Do you remember this post rant, about our house hunting fiasco? Well, I thought maybe it was time to provide a little update.
While the Boy continued to hunt for rentals – I mentally moved out and started thinking about buying. It wasn’t too long before something came up that said to us – we need to look at this one.
A house.
A century home.
Pros – beautiful high ceilings, lots of space, backed on to the park, awesome patio.
Cons – busy street and absolutely horrendous parking. It was a parking pad infront of the house – brutal really doesn’t start to cover it. It also had some knob and tub wiring and while we both love the idea of a century home, the worry of waking up one morning to $50,000 worth of work was not sitting well with me.
We continued to look.
A couple of weeks later we saw 4 more. And with those came a list of questions.
Q: How necessary is 3 bedrooms?
A: Very – we decided that while a 2 bedroom would work for now, given that the Boy’s parents live out of town – once we have a little we’ll quickly find ourselves short on space
Q: What neighbourhood do we want to be in?
A: We love our current neighbourhood but we did need to take a bit of a reality pill as far as what our current neighbourhood costs. The affordable option in our neighbourhood STUNK like cigarettes – con.
Q: How much work do we want to do when we move in?
A: We want to decorate and make it ours. We do not want to completely gut – not because we expect to find everything we want in an existing house, or that renovations make us crazy nervous – but frankly, we don’t have thousands of dollars hanging around to put into a renovation. Anywhere we live has to be liveable immediately, but room for improvements are welcome.
Q: Could we live in a condo?
A: We still weren’t sure – and it would definitely depend on what the condo fees were.
Q: Were we willing to stretch our budget – knowing that the Boy’s income is only going up as he gets a permanent teaching gig?
A: No. That’s how people get into trouble. Plus, since we’ve only recently found ourselves with disposable income – we’d really like to enjoy that feeling. Hello? Honeymoon is still on the agenda!!
None of the 4 were it. But we were getting some answers.
Then our Realtor sent us a listing. I loved it. Mentally moved in doesn’t even begin to describe it.
We said we wanted to book a showing but unfortunately we were away for the weekend wedding’ing it up. When we saw our Realtor on Monday she sadly let us know it was gone. We rallied and made an appointment to see a house the Boy had been lusting after for a good month – a tiny two bedroom semi-detached, on the same busy street as house #1. But at the last minute the house I had moved into became available again – so we booked an appointment for both.
We saw a 3 bedroom townhouse, common element condo (common element we learned means we own the property and the very small condo fee covers maintenance to the common elements – i.e. the road) . My choice. I don’t know how to be eloquent about it – I loved it. Love. I could see us living there and compared to everything else we’d seen, it was checking all kinds of boxes. The Boy – not convinced. “Where’s the yard?” “It’s a townhouse.” “It’s outside of our neighbourhood” “Are we willing to settle?” We moved on to option 2.
I don’t want to say I had made up my mind before we saw it – but I had. I knew we weren’t moving there. In our market there’s a reason that a house has dropped in price and has sat on the market for over 6 weeks. I wasn’t really prepared for what we saw.
Slanted. Slanted in every single direction. And instead of stairs – basically ladders. LADDERS! Two tiny bedrooms, slanty bookcases, and once again a ridiculous parking situation.
But do you know what it did? It showed the Boy some of the pros of house #1. No yard = no yard work. No yard work = more time for golf. Con becomes pro. It’s a townhouse, a new townhouse at that, which means touch wood, there’s really not a whole lot that we should have to do as far as major renovations. Plus we should meet our neighbours and maybe, possibly, make some local friends – we don’t want to push it but the possibility is there. It is outside our neighbourhood – just, but it’s also spitting distance from my work which means if/when the red car dies, it’s possible for us to be a one car family. Seriously, driving is not going to save me any time. But I think the kicker for the Boy was that both of our parents loved this house. They both thought it was a great starter option for us, and BOTH told us to put in an offer based on the pictures alone (though my parents did walk through it with us and loved it).
We put in an offer, and at 12:40 am on Thursday, when I really should have been sleeping...
WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!!!!
Can you believe it?! I’m still wrapping my head around it. We’ve got 5 1/2 weeks to go before we close but since we’re both wishing we could move in next week – we know we’ve made the right choice.
Goodbye tiny 1 bedroom apartment – Hello married life in our new house!
The Ginger & The Giant 