Home Search

Part of the purpose of the weblog is to keep some record of this thing that in the end will be called "my life"; or "his life," because I won't be around in "the end."  Funny to think that one day this blog will be sitting around, unattended in cyberspace; funny, but not that profound.

Butsothen one point of this is to simply be a record and right now much of my life and energy is being dedicated toward the search for a new home.  That said, I feel bad even mentioning it on here, as it is really the height of banal bourgeois nonsense to discuss one's ownership of things in a public forum; probably most of all one's ownership of real estate.  Still, I am about to do it and for the reader I've felt it necessary to include the above explanation, which falls short of justification, but will at least provide the opportunity to skip over this post.

Coming closer to justification, although still not it in fact, is my expectation that at least a small portion of my regular readers (if I may presume to say that I have any of those) will be legitimately interested in the details I am about to share, and may continue to share if my shame does not prevail before then.

Sonowthen...

"House hunting" is really not so fun anymore.  It was for me the first time around.  Those were the days when almost everyone still believed that home ownership was a gleaming milestone along the road into adulthood and maturity.  It was a reward that one could claim for oneself and expect that not only would it contribute immediate satisfaction, it would also payoff in terms of long-term planning;  magically, we could be both the fabled grasshopper and ant, all at once.  That was before an entire generation of reasonable, educated and professionally-ambitious twenty(now thirty)somethings watched in disbelief as years', if not decades', worth of prospective net-worth accumulation was undermined by... well, we all know what now, even if we don't entirely understand the how.  Now, home ownership feels more like a sort of grimy necessity, only barely preferable to the life of a perpetual renter.

But we are house hunting, for good or ill.  We walked away from the purchase and sale agreement we had on the first condo; a great unit in what our prospective lender subsequently described as a "dead building" from a loan underwriting perspective.  So, now we toss ourselves back out into the mess that is the 2012 housing market.

Today we made an offer on the unit below.  We'll find out tomorrow or Friday whether our offer is accepted.  The first order of business in this place will be to paint it bright white, because the colors in this place are criminally awful.

Master bedroom and deck.

Guest "bedroom" with private bath.

Other half of master bedroom. Really? Who buys a modern loft and puts this crap in it?

Guest bath.

 View from western deck.

Living room looking west.

The other half of the guest bedroom. 

View to the east.

Living area.  A paint and decor nightmare.

Master bath.