money but I disbelieve), to be at a stage where I have the luxury of worrying over how to make mortgage payments each month.

Also ridiculous privilege in, to be fully clear, I couldn’t have done this without my parents throwing a good chunk of money at the problem.
They paid the down payment, so there’s that.
Then, when the bank told me they couldn’t lend me the full amount required because the government was throttling down on loans, my parents made up the difference necessary to get the deed done.

I still owe terrifying amounts of money, but now I have a place to stay, for the low low low cost of slightly less than $750 USD per month.
We’ll ignore the costs of bringing the flat up to a livable state…
Plus stuff like…a fridge, or air conditioning, or …y’know, a toilet and stove.

And if I don’t have enough money, for the years where I only have to pay interest…
The “house” portion of housing costs goes down to roughly 400 USD per month, excluding property taxes.

I don’t know how to make it make sense, but there’s also a sense of relief in vaguely knowing how much money I will need as a baseline for survival.
Inflation, yes, and utility fee hikes, but at least now I have a ballpark range.
There’s a something to work toward, even if it is astronomical, whereas before it felt just as out of reach as going to Mars.

In recent years, after moving in with my parents, despite knowing logically that my mother wouldn’t kick me out of the house no matter hard much she didn’t like me at the moment, emotionally, it was still really rough to not have a place to go to in case of emergency.
So whenever things got really bad, it was always “what does AirBnB say” and “how much do hotel nights cost”, and somehow in Taiwan both are prohibitive to the extreme.

I can’t explain it.
But although it’s the same money serving sort of the same function, “putting money towards a mortgage” hits massively different than “putting money towards a hotel room for the night, or several nights”.
“Building equity”, they say.
But to be honest, in the face of “China keeps threatening to invade”, and “global warming might make Taiwan unlivable”, and the more immediate “I might not be able to keep up with the mortgage on top of everything else”…
“Building equity” in Taiwan feels a bit like a fool’s errand.

Of course, like the Y2K situation…
It would feel even more foolish to have not tried, just in case the worst doesn’t happen.

Anyway.
All this to say.
I am one tiny step closer to having a home of my own.
And I am so incredibly happy over it.