House Huntin'

For the first time in over six years, I have no home in Ottawa. And it's a very odd feeling. At the moment, Stewart and I are living with my parents in lovely St.Isidore Ontario. It's a cute little town and my parents are great, so it's not a bad thing to be out of the city. However, I've only been back a couple of weeks and I'm already hating the 45 minute drive into and out of Ottawa.

So Stewart and I started house hunting yesterday. As a married couple, here's what we're dealing with:

-- We want to own a home, but who is going to give us two "actors" a mortgage right now.
-- We don't want to live in a highrise apartment. I've always hated living up high, with my silly fears of earthquakes and fires and being trapped in stairwells with no escape.
-- Stewart and I want to have kids soon. We also want to be able to finally have some friends over to "our place"... therefore we need something bigger than the two bedroom apartment we had before.
-- Based on our budget, we can't afford much but we've discovered that if we're willing to be away from downtown, we can afford pretty much anything... including an actual house.
-- And, the finally conclusion I've come to is... I was getting a damn good deal paying 850$ for a two bedroom apartment downtown and nothing under 1000$ is really worth anything these days.

So. We looked at four places yesterday:
- bottom floor of a duplex downtown... fairly run-down... $1100 + heat and hydro... wouldn't need a buspass, but I'd be walking my ass off.
- bottom floor of a duplex in Sandy Hill... really cute... well decorated... but rooms broken up in an odd way... the second bedroom is more like a room than a bedroom... $1185 + hydro
- semi-detatched on Kilborn St... not exactly near transitway but not far either... a good size with a good size yard... but we didn't fall in love with it... 1300$ + all utilities.
- a house near Bank and Walkley... five minute walk from transitway and from grocery store and from everything else... a great sized three bedroom with unfinished but really clean basement... washer/dryer, A/C, dishwasher, fireplace, large backyard with trees, fenced in, gorgeous...$1200 + all utilities.

We completely fell in love with the last place. So we think we're going to apply for it. However, the yucky thing is that we were hoping to find a place with at least a finished basement, so we could move in with someone. But we haven't found anything suitable yet. Sigh.

I'll let you know how it pans out.