from the desk of stinkpot

our housing search has finally come to an end. hooray! in a couple of months, we’ll be living in the building pictured above.

i’m rather pleased with how things ultimately turned out. christina and i snagged a unit in an artists’ community called Brickbottom, across the tracks in somerville. it’s been a bit of a fairy-tale ending in fact; several months ago, we’d seen the building and thought out loud how cool it would be to live there. the building is a former cannery / factory – it’s full of these gorgeous lofts with entire walls of windows and tall ceilings. being from new york city, we’d always dreamt of living in a loft, but understood that affording one required a pact with the devil (like becoming an i-banker).

turns out that you don’t need to sell your soul to afford a loft. instead, the following helps a lot:

• living in boston (ok, sorta like giving up your soul). although expensive by national standards, real estate here is still not nearly as insane as in new york.
• buying on literally, the other side of the tracks. the neighborhood isn’t crime-ridden or anything – it’s more like there isn’t a neighborhood at all. instead, there’s a bus depot, recycling plant, and towing company nearby. blighted is a good adjective.
• a slowly deflating housing bubble. the seller had bought this condo as an investment a couple of years back. today, his mortgage payments are higher than the rent his tenant pays.
• a space that’s a bit rough around the edges. the 18-year old kitchen is hopelessly shabby, the floors are all concrete, and we need to tear down a couple of partition walls.

yikes. as unappealing as all of that sounds, we thought the loft was still worth it. we get:

• a thousand square feet of space (about 200 more than we could afford in cambridge).
• a top-floor unit with a freaking skylight, a 20-foot stretch of 6 foot-tall windows, and 10-foot ceilings. the place gets absolutely beautiful light.
• to live only a 5-minute bike ride from “bustling” cambridge st. and a 10-minute ride from school.
• lots of freedom, since only the four perimeter walls are load-bearing. partitioning rooms the way we want them to look + feel is fun.

dragging ourselves to about 50 open houses and house viewings was a bit painful, but i’m thinking it was worth it.

we’ve postponed our big celebration for now, however, as we still haven’t completely slain the home-buying dragon. we’re still not sure when we’re even moving in – the current renter in the unit has up until august to leave. (we’ve agreed w/ the seller, though, that every month’s delay will translate into a purchase price reduction.) in the meantime, we’ve still got to find a real estate attorney, get a home inspection performed, and hammer out the details of our mortgage plan. it’s still a bit overwhelming, but i’m sure that in the end, true love will triumph over good.

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