Well, I've been toying with the idea of getting something bigger for a while. I am forever watching the MLS, and my dream house came on the market, in the next town, and even though it would be a financial stretch, I could swing it.
I drove by the house today. It was spectacular, the pictures in the MLS did not do it justice! The house has 2,600 square feet, a 2-car garage, a Victorian bowed out front, which has window seats inside. Two 1/2 baths, with a jacussi tub in the master suite's bathroom, yeah I said suite. It had a gourmet kitchen with granite counter tops. The great room was 22 x 24. The living room, and sitting room (in the master suite) both has fire places. Huge closets, hard wood floors, and everything imaginable. Oh, central air, of course...
The lawn had been professionally landscaped, and the best feature is the one-year-old heated swimming pool, which was spectacular.
I had myself somehow convinced that I could afford the house. I may not have been able to afford to turn on the AC, but I could swing it, barely.... As long as I could knock the selling price down $50,000, and get what I want for mine.
I was in AWE..... I drove by imagining myself with the moving van..... And then REALITY set in.... Out of the corner of my eye I saw something dart for the road, on the opposite side of the road. It was a little child. I did not come anywhere near hitting him, but then I glanced at the house across the street, and started counting the little kids there...... There had to be around 15 kids under the age of five!!!! With their mom's all hanging out, and it seemed like dad's were emerging from all the other houses in the neighborhood, going toward the neighborhood meeting. A few houses further down were the 6-12 age group, and then a little further the teenagers.
I got out of there really quickly!!!!!! I felt like I had stumbled upon some time warp, somewhere between the Brady Bunch, the movie YOurs, Mine and Ours, and Sesame Street. Could you imagine how they would have reacted to poor Tess? I shudder to think....
I realized something... I really like my little house, my spread out neighborhood, and diverse age group around here. If I really want more space I can always put on an addition, and if an in-ground pool is really that important, I can cash out some of the equity I'm sitting on, and have one put in.
Talk about being strange, but after having already raised my daughter, I don't want to move into such a young neighborhood.....
I'll have to wait a few years, and look for one of those adult communities.... shudder....
Great when you have some the same age. The sound of children laughing can be a joy, as long as they go home somewhere else after a while. Teenagers can be very loud when they get together, but they usually opt to do that somewhere other than home, so a teen or two on the street doesn't really do that much damage to the peacefulness.
Our street has a large age range from really young families to oldsters with visiting grandkids to a four generation family under one roof. I can be really crabby when neighbours have a gathering outdoors and their racket spills over into my space, but nothing annoys me more than do-it-yourselfers who mow lawns and blow clippings in the evenings.
So if I were house-hunting at this stage, I'd be certain to look at communities that have predominantly owners with hired groundskeepers that work during the weekdays. Suburbs can have advantages, but I'm an urban type, so the idea of having to live inside a car to get anywhere useful is a nightmare for me. Not to mention the wastefulness of driving to get a jug of milk when a short walk would be more beneficial to all.
Tess, put on an addition to accomodate all that stuff you like to have around you.
Additions and time shares sound like definite possibilities! My mom stopped over tonight, and I was showing her how a nice breezeway and an attached garage would go very well off of the side of the house, and then a three season sun room off the kitchen would be lovely.
I think that I may speak to a few contractors to get some ideas on prices, and then just go down to home depot and pick up a few cans of paint and re-do the two main bedrooms, and motivate myself to go outside and fix the darn fence and a few remaining projects that I have outside.
I then pointed to the trees, no houses in view and commented about how much I love my home, and that I really need to keep in mind the positive things that have kept me here for 19 years, besides a small mortgage. I am also going to think about replacing the huge chaise lounger that I have in my living room with a recliner, and free up some space. The chaise is incredible, and I love it, but the darn thing is to big for the room, it belongs in a big great room. We were also looking at the new bedroom set, and talking about how I really need to paint the room a warm beige, and get some new pictures for the walls, to really bring the room together.
All-in-all, much cheaper than going out and buying a huge house, that will leave me mortgage poor.
Wow. I can't even imagine buying a new car, much less a new house. I wish I could go look around and find something nice in Gillette, but I'll be stuck in an ol' apartment.
Jojo, it all comes with time. The only reason that I can even think about upgrading is that I bought my current one almost 19 years ago, and I have built up equity in it.
When I bought my current house I was a single mom, with a 4-year-old. I was waitressing, and literally living paycheck to paycheck. There is a federally sponsored mortgage program, that I obtained my mortgage through. It is for low and moderate income households. Back in the days it was called Farmer's Home Administration. I believe it is called something along the lines of US Rural Housing Department, or something like that these days. It is still very much in place, putting families into homes. The great thing about it is that your mortgage is based upon your income. When I bought the house, I was in the 1% interest category. That basically meant that my mortgage payment was at 1% interest. Instead of having an $800 payment, I made payments of $312.
I actually moved out of an apartment that had a $600.00 rent into the house. I also had some old bad credit that I had paid off (left over from my youth and marriage), but did not reflect well on my credit. They cared that I had cleaned it up.
