condos

I am looking for a new home, and my current condo is for sale. This means I get a lot of mail from people who want to be my new friend. Thanks, but I already have a realtor, a mortgage broker, insurance, a mover, an attorney... and lots of stress. What I don't have is a cleaning lady, but I've decided it would just add more stress for me to figure out how and when to get her into our tiny place, so we (me and my daughter, almost 14) had better just suck it up and clean it ourselves. (My daughter still does not fully understand that cleaning actually involves effort. Apparently she thinks that holding a spray bottle in one hand and a rag in the other for a few seconds, making wiping motions at random, is cleaning.)

Earlier this week I made an offer on Pricey Condo, an elegant place that was really way out of my price range, but I loved the location. I didn't think I could find anything cheaper in such an ideal spot. Somewhat to my amazement, in this slow month in a slow market, I was outbid by someone else who offered for the same property on the same day. I felt strangely relieved by this. I really liked the apartment, and I could have afforded it if I made some changes, not really terribly painful ones, but as I said to my realtor, "I love having disposable income." And I do. I am not extravagant, but I buy any CD I happen to want. If I find something nice at the consignment shop or the J.Jill outlet, I don't think twice. I buy organic food, good coffee, brown eggs fortified with omega-3's, and environmentally friendly dishwasher detergent that actually works as well as Cascade. These things satisfy me, they are not cheap, and I don't want to give them up.

So yesterday I went to see Thrifty Condo. Afterwards I told my daughter that this condo is sort of like going to the art supply store and buying the blank canvas. Aesthetically it offers nothing -- other than potential. Ironically, it's in the same neighborhood as Pricey Condo. Walk to everything, including the train station I most need access to in order to make real improvements in my heavily car-dependent commuting habits. Surrounded by historic homes on quiet blocks. Enough one-way streets and dead ends nearby to really keep the traffic down. But seriously, it's the homeliest damn condo... crummy wall-to-wall carpeting, original bathroom fixtures from the late 60's, a cheap kitchen update that's now 20 years old including the ugliest microwave oven I have ever seen. Even the air conditioners are ugly (but there's one in every room!).

On the other hand, the building has both a management company and a maintenance man. Living as I currently do in a self-managed building with no on-call repair services, this sounds like heaven to me. In fact, I can honestly report that when I heard the magic words "maintenance man," my heart leapt for joy.

So I am looking into estimates for wood flooring, and I'm going to take my daughter, who's an aspiring chef, to consult with me on what might be done about the kitchen. I suspect we will put our money in those two spots for now and live with the bathrooms as they are. In another 20 years perhaps those plumbing fixtures will be vintage... or even chic.