Further to Being a Hypocrite

Over a year ago, we moved into a small space - a 600 square foot basement suite.

Having done that, I can report it's been mostly a success, but required some tweaks moving forward. These are things we didn't really think about at the start, but which became apparent over the last thirteen months.

We've become spoiled over the years, and there are some creature comforts that have joined the "must have" list when we looked for our next home..

1. Sheltered parking for the car. The street just won't cut it anymore.
2. More light. While this is a really bright place for a basement suite, it's not bright enough. Especially in the winter.
3. Another bedroom. While we can get by with only one room, it's a pain to have someone sleep in your living room when they stay over. I'm sure this limits the number of invitations we give, and the acceptances we receive. Our friends are a bit old for couch surfing.
4. While I'm willing to live off the kindness of neighbors, Laura isn't. She wants room to have people over for dinner and to entertain. Fair enough.

And that's really about it. Everything else - the down sizing process especially - has been fantastic. We now know that we can certainly live in a small space and not kill each other, and there is far, far less junk in our lives.

I said at the outset that chances were good we would rent for the duration. But, in addition to Laura looking all the time for our next suite, I read an article in the New York Times that did a very good job of quantifying the rent versus buy equation. Never one to stick to my beliefs when new information comes to my attention,  I went through this multiple times. I adjusted all the variables I could - conservatively and aggressively - and came up with a range of rental numbers to fit our lifestyle (I also took into account the US mortgage interest tax relief, something we don't share).

In the end, Laura and I found that any rental property in the area that we would live in (taking into account the four "must haves"), was priced significantly higher than any place we could buy. So the search started for homes to buy, rather than to rent. There's many, many more that fall into this category.

The floorplan up top is the place we bought. 11th floor of a high-rise. Move-in date is July 15.