Searching For A Home

It has started. The viewing of potential houses to rent and call home. There are very slim pickings here in our little village, so with each house we view comes the question of if we decide against it, whether or not something better - or something else at all - will come around. Today we went to see a house that we had spoken to the landlord a few weeks ago. We had high hopes for it. The timing of the availability was right, the price was high but still within our budget,it was in a good location, and most importantly it was available for a long term lease so we could be guaranteed not to have to move again soon. But it wasn't really what we had hoped. It is small. Very small. The house we live in now is already very small and this one was even smaller. The only way it could work is if the 2 girls who share a bedroom (currently Kiah and Anja, though that can be changed as needed) would agree to bunk beds. We might be able to get Anja to go with a bunk (she would be automatically assigned the top by default of age) but even then it would be a tight squeeze for a teenager and a 7 year old. Fine for two younger kids, but teens just take up more space than the littles do. It's not just their bodies that get bigger. But in a pinch we could make due.

The question is - are we in a pinch or not? There is one other house that we know of currently that is on the same street that we lived on 2 houses ago. We have an appointment on Monday morning to look at it, and I am really hoping that it will be a clearly better option for us so that we can agree to it and have this settled. We need to let the landlord from the house we looked at today know by Thursday evening if we want it. She has 4-5 other parties interested in it. We were the first to contact her so we get first refusal. But that she has so many people asking on a house that was just listed last week makes us really nervous. We've included surrounding areas in our search knowing that it will be hard to find something in our village and even then we aren't finding much at all. Landlords are selling right and left because they are running into financial troubles of their own and needing to free up assets (which is what happened with ours) and that means that there is a glut of people being thrust into the pool looking for a place to rent. It's not a market in favor of the renter at all.

If we were going to be here all summer and able to look at houses that come available in July we might not feel so pressed, but the timing of coming back at the end of July and being up against the clock in finding a place to live is not at all appealing. But then again, neither is the idea of committing to a house that is not right for us out of desperation.

Keep your fingers crossed that the right choice is clear to us when it comes. And that the right choice makes itself known soon.