little bitty girl

Not that we're really looking, but I like to know what's out there on the market. So every so often, I troll onto the online real estate listings to see what is out there in my world. This is usually what happens.

Me: God! Don't people watch "Sell This House"? At least wash your dishes before letting the real estate guy take pictures!

Me: Hmmm....that's what they call a backyard? It's a vegetable patch!

Me: Why do people need 5 bathrooms and only 3 bedrooms? How does that work?

Me: ooooo....This is a possibility. We would have to fix the kitchen and and bathrooms though, so eighties.... but it'll be a good fixer upper.

Stefan: Karen! Are you not looking at prices again? For $2.8 million, we shouldn't have to fix anything!

OOOPSIES!

That's the gist of the real estate woes that we've been experiencing in Toronto for the past 5 years. With the city expanding so quickly, real estate has just sky rocketed so unless you're willing to do major renovations or live in the suburbs, it's not possible to find a decent small starter home for under $500,000.

We sometimes contemplate living in the suburbs but we really don't think we could do it. If we're going to live in a city, we have to live in the city. We contemplate doing renos like what many of our friends are doing, but I remember just putting the two walls up in our loft and what a pain it was. We're not very handy. Sure, we can build walls but being able to do the plumping, concrete pouring, and wiring? Not a clue. What I want to know is how our friends, who are all mostly young professionals learnt how to do all that? Was there some memo to take classes that we missed?

Our requirements seem simple - an older house with interesting architectural details, some garden space and accessible to the downtown core. I think we'd have better luck winning the lottery. I know at some point, we're going to have to compromise our wants and needs for a home, if we want to live here.

Right now, my ideal home is this -

A converted, 12th century fort in Italy. Stefan says it'll be hard considering we don't speak Italian and have no idea of what we would do for work but I say, if you're gonna dream, you gotta dream big....

So here's to dreams. Happy Friday!