House for sale?

Us walking down our street in Brooklyn, New York. August 2012. Photo by Jenna.

I started this post last month, but then life got busy and the post languished in the drafts folder... Time to bring out the defibrillator paddles to revive it.

So a month ago, we received a 60-day notice from the management of our Minneapolis apartment, which at that time was really a 90-day notice, since we signed a 13-month lease. But since it's a month later, we have less than 60 days now, basically we have to move out by February 1st, 2014. The owners of our unit [a company] have most likely put our apartment on the market by now. We were already offered the chance to purchase the apartment a few months ago, but turned them down. It's not really up to our standards, so while we're perfectly okay with renting, it's not a place we would buy. There's a chance that we might be able to keep renting our current place month to month, assuming the apartment doesn't sell, but we've decided that since we'll be in Minnesota for the next few years, it makes more financial sense to buy a house. So for the past month, we have been house hunting, not just in Minneapolis, but also in St. Paul, and the surrounding suburbs of Edina, St. Louis Park and Golden Valley.

We've already met with a mortgage broker, and figured out our budget. I had to pull up documents and records on our New York apartment, which made me feel strangely nostalgic, hence the photo. Our preconceived notions of real estate prices in Minnesota were skewed, buying a nice house here isn't as inexpensive as we expected... we've seen around 15 to 20 houses so far, and nothing has really spoken to us. We're going to see more houses tomorrow though, so fingers crossed that we find our dream home!