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December 13, 2004
House Hunting Sucks...
Just before we left CA (the morning we had to catch our flight) our house went into Escrow. We met our CA realtor before heading to the airport and signed escrow docs. We got here, dropped our stuff in our apartment and met with our WA realtor to prep an offer on a house we'd seen during a house-hunting trip.
The sellers hadn't even gotten the offer paperwork when our CA realtor called to say that the buyers got cold feet and used the inspection contingency to get out of the deal. Our offer, contingent on that sale, fell apart.
Talk about rain on the parade.
So we decided to put the WA house hunt on hold 'till the house in CA was solidly in escrow - all major contingencies signed off. Barring any last minute catastrophies, the sale in CA should close late this week or early next. (...fingers crossed...)
In the mean time, we've (and by we I mean mostly I) started to have doubts about our choice of location. It's on an island, see.
No, really.
There's an island about 8 miles out of downtown Seattle called Bainbridge. There's ferry service from the waterfront, about a mile from my office, to the island every 50 minutes from 4am to 2am (don't ask me why they stop for those two hours - I have no idea). The crossing takes about 35 minutes, and as those of you who've ever commuted on mass transit understand, those 35 minutes needn't be wasted as they would be while driving. Seemed like a great solution at first.
But then I started to have second thoughts. How do I get from the house to the ferry? Would living 35 minutes out of town make Dawnise feel too isolated? Would people "on the mainland" be hesitant to come to parties owing to the cost and time involved in the ferry crossing? Would I grow tired of the ferry commute? The alternative is a 90 mile drive around the sound - hardly sustainable. I thought about renting something on the island to give it a shot, but we're running out of time on the temp housing - and I don't want to keep moving, not to mention the cost of keeping all our stuff in storage (or moving it twice)...
So we started the search again - looking for houses on the mainland that fit our criteria.
We spent most of Sunday afternoon and several hours today looking at houses in the north end (Lake Forest Park and Edmonds), the east side (Bellevue and Newcastle), Magnolia and Green Lake. A couple of them were close enough to bus lines that I might be able to bus to work (a huge plus), but none of them were particularly nice houses.
Well, except the $830,000 one.
That one was really nice; and way, way out of our price range.
I don't even know why we looked at it, except that it was literally across the street from one in our price range, so "we were in the neighborhood."
So Dawnise and I have spent our evening looking at flyers, ranking them in order, and agonizing over the compromise.
Do we live on the island - where our money goes significantly further - and take the extra cash we could be spending on a mortgage each month and put it into a travel fund? Or do we bite the bullet, live closer to the downtown that we've come to enjoy spending time in, but pay more and get less? Or, do I just give up on the idea of improving on my CA commmute and resign myself to driving 30 minutes or more each way?
Nice house, convenient location, reasonable price.
Seems we only get to pick two...
Posted by dberger at December 13, 2004 9:19 PM