Tenth posting - Home

I did it. I bought a house. Or I convinced someone to sell me her condo. It's a crazy market here in Connecticut. The place was on the market for a total of 7 days. Three days at a too-low price, which likely brought in too many offers, and four days at a higher price -- and five good offers. After hearing a segment on NPR about writing a letter to a potential seller, I wrote a "Dear Homeowner" letter (sappy but truthful) and my offer was accepted. Supposedly it helped (and because it took all but 20 minutes to write, I would recommend it).

The place isn't huge - if it were a square, it would be 25' x 30' - but the light is good and it felt (to me) bigger than what it was. I can walk to do my food shopping and to a park, and my commute will be 5 min shorter each way. That might not seem so much time unless you annualize it to approx 40 hours. Let's just hope that doesn't translate into working 40 more hours... A friend in NYC just told me that an apartment "just shy of 500 sq ft" in her Upper West Side building just sold for $325,000. Yes, you could round that up to half of a million dollars. And to think, in some lovely parts of the Mid Southwest, for that much money you could buy a governorship or name a stadium...

Tomorrow's the inspection, which means that if there are termites, I can terminate the deal. Ha. It's also the time I can spend more than 10 minutes looking at the place, getting a sense of what furniture fits where, how my bikes will look when mounted on the ceiling in the middle of my bedroom, what it would take to rip up the carpet and install Astro-turf... If I can figure out how to post pics on this blog, I'll do so. Otherwise, you'll get a full description soon.

Bye for now, NATHAN