Looking for a place to call home

While scouting the southeast fringe of Vancouver for condo bargains this week with the wife, my mind has often flip-flopped between first-home-buyer's pride and resentment at the painful realities of buying in a hot market (I touched on this subject in a recent post).

The apartments we saw were small; nearly as small as the various bachelor pads I'd rented in my wandering youth and far smaller than the roomy dwellings of our parents.

On returning home this evening, I imagined how the floor plan of both condos we'd viewed would fit easily within the backyard of our current residence (which my in-laws have generously rented to us on exceedingly reasonable terms). Actually, I think one of the apartments would have fit neatly within the little stretch of concrete my brother-in-law uses alternately as a basketball court and street-hockey rink.

Of course, those tiny condos are going for prices that I still can't quite get my mind around. Part of my brain is still operating on the Winnipeg, 1990s-era real-estate pricing program (I'm aware that the market in my hometown has risen recently, but I suspect it's light years behind Vancouver).

Fortunately, we don't need that much space, just starting out on the long journey of married life.

And we can at least hope that rapid price increases in the market will begin to work in our favor after we break into it. A few years and gobs of inflated equity later, we'll be able to transfer our debt into a space big enough for us to not actually hear eachother breathe.

We've got a few more places to look at tomorrow, a little closer to central Vancouver - where we'd like to be.

I'm excited at it all. In a few weeks or months, we may be in a home of our own. It might not be much, but at least it will be ours.

The search continues...

tags: Vancouver real estate, condo, apartment, house hunting, equity, break into the market