The American dream.

[rivka]

We agreed yesterday that we'd better plan on another year in our current apartment. We've been wanting to leave Columbia, wanting to live downtown, most of all wanting to be homeowners. But it's not going to happen just yet.

We won't have saved enough money for a down payment by the time our lease is up in June. Also, by this time next year our car will be paid off, and we'll have more substantial employment histories, and we'll be in a better position with regard to Misha's student loans. All of those things will make it easier to qualify for a decent mortgage. Waiting a year will make it easier to get what we want. And the good housing market in Baltimore is not going to go away.

It's just that I have such a clear picture of what I want. The American dream: a rehabbed hundred-year-old brick rowhouse in a mixed downtown neighborhood, with tall windows and hardwood floors and deep narrow rooms and a deck or courtyard instead of a lawn to mow. Close to restaurants and shops and Baltimore's anachronistic old markets and the harbor. Homeownership, in one of the last big American cities in which that's possible for people like me. A joint cooperative venture between me, Misha, and the bank.

I'll buy a china cabinet and bring home the delicate gold-rimmed china dishes I inherited from my Aunt Kings. They're packed away in my parents' attic, waiting for me to settle down. I'm ready.

It will happen.

Comments

[geekchick]

The American dream: a rehabbed hundred-year-old brick rowhouse in a mixed downtown neighborhood, with tall windows and hardwood floors and deep narrow rooms and a deck or courtyard instead of a lawn to mow.

Can I just say how wonderful that sounds?

[wcg.livejournal.com]

It will. And when it does, I'll happily help move you in.

[dandelion-diva.livejournal.com]

Sounds *wonderful*, and I have nothing but confidence that it *will* happen. I'll help bring stuff in when it does.:)

Do you know if there's any difference at all between a row house and a townhouse? I know there is a difference...'cause people don't tend to use them interchangably, but I don't know what it is.

That's just one of those weird questions that bugs me.

Sorry...veering agin. I'll stop now.:)

Gesi

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

hurray for wanting to live in the city! hurray! (so sayeth the woman who lives in south minneapolis... :)

when buying a house was about a year away for me and the one i live with, i pored over the local real estate websites, so that i'd have a good idea of what i wanted in a house before we started actually looking.

good luck house hunting in the near (yes, near; at least nearer than it used to be) future!

[rivka.livejournal.com]

when buying a house was about a year away for me and the one i live with, i pored over the local real estate websites, so that i'd have a good idea of what i wanted in a house before we started actually looking.

We've been going to open houses, from time to time, on Sunday afternoons. It's a lot of fun, and we're getting a better sense of what kinds of house variations there are and what prices tend to be like. I have no qualms about going just to look because the real estate agents have to be there anyway.

We recently agreed on another year, too.

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

Before we move into our castle on the Seine.

OTOH, the city house sounds good. I thoroughly loved living in the beat-up, stinky, uninsulated vintage 1886 brick bungalow (a nice word for it) in northwest Denver...it was (almost) the crummiest house on the block, and it was OURS OURS OURS. I liked the great loamy garden soil, but I could see doing the row house thing...mmmm. With a nice cobbled courtyard. And a moat.