House Hunting

Very tiring! Very frustrating!

I love my house. But I have to acknowledge that it is no longer the right home for us. It's a beautiful house in a very nice neighborhood. But it lacks schools and near daycares (a real consideration these days), and it is not on a decent bus route. (I work downtown, so that is quite important.) Plus, it is a 2-storey home, so we have a lot of stairs to barricade from J. Besides, if I ever end up on bed rest again, it would be best for us to be in a bungalow. We don't have a finished basement or a garage and, with the new baby, we won't be able to find the time to do these things ourselves (not that we're particularly handy folk who could figure it out anyway); we certainly don't have the cash to hire someone to do it! So it is with some sadness that we must begin the dreaded house hunting process.

But where to live? H and I have very different takes on this issue. He is partial to the area where he grew up. I love that area as well and, if that were the only consideration, we'd probably be devoting ourselves to a search in the city's southeast. But that is not the only consideration.

My parents, who are our main source of support and care for J, live in the west end. (Kind of northwest, actually.) Being southeast would not work for us from that perspective. We'd lose our main support and possibly some childcare assistance. Suffice it to say that I quite enjoy the help of my family and don't wish to lose it by moving really far away from them.

So I propose we move to the west end of town, near my parents' home. Of course, H prefers southeast, and states that the west end is too far from his mother, who has some health concerns and is in need of assistance. My thought is that the west end works better for us right now and housing is temporary - we could always sell our west end home down the road if it is not working as well for us and we still prefer the southeast communities. But for right now, we need to be where it makes sense right now.

To quote va1kyrie, "If I Ruled the World"...

If I ruled the world, H's mother would move into a senior's complex in the west end, where she would be near us and we could provide some assistance and a close relationship with her new grandson. In turn, we would find a suitable house for sale in some nice west end neighbourhood near my parents. The house would be within our price range and, (and this is very important), would be AVAILABLE!! Not sold; not pending; not waiting for acceptance of the other possible offer - AVAILABLE!! We would then sell our current home for an appropriate price, transfer our mortgage to the new house, and move in. And it would all go really smoothly and everyone would be perfectly happy.

Every time we find something we like with a reasonable price point in either southeast or west, it's already either sold or pending. Sure takes time to find anything tangible.