Ghoul Next Door

Here's why you should go house hunting in October

I think October is a great time to go house hunting.

Keep in mind this bold statement comes from someone with absolutely no knowledge of real estate. While I have lived in a house, I have never bought one or sold one. I’ve never had to decide between a new build or a fixer upper, a split level or a yurt. Not once. I have spent most of my adult life as a renter. It’s just the way things went. 

The idea of home ownership never even came up for me unless, of course, I was pressed — usually by an eager real estate agent, the kind of person you meet at a networking event or over a cheese tray at a housewarming party thrown by mutual friends.

“You should really think about buying a house!”

“Now?” I would think to myself, standing at the island in the open concept kitchen eyeing the bowl of guacamole on the granite countertop.

“Escrow,” sounds to me like a supplement for plants and it might as well be for how ludicrously ignorant I am about the entire process. All this to say: when I tell you I have no idea what I’m talking about, I am not kidding in the slightest.

Despite this complete lack of knowledge, I am very confident that I am right — as is the American way.

Let’s look at the evidence.

Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash

Step outside in October and you experience a world in transition — the warmth of the sun cut by the chill in the air, the landscape dotted with color, a crunch under foot as the leaves collect on the sidewalk. Your eyes wander over mums on porches and pumpkins on stoops then gaze upon a skeletal hand in a front yard desperately clawing its way out of the cold garden soil and grasping for the sky.

There it is.

This is why, if you are auditioning neighborhoods, I strongly suggest an October tour. When it comes to tastes and attitudes, personalities and proclivities — it seems to me October is when a lot of people put it all out there — right on the lawn.

When I see — let’s call it “ambitious” — decor around this time of year, I’m always curious what the neighbors think about it.

What went through the minds of the couple with the single scarecrow on the porch that fall day they realized the guy next door was putting up a skeleton so large it could peek in their second story windows? What did they think when he bought and installed two more?

And consider this: rules can vary on disclosing actual deaths that occurred in homes for sale, so house hunters are probably really out of luck when it comes to Halloween decoration intel. Even if your real estate agent happens to know you’re arachnophobic, they may not even think to mention the lady across the street from your potential dream home starts stringing up an enormous animatronic spider in late September. 

What of the residents with the jack-o-lanterns on their porch seeing a full scale surgical suite on the neighbor’s lawn staffed by inflatable horror movie characters performing an autopsy on a thrift store mannequin next to a haunted ferris wheel in front of half a dozen deranged looking clowns butted right up to the property line? Then, there’s the errant Barbie doll stiffly stuck in the grass who may or may not have been part of the original design concept.

Finally, if all these Halloween examples are not scary enough for you, let us not forget the holiday falls just before Election Day. Some of those decorations can be truly terrifying.

While it’s probably wise to stop short of judging a book by its cover, I still believe you can learn a lot about people in October — and I love imagining what goes through the mind of an unsuspecting neighbor watching someone painstakingly construct a display that would make Stephen King squeamish. Still, when you consider how many serial killers were described as “good neighbors who kept to themselves,” these kinds of over-the-top screams for attention may actually be a good sign.

So, there you have it: my completely unsolicited food for thought for prospective homebuyers. Thank you for reading it and please know this completely correct opinion is for entertainment purposes only.

Thanks for dropping by.

Kate Welshofer is a writer, speaker, content creator and mischief maker. For Halloween, her dad used to stuff an old beer ball with Christmas lights, cover it with a boat sail and mount it on a pole on their front porch to create a ghost he named “Awesome.” This column originally appeared in Kate’s column in the October 24, 2024 edition of the Perry Herald in Perry, NY