Most of my life, my family has rented. The house I grew up in was actually the only real house in a trailer park (when my parents were expecting me, the landlady moved out of the house and into a trailer, and rented the house itself to my parents). From there, we moved to a rented half house, from there to a rented whole house. Eventually, my parents bought a townhome, and a few years later, I moved out.
Now, my husband and I want to own our own home for different reasons. Me, I hate being stuck with “landlord beige”. Luckily, the townhouse we’re renting now only has the lame eggshell wall paint (flat, of course, so everything marks it), but the carpet is actually more of a tan. SOOOOO much better than landlord beige! I want to be able to paint walls, buy quality carpet, choose my own washing machine, clothes dryer, oven/stove, dishwasher, maybe even bathtub if finances would permit. Hubs just wants privacy. No maintenance guys having keys to our apartment (though all the maintenance guys here are great and the kind of guys hubs would invite over for coffee if he were the kind of guy that did that sort of thing), a detached so we’re not listening to the neighbors having band practice and they can’t hear hubs crank up the volume on his video games, movies, and music.
We really want to buy, but because of finances, we can’t. Not yet anyway. The housing market hasn’t come down far enough, and the economy gave the bosses a good excuse to not increase our financial situation for a while. I hope that’ll change soon, but since we’re having so many problems with our rental (the building itself), we’re looking to move again and may not be able to buy before we snap. That means hunting for apartments again. Luckily there are some amazing apartments just up the road. They cost a bit more, but they sit on a golf course and have their own little village shopping center right in it! Pizza place, needlework supplies, a bank, post office, and gift shop. Not too shabby!



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