I wrote a bit ago about how much space we use and what we really need. At the time I thought that about 1200 sq feet would be adequate. I’m not really into building a “micro” house. Living in the northeast and freezing my rear off for 9 months out of the year doesn’t lend itself to wanting to be stuck inside an itty bitty space with 2 children, my dog, 2 cats and my husband. Love them all but I need more room than that.
As we’ve been decluttering and getting rid of stuff I am looking around and thinking that if we get to the point I want to arrive at, we most definitely won’t need the amount of space we currently have. This in turn has me looking at and thinking a lot about smaller homes in our area (and elsewhere) and trying to figure out what I really like. In fact, today I was walking at lunch and found a cute little green house for sale. I sent my husband a text to get more info. It’s within walking distance to and from work and had a cute little yard (read: manageable). I almost fell over when he sent me a text saying this “little” house was 2700 sq feet, asking $175k and the taxes were over $9k!! Where are they hiding all that space? It must have a finished basement or something. Ugh. Seriously from the outside this house looked like half of my house and yet it’s actually bigger. Ha!
So I got to thinking that one of my favorite landing places was actually a local apartment complex with an amazing tub, open floor plan and situated in a quiet area where the deer roam so close you could almost hand feed them apples. Believe me, I tried! They only have 2 bedrooms but that’s all we really use right now anyway. Dogs are allowed, although I don’t know what we would do with our kitties. The closets are big enough to hold the clothes I now have since purging although we would have to perhaps combine our 2 dressers into one. My husbands dresser is kind of beat up and old. He can sacrifice…
Of course, we still have a house to contend with. But our long term plan is to move anyway so why not make our goal to downsize to the point where we could sell our house and get an apartment temporarily while we find the house and location of our dreams? We’d save on the cost of rent. We wouldn’t have any repair bills. No lawn to mow. No driveway to plow. Wow, what a dream.
Really though, the more I think about this, the more I think it makes great sense. If you know you want to move but don’t want to be a slave to the housing market, why not sell your house first, get an apartment and then work on getting where you want to go without the pressure of selling your house while a job or another house is waiting for you? Plus, you can save time and money in the process and pay off your debts with the proceeds from the sale. I don’t really see the down side here. Unless your husband likes being a hermit. There’s always that. Well, and there’s the school issue too. But I still think it’s a smashing idea. What do YOU think?
We have been looking at houses for about 2 years now. We have debated putting our house on the market and if it sells before we find another one , moving into an apartment or townhouse. Some of my concerns with doing this is that we would not have the tax deductions that homeownership provides. Even if we saved in monthly housing expenses, I’m not sure it would be equivalent to those deductions. I am not sure I want to move our stuff twice either, although it might help us pare down what we truly need versus what we think we need. We also like to entertain and have a large extended family so any rental would need to have a clubhouse or something similar that we could rent or use for larger gatherings. Just some food for thought.
AFAICT you’ve coevred all the bases with this answer!