Archives for 2015

So, I have a little bit of some big news to share and I am just going to come right out and say it: J and I just bought a house and we got the keys yesterday.

This is our own little Christmas miracle and to say that we are excited is the understatement of this century.

It’s no secret that I’ve wanted to move from our one bedroom apartment (with drafty windows and little space) for quite some time. There were many reasons in the past couple of years why we couldn’t. When we expected my family for a visit last summer, I was set on moving to a bigger place before they arrived. I’ve looked for rental houses and apartments for the better part of this year and couldn’t find anything we liked (and knew we could afford what with my job contract still up in the air). We ended up staying put and making their visit work in our tiny apartment. But I was back at looking for a new place again right after they left.
But rents have been going up (or so it seems) and upgrading to a 2-bedroom rental in our preferred area with the desired amenities (like central heat and air, sealed double-pane windows, a washer/dryer, etc.) looked increasingly grim.

We honestly didn’t really think about buying until a couple of months ago when we realized hat a mortgage is basically more affordable than rent for comparable places right now.

In October, I went to a couple of open houses just to get a feel for what’s out there and to compare with the rental market. The next day, I took J back to look at one of these houses – again, just to show him what’s out there! – and two days later we made an offer on said house.

A day after that, we were in Escrow. Yeah. That was kind of completely unexpected. And things in this country just move so ridiculously fast. No way in hell did I think we would be moving out of our apartment before this year comes to close – but alas, here we are packing boxes instead of wrapping presents (well, I am doing a little bit of that, too).

The European in me was is still screaming “nooo” (you must know that in Germany people only buy houses if they intend to stay in them forever and ever), but the American mindset is different and I know that many people buy a “starter home” for a few years before moving on again (to something more permanent and/or bigger). Well, that seems just like the situation that we are in and even though part of me was still not sure if we ‘should be doing’ this, I kept telling myself: we’re grown ups and grown ups do indeed do such things.

Adulting, it’s a thing over here.

We’ll be moving next week, only 10 minutes away from where we currently live. We wanted to stay close to our current location and I didn’t want to add unnecessary mileage to my commute. I can still totally avoid the freeway (if I want) and still be at work within 15 minutes. I call that a win.

The house is just the right size and in a great neighborhood and it has almost everything we were looking for; a second bedcraftroom, hardwood floors, central heat and air, new windows, a new kitchen, washer/dryer hookups, and a backyard. Plus, on top of that, is has a detached former-garage-turned-guesthouse. I really haven’t quite processed that we’re going to live there so very soon.

Honestly, this was like finding a needle in a haystack and it’s pretty much all I wanted for Christmas (besides flying home which wasn’t going to happen), so I am beyond grateful.

In case you’re worried about your holiday cards – don’t be, they’ll make it (and some already arrived – yay and thank you!). We’ll have our old apartment until the end of the month and, of course, there will be a change of address forwarding service set up with the postal service. (Fingers crossed that they do their job right.)

It’s a little bit ironic that we found and will be moving into our house just after having not one, but two occasions of hosting visitors this year (a rarity), but hey, that just means we’ll be even that much better set up for whoever decides to visit us next!