The dilemma

Do we choose the 40-year-old brick house that is rich in character, well maintained, and is nestled into woods on a professionally landscaped lot that backs up to National Park land? The house is full of stained wood and very cozy and the yard is all plants, flowers, trees. No grass.

It has hard wood floors, custom cabinets, kitchen counters with tile hand made by a local craftsman, an incredible deck, and a beautiful stone patio. It has a finished walkout basement with a family room, library, and bedroom. It comes with a 42-inch plasma TV.

What it doesn't have is room for a table in the kitchen, all three bedrooms on one level, or a lot of storage (for Christmas decorations, camping gear, tools, extra dishes, etc).  It only has a one car garage, a problem for E, who is not comfortable parking cars outside. We'd have to rent a storage unit  and downsize, experiment with different furniture arrangements to see what would make the house work, and sacrifice some conveniences. The setting and neighborhood are so fabulous, it almost seems worth it.

The second house is practically new, and it's a classic modern colonial with a two-car garage. Spacious, bright and airy with 9 foot ceilings, a gourmet kitchen (double ovens, cooktop, counter bar, etc), a big breakfast room, an adjoining family room with a wall of transomed windows and gas logs in the fireplace, a full fledged laundry room with a folding table (woo hoo!), a full basement, and four perfectly proportioned bedrooms, and a big jetted tub in the master bath, sinks for both kids in the other upstairs bath.

What's not to love? The setting. The neighborhood is devoid of trees and mature landscaping and when you step into the small backyard you have an unobstructed view of every house's backyard on the street. No trees outside the windows, no place "natural" to rest one's eyes. A perfect house--a crappy lot and a small deck I'd never want to sit on because it feels more like a stage for the neighbors to view than anything else.

So can we suck up the storage and parking issues in the other house and make it work for us in exchange for a gorgeous natural setting or do we go for a house that will meet all our short and long term needs for space, storage, and modern amenities, but will never feed our love of the outdoors?

And did I mention we met with the mortgage guy and the financing might be tricky not because our credit isn't fine but because we won't be occupying the house as our primary residence until next summer? If we say we're going to rent it out, it becomes an "investment property" and probably won't be financed. We already own one home so we have to package this financing as a loan for a second home and it's a bit whack. And of course, we'll have to be making mortgage payments on this house long before we get to be free of our rent payments in Belgium.

Are y'all confused, anxious, excited, and thoroughly undecided? You are? Good. Me too. We're in this together.

July 14, 2007

Comments

[bubandpie]

I love a big eat-in kitchen ... but still, I vote for the older home. New neighbourhoods never feel the same, even with top-notch landscaping. And maybe you could look into putting on an addition for an extra bedroom upstairs and a bigger kitchen?

[bubandpie]

Also - the best part about asking for advice is that you find out what you WANT to be told. (Having asked for advice myself today, I am discovering this principle afresh.) This post is set up in such a way that I fell in love with the older home and thus was hopelessly biased against the newer one by the time you got around to describing it. Which tells me that you're stacking the deck here towards the one you really want.