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December 10th, 2009

alara_r

12:02 pm - Kono utsukushii midori na chikyuu wa atashi no mono ni narimasu yo! Okay, perhaps "this beautiful green earth will soon be mine" may be overstating the case, but at the very least, the house next door will soon be mine. Yatta! (Or as Dora would say, "Lo hicimos!") See, I live in half a duplex (a house that has been divided in half to be two houses, common in big cities). I have four kids, and four cats, and a husband, and a housemate, and maybe another housemate in a little while because my sister-in-law needs a place to stay, and I own stuff. And I live in a city. We bought the place when we had three kids because it had a big yard and, during the height of the real estate bubble, it was barely within our price range, and it was in a decent school area, which in a city is not easy to come by. But the overcrowding has been painful to deal with. No longer! For twice the price, we will have twice the house. When we bought the current house, I wasn't working, and my credit sucked, so my name is not on the title. So this house is being bought with my credit, my salary, and *my* name only on the title -- it's intended to be a primary residence, but Tom, since he owns our current house, could only have bought it as an investment property, with so much money down that we couldn't have managed it. I have no intention of using this thing as an investment property -- I'm gonna *live* here. And also in the house next door, the one I live in right now. But mostly in the new house, because it has never undergone rounds of lead abatement that ripped it to shreds and didn't get properly restored afterward, and it does not have cats (and it will not have cats; they will be restricted to the other house. We'll see if my breathing improves.) It's taken since April, because the house was being sold as a short sale. (Short sales take months and months and months. The "short" doesn't refer to the timing; it means the owner is selling for less than he owes the bank, and therefore needed bank approval, which takes forever to get.) But we got the approvals back, so we are moving forward at last! Hopefully we'll close on it and move half our stuff into it mid-January. I didn't mention that it has a hot tub, did I? And three stories of deck? Our house has a huge yard; the house next door has no yard. But three stories of deck and a hot tub. Woot!

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