Between the time you were born and when I’m writing this, we moved. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if, by the time you read this, we will have moved again. Anyway, a few years after you came along, we moved from the hills of Hollywood to La Cañada. Your mother and I decided that, among many other reasons to get outside of Los Angeles proper, we wanted you to have a place to ride bikes and a real backyard to do cartwheels and throw a football around in. That place was great. But, less than ten months after we moved there, into this great house with a tire swing and zip line, Natalia, you announced that you wanted to step it up and live in a place like Uncle Jimmy. So forgive me if I assume by the time you’re reading this letter that we’ve moved one or two more times due to your unreasonable demands.

By the way, moving a lot as a kid is another in my long line of rich man, poor man examples: things the very rich and the very poor have in common that people in the middle class don’t share. When you’re super rich you move a lot, constantly stepping it up or moving when business requires. When you’re super poor you’re constantly on the lam or getting evicted. The middle class just buy a two-bedroom, ranch-style house in the burbs and wait to die in it.

Closely connected to that is living in the same house as your grandparents. (Though credit where it’s due, one of my listeners came up with this one.) The really rich live in the manor that has been in their family since the Civil War, and the really poor are sharing a doublewide with Granny, Mama, Mama’s third boyfriend in as many months and their six brothers and sisters.

So, with all of this in mind, what should you be looking for in your first, and hopefully last, house?

Space: Famous racecar driver/builder Carroll Shelby once said that, when it comes to winning races, there’s no substitute for cubic inches. And not-so-famous driver/builder, me, once said when it comes to relationships there is no substitute for square footage. When you and your spouse are literally up each other’s ass because you don’t have a big enough place, it’s going to cause marital strife. The bright side of this is that when you inevitably get divorced you won’t have much property to fight over.

Trust me. A guy could move into a studio apartment with a Victoria’s Secret model and within two days he’d be ready to shiv her with a sharpened toothbrush.

The bottom line is that you can live in a three bedroom for nine years or a one bedroom for nine months. Also, more square feet usually means more than one television, and separate TiVos. There’s no sense in getting in a fight with your old lady because Top Gear and Top Chef come on at the same time.

A Nice Yard: A house is more than just the four walls you sleep in. You need that yard to throw a baseball, chase the dog around and, this one is directed at you, Sonny, take a piss in.

Yes, Natalia (and all you other ladies reading this), you’ll never quite understand what a power move this is. Taking a piss in your own yard feels so liberating. Being a dude has its cons for sure, like dying several years earlier, but a big pro is that you can literally pee anywhere. Imagine you’ve been driving home with a bladder full of piss. Instead of having to fumble with your keys, unlock the door and race up to the bathroom, you can just step out of your car, unzip and water the bushes. Because those bushes are yours. If you did this in your apartment complex you’d be arrested, and if you did it on someone else’s lawn, they’d shoot you with rock salt. This is the patch of ground that God created and that you worked hard to own, and no one can stop you from putting your urine in it. Go for it. Plus, that stuff has a smell and it might ward off some predators.

And on that note, Sonny, I’m guessing you’ll be about my height, so when you buy that first house, make sure the bathroom sink is at optimal piss height, too.

A Cul-De-Sac: If you can manage it, you want to live on a cul-de-sac. That way you don’t have assholes like me zooming up and down your street plowing into my future grandkids on their hoverboards. And make sure it’s called a cul-de-sac. There is a big difference between a cul-de-sac and a dead end. They’re both streets that have no outlet but at the end of one is a back entrance to a golf course, and at the end of the other is a couch with raccoons fucking on it.

Basement: This might be a tough one to pull off if you stay in Southern California, or the Southwest in general. For some reason there are no basements out here. Basements are great. It’s like adding a second or third story to your house. And it’s always fifteen degrees cooler down there.

I’m thinking about this more for my future grandson. Without a basement, where is he supposed to lose his virginity? Every kid from the East Coast or the Midwest lost their virginity in a basement. Growing up in SoCal, we had to go out and hump in a car. If you had a compact car, it sucked. Getting it on in the back of an ’82 Honda Civic could literally cramp your style.

Plus, there’s just something truly great about going down those creaky wooden stairs to a basement workshop and refinishing an old coffee table, playing a few games of darts or grabbing a Sawzall and dismantling a hooker corpse. Perhaps I’ve said too much.

Bar-Free Windows: Windows with bars are something you want to avoid, and an immediate sign that you should move on with your house search. This may not resonate with people outside of Los Angeles, but almost all the houses here have bars on first-floor windows. That’s how much this town sucks.

Here’s how you know you’re in a horrible neighborhood: There are bars on the windows of the houses, but the bars in the neighborhood have no windows. Heavy.

Make sure you get a home inspection before you close. Just understand that there’s going to be shit to fix. Every home is a fixer-upper. Don’t walk away from a good place because you don’t like the paint job or a few windows are drafty. There’s always something to do, and you should appreciate that. Make the home yours. But here’s a bit of paranoia you can just ignore, and that is mold inspections. I don’t think humans would exist if mold could really kill us. We currently have a very bizarre relationship with mold. We devour blue cheese and penicillin, but will freak out if we find it during a home inspection. This is just white people panicking over nothing. Ironically, you never hear about black mold affecting black people. It’s always the wealthy white folk who also coincidentally have allergies to lactose, gluten and life.

Okay, so you’ve found your dream house; now it’s time to purchase it. Just like your first car, don’t come crawling to me. You’re going to have to earn it just like I did. I didn’t ask your grandfather to take out a second mortgage on his piece of shit in the Valley to help me out. Not that he would have, anyway. So unless you’ve married a rich guy or carved out a nice career in gay porn (that goes for either of you), you’re going to need a loan.

Here’s what you need to know about the mortgage process. There is no such thing as good credit. There’s only bad credit and not bad credit. Every real-estate transaction I’ve ever made required me to sign a Library of Congress’s worth of paper and go through FBI level interrogations. I’ve done several sizeable real-estate deals and every time it’s the same. I’ve never defaulted on a loan; I’ve never been foreclosed on. I should have the kind of credit where I can walk into any person’s home and say, “This is my house now, get out.” But I’m still treated like a guy who operates a forklift and is trying to buy his first one-bedroom town house.