Friday, January 22, 2010

Realty Bites

No, that's not a typo ;) Although I wholeheartedly agree that reality is highly over rated as well.

The other night I was unwinding watching some shows on HGTV and there was a show 25 biggest mistakes to make in real estate. They went on to comment on paying too much for a home that it should be around 1/3 of your salary. Anyway, my husband has had 'garage fever' which somehow wasn't even on the list when I bought the house. And yes...I bought the house. So, giving due consideration to his whole 'garage' obsession just for giggles I looked up what houses that would be double the price mine was 5.5 years ago would be, say if someone else was chipping in the same amount that I currently do for the mortgage. Now before I go further, just to be fair, he covers the majority of the renos.

Anyway, so on to MLS I got trolling. For comparison's sake I didn't even take in location as a major consideration. I popped in the area we live in and the city we border and boom, a little list appeared. What a disappointment that was! Any of the double garages were not attached and on a smaller house, the 'attached' ones compromised basement space and were the 1.5 variety. Any of the remotely promising ones had pending renos to do that we've already done in our current abode and I don't think any of them had the 5 bedrooms and semi finished basement ours does. Mind you I didn't take into consideration how much my home has appreciated in value, but still... So the hubby can wait it out and build what he wants sometime down the road. It'll be a heck of alot cheaper ;) To justify the pain in the butt it is to move, I had better be moving into my dream house, otherwise the good things will come to those who wait ;)

1 comment:

mainely stitching said...

We went through similar issues, I think, with our house in the Netherlands. We bought during the 'boom' and paid too much (probably my fault) and as a result, the house wasn't "worth" expanding it to better fit our large family. We'd never be able to sell it at a price to justify all the expense of adding on. Argh. We won't make that mistake again (I hope!!).