When we moved into our rental in the Fall of 2006, we signed a 6 month lease. We figured that would give us plenty of time to get reacquainted with the area and purchase a home. At the time, I was open to living in almost any family friendly part of Sacramento that had reasonable public schools.
Little did we know, we would still be renting the same home almost 2 years later. During this time, we have made friends, become active in local groups, and basically settled into the community.
As a result, I find myself wanting to purchase a home closer and closer to where we live now. In other words, my home searching radius is getting smaller the longer we stay here.
At this rate, if we are still here in another 2 years, I may have to talk Mr. BT into purchasing our rental home =)
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8 comments:
I'm like that too. The longer you are there, the harder it will be to leave. Even if it's not the perfect place for you, the attachment becomes stronger with time. You begin to change the space to fit your lifestyle and at the same time that place is making changes in you. You have memories of good times, maybe milestones in your children's development, or growth in your marriage that you associate with that place.
1137 - I think you make a really good point about the perfect place being the collection of experiences not the physical structure.
I take a different perspective on anon1137's post.
Sometimes comfort makes you start chipping away at what you really want and before you know it you settle into a home or job that doesn't really fit you or your wants but you start to pretzel yourself into believing that you're really happy to be in a place or job that you don't enjoy as much as you tell yourself you do.
I think it's time for AB to go back and look at what she and her husband really want from the neighborhood they want to raise their children in and see if it's the neighborhood they see themselves retiring in and welcoming their grown children and grandchildren back to on the Holidays.
Hey, if they're just looking for price appreciation that's one thing. If they are looking at a place to call home for the long term, they really need to validate how much it fits their wants and needs as opposed to how much they can bend those wants and needs to fit their current rental house.
I'm sure they'll miss those milestones set in a rental home but if they'd be happier in a different situation, then they still have options (like losing their deposit to the landlord having to replace that six inch wide and two feet tall missing piece of sheetrock they used to measure the childrens growth, unless they replace that themselves).
AB, your current rental seems (from reading your blog) to have been a compromise, don't compromise on what you value when you purchase a home for your family. Don't lose sight of what you were truly looking for in a home just because you've made concessions and connections in your current rental. If you were really in love with your current home and neighborhood, you would have already made an offer!
Full disclosure:
After 30 years of pretzeling, I am moving on and trying to figure out what I want to do with my life now that money worries don't rule my decisions. Woohoo!
Congrats Curious....I hope your un-pretzeling plans keep you in the area.
We plan to keep looking, but much closer to where we live now so that we don't disrupt up the life we currently enjoy. One of the best things about our current situation is the fact that it has a guest room. Not something we plan to have in our home, but its been great to have and has been in frequent use.
Sometimes, though, things you didn't think were important become much more important once you've got them. I didn't think that having a slider from the bedroom to the yard was important when we first moved to our current rental. Now I love it. I wake up every morning to see the sun glowing through my baby Japanese maple--and I can step outside and walk around through the living room slider to get my coffee. I barely noticed it when we moved here.
Maybe what's important has changed since you moved to your current rental?
@ BT,
Thank you, I am fairly certain the near term keeps me here, but who knows?
It's amazing that life seems wide open again, and the unpretzeling thingy is indescribable!
Curious -- enjoy the fresh perspective. There was a similar time in my life, and your description was very familiar to me.
BT -- I've been struggling with the same general situation for the last several months, and it was totally unforeseen. We've had the same hobby, interests, etc. for years and have belonged to an international organization, but the local chapters never really clicked with us. We didn't expect anything different up here, but we were pleasantly surprised. Now, these people we didn't even know 2 years ago have become so much a part of our lives that we can't imagine leaving. At last, our geekiness has found a home, and that home is more important to our happiness and fulfillment at this stage of our lives than a house.
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