Crazy days
Well, time has been absolutely flying by, and I have been very remiss with my communications of late! Its hard to believe that I am coming up on the fourth week in my new job already, and we're shortly about to embark on some more craziness, moving house.

So, life in the city has been a lot of fun so far. We found a nice little furnished apartment, with a great view, and settled in there pretty quickly. It is nice and comfortable, and well located, but it is a little small, and - well, I guess a little "corporate"? Thats not really the right description, but it definately feels like temporary accomodation.

So, shortly after moving in there (and the advantage, of course, was that we moved in with just a couple of suitcases), we started to look around at other accomodations. My first thought was that, in the property market, now would probably be a good time to buy. Interest rates were low, there were some great discounts being offered on top of that (I had an entire 1/4% discount lined up), and property prices are still dropping - when places sell at all.

Being slightly OCD, I of course analysed and planned and researched this all to the hilt, but the bottom line was, I came up with a number that gave us affordable payments (just!), and would allow us to find "something" in the right area. That area is known as "SOMA" (South of Market), and one of my requirements was that I should be able to walk to work. That put a pretty decent sized area within reach, and with a list of several dozen places, Jenny started visiting, analysing, and crossing places off our list.

As the fates always decree, no matter what budget you set yourself, you always wish for more. We pretty quickly decided that the "corporate-condo" places, like the one we are in now, didn't really suit us, and we also eliminated those that didn't have parking (a pity, because that could easily make a $100k difference in price!) What we were really leaning towards was the "loft" style, or at least, something in the converted-industrial style. After much deliberation, we narrowed our choices down to three. When I have time I will add links to those, but basically, none of them quite suited us - either too expensive, or not quite right (or in one case, perfectly priced, but stinking of urine!)

The problem with buying in this market is, because sales are few and far between, it is hard to make a good estimate. Many of the places we looked at were "valued" at the right price for us, but the asking price on those hadn't come down. The ones that were dropping in price, were usually the ones that didn't quite suit us. Sods law...

So, after a couple of exhausting weeks of that, we decided to put the purchase on hold, and find a rental place instead. That turned out to be a good decision, as we were suddenly spoiled for choice - the rental price budget we had allowed us to look at all the types of places that were just a bit too much for us to buy. We quickly had a short-list of 4 potential lofts, and managed to line them up to visit all of them in one day.

Now, Jenny is an easy-going girl, and I am the difficult one (who would have imagined it? :-> ), but I discovered an easy way to make decisions like this. As i had done my homework pretty well, each of the places we saw would have "worked". But as we walked into the third place, Jenny's face lit up, and she looked like a kid in a candy store. Decision made!

Jenny and I had actually seen the building before - in fact, we walked past, and I said "What on earth is that - Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory?" This picture doesn't do it justice, we'll post some better ones shortly:




We move in next weekend - real moving this time, as it is unfurnished. But this time, we're going to try and keep the minimalist thing going, and avoid the clutter that tends to build up where ever we go! ;^>