‘fessing up: Real Estate Roller-coaster

It’s been a bit of a wild week emotionally speaking. I’ve been full of adrenalin, barely sleeping, running on fumes, not hungry, and constantly full of nervous energy. What’s up, you ask?
I’ve fallen in love. With a condo. Fortunately, so has my husband.

We have been looking to get out of our house and into something smaller and more affordable. The search took us to some condos over the past week. After a few luke-warm views we decided to manifest the type of place we wanted: a slightly older building, built to larger proportions, sturdy, and with no updates – we want to do that ourselves. Sure enough, a few days later we headed out with our realtor and to a street I was definitely not interested in. Expecting little, I got out and was highly critical of the lobby and hallways. Then we walked in, and BAM! Love. It felt light, airy and open. The layout flowed. The rooms were spacious. The view was gorgeous. It was quiet and calm. It felt like home. I could instantly see the hardwood floors, the new paint colours, us working in the kitchen while baby played. It was our home!

My husband didn’t experience the same love at first sight. He glanced around and wrote it off – he was eager to show me one condo he’d looked at the other day. We went to see this one and a few others, and nothing worked for me. They all felt dark, oppressive, small, awkward and poorly updated. I was seriously not impressed. I had seen the potential of the first place, and had a sense of what it could be, and none of these others came close. I was seized with passion to take that luxurious space and make it beautiful and ours.

I let my views be known with a few simple words: I think the first place has the most potential, and none of these others interest me. Husband was curious and started to think back on the features of the first place. Rather quickly, he started to see what I had. He also remembered what we had tried to manifest, and was amazed that 1) we had, and 2) he hadn’t noticed! We went back 2 days later with my parents to see it again, and the same thing happened: magic. We all liked it, a lot, and could see us living there.

At this point, my husband and I were having sleeping difficulties. It’s hard to rest when your mind is racing. It’s hard to take care of life responsibilities when your brains is running on one groove only: how would we renovate this awesome space?

It quickly became clear that getting this space could be possible, and that I would be the one to apply for the mortgage. Enter the madness: the sudden sense of time pressure, digging through documents to get the right papers, sudden immersion in the world of mortgage brokers and lending and financing and credit checks. The adrenalin grew, I still wasn’t sleeping, or eating really, and going at a much faster pace than I like. We stayed up late a few nights crunching numbers, looking at pros and cons, planning and dreaming, and not sleeping. We then went to bed to not sleep.

And I’m going to stop there and continue writing tomorrow or maybe the day after – just depends on my energy.

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