Buying before selling backfires for this couple [Southern California]
When Laurian Rhodes and her husband, Sluggo, bought their first house 2 1/2 years ago, they did everything right, according to real estate protocol.
Veteran punk rockers, Laurian, 36, and Sluggo, 47, aren’t what would be characterized as the new San Francisco buyers — upscale professionals with fat paychecks. Together they own and run a picture-framing franchise on Lombard Street, and Sluggo performs with his band, the Grannies. But having just given birth to a baby daughter, Laurian was eager to do the right thing for her family’s stability.
“We’d lived in a big, rent-controlled apartment in Noe Valley for 10 years, but I thought, ‘We have to get into the market,’ ” she recalls. “There was this sense of urgency. It seemed like the smart thing to do.”
So they took what at the time seemed to be a relatively risk-free path. They bought a single-family home (not a more risky condo or TIC) in an affordable but up-and-coming neighborhood — the Excelsior district.