Leahs Cafe

The lease for our current rental is due end of May, the landlord wants to know whether we are going to renew the lease. We have decided to move out of this one hundred years old house to a newer house that has more modern facilities, and have been looking at other rental properties. Rental for this newer apartments is so much more expensive! We are battling whether to continue to  pay rental. It doesn’t make much sense to continue to rent when property prices and mortgage rate are at their low. It cost almost the same to rent vs to buy (mortgage plus property tax plus association due)

So, we told the landlord that we would not renew the lease, but would stay on a month to month basis until we find a place to move.  T’s cousin is a real estate broker, she has been helpful to get us some listings and show us around. She also got us in touch with a lender to start a pre-approval process, so we know how much loan we are qualified.

We have been looking at a couple of single family homes and townhouses. We are amazed how the prices have dropped in the last six months or so. Many of this houses are bank-owned or in the process of being foreclosed.

We were looking at a  3 split level end unit  townhouse on Thursday. They are 2-stall garage at the ground level, one bedroom  and bathroom on each level, kitchen, fireplace and living room on the first level,  family room on the second level and a full basement!!

Front of the house shows the garage and front door.

Living room and fireplace on the first level.

Kitchen on the first level, comes with cabinet and fully equipped with appliances i.e. refrigerator, oven, stove, dish washer, garbage disposal and microwave oven.

Full bath on the second level. They are 2 full bath and one half  bath in this house!

Guess how much is this house listed for? It has been listed since July 2008 and current list price is $129,900. Since it’s a short sale (the bank owns the property), T’s cousin thinks we can offer around 100k. We are sitting on the decision to make an offer, may continue to look at more houses before we do that!

Our necks must have getting longer looking forward to the arrival of spring! In the middle of March, we have beautiful spring weather for two days, then cold rain and wind chill for the next two weeks! Then, first week of April, beautiful spring weather, again for three days, when the weatherman said it was going to snow again, many people felt like straggling him!
We are in the 70-80s F (21-27 Celsius) since Thursday, I think the warmer weather is going to stay, finally!!

The weather started getting crappy since my arrival here in the end of September. While T goes out to work , I am mostly  stuck at home, too lazy to bundle up and brave through the cold wind to go out. I get my fix of shopping and store runs when T gets off work or on his days off, we will drive out of town.

While we are glad spring is finally around the corner and had a wonderful spring like week in the middle of March, alas it’s back to cold and rainy days after one week. Looks like cold weather still roaming and lingering around!!

Can’t wait for the day we can switch off  the heating  to arrive!  It will be quite lovely to open the windows to let fresh air and sun to come in!!