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Snake and I had managed to feel content and calm for almost a week, so yesterday we decided to increase local chaos and stress to its usual high pitch. A developer has built a funny little row of townhouses about five minutes walk from our house. We went to the open house yesterday and since then, we've been in full-on battle plan mode.
Why move? Our 80 year old house, while perfectly located and possessing a sweet garden, is a fucking hole. We've renovated three areas very nicely with our own sweat and blood, but that doesn't mean the walls are straight, that the back patio isn't a badly formed concrete nightmare, that the wiring isn't ridiculous and that some major structural problem isn't about to arise demanding immediate application of $20,000.
The townhouse is spacious enough for three but, should Br'er Rabbit move on in a couple of years, not too large for two. It's only 13 feet wide but over three floors. From the third floor, you moved up a staircase to a full rooftop patio with a beautiful view. No garden, but the patio has a garden hose attachment already built in, ready for pots of herbs and flowers. It's all new. No cracks, no settling, no 80 years of stupid hand-made retro-fitting by unqualified idiots.
So, the question arises: how much money can we get for our house? We bought it cheap, but our neighbourhood has exploded in value recently. This question is crucial. It makes the difference between not getting the townhouse, getting one of the cheaper units sandwiched in the middle or the nicer one at the end and completely determines whether the mortgage is light, medium or unfeasible.
Do I really want it? Do I want a bedroom and a workspace that's not in a basement? Oh yeah. Do I want to stop worrying about the expensive renos? Oh yeah. Do I want enough privacy from each other which we do not have now? Oh yeah.
But will I miss our little house if we move? Oh yeah. Our sweet little cottage-like nest has been a place of dreams and creation. Finding out that I could renovate the basement with my own two hands was crucial to my self-esteem in 1995 when I was out of work. And then there are the hours we spent researching the proper pruning techniques for our red currant bush and the frustrations and subsequent joy of learning to do it right.
But Snake is right -- we aren't the kind of people who want to make fixing our house our full time hobby. I want more time to make art, not put in new crown molding.
I also have weird and uncomfortable feelings about any kind of upward mobility. It's all very strange to be this wealthy (and I refuse to think of anyone in the first world with a house and a regular income as anything other than wealthy). We had less than a down payment when we bought our house and had to take out a usurious second mortgage which we sweated to pay off. Since then, we've lived frugally in order to make lump sum payments. At the same time, our neighbourhood has become more and more desirable and it's very possible that we have made more than $100,000 just by sitting in the little cottage.
This in the same period that rent controls have been sabotaged by the Ontario Tories; all of which means that me and Snake are getting wealthier and wealthier while most of our friends struggle to meet their rent payments and wonder if they can afford groceries, even when they have regular jobs. There's a fascinating article on the middle-class poor in Eye Magazine this week that describes the dynamics of this process.
And so, even though this is a silly kind of liberal guilt, I find it uncomfortable when I end up on the up side of the equation. Blah blah blah.
One real estate agent is coming tonight to the house, another tomorrow night. I'll keep youse posted.
Why move? Our 80 year old house, while perfectly located and possessing a sweet garden, is a fucking hole. We've renovated three areas very nicely with our own sweat and blood, but that doesn't mean the walls are straight, that the back patio isn't a badly formed concrete nightmare, that the wiring isn't ridiculous and that some major structural problem isn't about to arise demanding immediate application of $20,000.
The townhouse is spacious enough for three but, should Br'er Rabbit move on in a couple of years, not too large for two. It's only 13 feet wide but over three floors. From the third floor, you moved up a staircase to a full rooftop patio with a beautiful view. No garden, but the patio has a garden hose attachment already built in, ready for pots of herbs and flowers. It's all new. No cracks, no settling, no 80 years of stupid hand-made retro-fitting by unqualified idiots.
So, the question arises: how much money can we get for our house? We bought it cheap, but our neighbourhood has exploded in value recently. This question is crucial. It makes the difference between not getting the townhouse, getting one of the cheaper units sandwiched in the middle or the nicer one at the end and completely determines whether the mortgage is light, medium or unfeasible.
Do I really want it? Do I want a bedroom and a workspace that's not in a basement? Oh yeah. Do I want to stop worrying about the expensive renos? Oh yeah. Do I want enough privacy from each other which we do not have now? Oh yeah.
But will I miss our little house if we move? Oh yeah. Our sweet little cottage-like nest has been a place of dreams and creation. Finding out that I could renovate the basement with my own two hands was crucial to my self-esteem in 1995 when I was out of work. And then there are the hours we spent researching the proper pruning techniques for our red currant bush and the frustrations and subsequent joy of learning to do it right.
But Snake is right -- we aren't the kind of people who want to make fixing our house our full time hobby. I want more time to make art, not put in new crown molding.
I also have weird and uncomfortable feelings about any kind of upward mobility. It's all very strange to be this wealthy (and I refuse to think of anyone in the first world with a house and a regular income as anything other than wealthy). We had less than a down payment when we bought our house and had to take out a usurious second mortgage which we sweated to pay off. Since then, we've lived frugally in order to make lump sum payments. At the same time, our neighbourhood has become more and more desirable and it's very possible that we have made more than $100,000 just by sitting in the little cottage.
This in the same period that rent controls have been sabotaged by the Ontario Tories; all of which means that me and Snake are getting wealthier and wealthier while most of our friends struggle to meet their rent payments and wonder if they can afford groceries, even when they have regular jobs. There's a fascinating article on the middle-class poor in Eye Magazine this week that describes the dynamics of this process.
And so, even though this is a silly kind of liberal guilt, I find it uncomfortable when I end up on the up side of the equation. Blah blah blah.
One real estate agent is coming tonight to the house, another tomorrow night. I'll keep youse posted.
