On The Move

So we are closing on our house on Thursday. Yay! We are super excited while extremely anxious at the same time.

We currently live on the third floor of a 6-unit condo building. And while it has been a fine place for these two years, carrying groceries up the stairs and taking the dog up and down the stairs all day long has become strenuous on my arms and tedious on my mind. We weren't really seriously looking but I was browsing realtor.com one day this past spring and saw this one house nearby was having an open house. We weren't busy that Sunday and we ended up stopping by. We absolutely fell in love with it. It was larger than the normal teeny Chicago lots and had a front, side and backyard -perfect for the dog. It had a large master bedroom (with !organized closets! - my favorite thing ever - seriously. If I could marry California Closets I would.) and three smaller bedrooms. Now four bedrooms seems like two bedrooms too many but the "fourth" bedroom is really so small it can't be used for anything but a nursery or office. Downstairs there is a combo living room/dining room and then a large kitchen that blends into the family room. Everything is very open and there is lots of light. So we really just fell in love with every space that this house had and really could see ourselves living in every part of it. So all of a sudden we were in the housing market. Once we realized that we were serious we ended up talking with a real estate agent and seeing about 15 other houses. But nothing compared with the first.

So the day has almost arrived when that house is going to be ours. We close at noon on Thursday and all the blessings and headaches of owning an actual home will belong to us.

The major problem and reason why our anxiety level fluctuates is that our current condo has been on the market since late April and still hasn't sold. Now, we both entered into this knowing that the housing market is SLOW right now and that it will take a while to sell. But I think we were both secretly hoping and maybe actually believing that our place would have sold by now. I have cleaned the toliets in our condo more in the past three months in preparation for open houses and showings than I ever did while we lived here. (Not that we are gross and don't clean, it's just not something I normally do every two or three days.)

The condo is in a fantastic location. Half a block away from the main street of Andersonville, which is filled with restaurants, bars and boutique-y shops. But as our realtor pointed out to us the other day, there are 18 other two bed/two bath condos in our area that are also for sale. Ugh. The real problem is that we don't have parking. There are four garages and an open space for our building tenants, but there are given out on seniority. Usually street parking is really not that bad. No, you won't usually be able to park right in front of the building but not too far away (well, unless it's a weekend night). But everyone now wants an actual garage.

So, we are keeping our fingers crossed and figure the perfect owner will come around eventually (hopefully sooner vs. later) If anyone knows anyone in the market for a nice condo in the Chicago area, look us up! Meanwhile, I am going to concentrate on our new digs and prepare to move.