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 ⇐   November 15th, 2009   ⇒ 

Copyright 2009 Michael Anttila

This weekend Angela and I decided to go to a couple of open houses, just for fun. There were two houses that we had our eyes on, and coincidentally both of them had open houses on the same day. Both houses were very different, although they both had one thing in common: They were too expensive.

The first one (MLS #0937871) was a rather large century home in Elmira that had a huge wraparound addition added to it. It is always difficult to get a real sense of what a house is like just by reading spec sheets, so it was very interesting to go and check this one out. It was huge! Plus, the additions were sort of stuck on all around the outside of the original home, so the interior was a maze of passageways between old and new. It had two furnaces, which was something I haven't seen before. The master bedroom is off the kitchen, and because there is a pool in the backyard, there isn't really room for anything else back there... such as, you know, grass or anything else that you would consider a "yard".

Anyway, while it was amusing to explore, we decided that it would be insanity for the two of us to move into a 6 bedroom house. I also decided that I didn't want to spend every minute of my free time cleaning, which is what I would have to do with a house that big. To cleanse our palates, we headed off to the other open house. I thought it would be nice to see a really nice house... something to aspire to.

The second house (MLS #0937176) was located in the Old Beechwood area of town, which is right beside the University of Waterloo, in the neighbourhood where all the professors live. It was a nice house and all... but that's pretty much it. Just nice. It was about the right size for us (assuming we are going to have kids to fill the other bedrooms), had a finished basement, decent sized rooms, and a nice little pool in the back for Angela, plus some grass left over too. However, it didn't strike me as being worth over three quarters of a million dollars. In fact, I wager that if the house was in my neighbourhood, it would list for less than half a million. Spending an extra $300,000 just to be in a good location seems a little extreme to me.

Anyway, we decided that neither of those homes qualify as our "dream home", so the search continues. I feel a little snobbish for turning up my nose at such expensive homes, but I'm quite sure that our dream home is out there, and that it is around the $500,000 range, and is in a decent neighbourhood, too. It's just a matter of finding it.

Technical details: This photo was taken with my Sony Ericsson K790a at 5.2mm, ISO 80, f/2.8 for 1/40th of a second.

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