housing: potential is not actual, #1 and #2 in a series

[jazzfish]

A few weeks ago we saw a place that we liked enough to put in a bid on. Sadly, we got outbid: foiled by the selling agent's utter apathy and incompetence, which caught our agent Rhonda by surprise. (A sample: when you're selling a condo there are certain documents you're supposed to have available, such as strata bylaws, council minutes, a depreciation report if one exists, a list of recent or upcoming major work on the building, that kind of thing. Dude had none of those, and in fact said to Rhonda "hey... i see you bought a unit in this building earlier this year, so you must have copies of the strata documents, can i have those?") I'm still a little bitter about that but mostly over it. The bylaws technically only allowed for one cat, and it looked out over an occasionally busy street so noise would have still been an issue. Oh well.

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Earlier this week I walked the couple of blocks from work to take a look at another unit. It was ... questionable on the inside: awful paint and wallpaper, some old water damage, and carpet and applicances that look like they went in with the building thirty years ago. (The microwave over the stove has big clicky pushbuttons and no turntable.) I liked the layout, though, and the roof deck, and the fact that it cut my commute by an order of magnitude.

Last night uilos and Rhonda and I went out for a closer look. Rhonda pointed out a number of things that basically amount to "this is a fantastic investment property": the roof deck has a great view of downtown and the mountains, the location is spectacular and will only get better in 5-10 years when the Broadway skytrain line comes in, and the cosmetic damage can be dealt with for substantially less than the likely appreciation value of the property. They both noted some additional hopefully-old-and-only-cosmetic damage. uilos also pointed out the lack of storage space, and the tininess of the kitchen, which I had missed in my amazement at the thirty-year-old appliances.

uilos was understandably not thrilled with the prospect of having to do, or pay someone to do, an awful lot of work on the place. I wasn't happy with that myself, but the fact that the layout worked so well, together with the commute, meant I spent much of the evening trying to talk her into it. We went round a bit, and realised that the strata claimed to have a gas line running to it so the useless wood fireplace could probably be retrofitted to gas after all, and decided to sleep on it.

This morning she said "I've been thinking about it and I can make everything work except the kitchen. There's no possible way to get enough space in there."

I thought about it for a few seconds and said "Crap. You're right."

The unit's a townhouse, which as near as I can tell is Canadian for "apartment with stairs." The floorplan shows two levels but each of those is cut in half by a three- or four-step flight. One of these semi-levels consists of the kitchen, dining room, and balcony. There's no way to make the kitchen any bigger without cutting into the middle of the dining room, and there's no way to get additional counterspace or cabinet-space or pantry-space without embiggening the kitchen.

It is, I am telling myself, just as well. I'd really rather not spend down my entire retirement savings to date on making my house livable, and I'm not 100% sold on the area. And in spite of the cosmetic damage we'd almost certainly get outbid anyway.

Be nice to not have to look at places anymore, though.

Comments

[green_knight]

Our kitchen has three extensions. It's a galley kitchen, housing a sink, a washing machine with a counter over, a stove, and a small cabinet with working surface (narrower and shallower than a standard kitchen cabinet). We have a narrow hanging cabinet that holds tableware and a few food staples. On the other side are a bin for onions and potatoes, food and general waste bins, and a couple of shelves for spices and a bread bin.

It's crowded with one person, and intimate with two.

But this is the kitchen this flat comes with, and short of major building works, we're stuck with it. In the corridor next to the kitchen, we have a narrow shelf (on casters) that holds all of our pots and pans. In the bedroom, we have a narrow cabinet that holds the wok and all kinds of food you want to keep out of the potential reach of mice. On the other end of the corridor are the fridge, the freezer, and more storage for staples.

Do I wish for a larger kitchen? Hell, YES. But it's not actually horribly laid out, or terribly inconvenient as long as both users of it are comfortable squeezing past each other, and as long as you're reasonably tidy.

So it's doable. Not great, but if a place really sang to me, I'd put up with an arrangement like this again.

[jazzfish]

Oof. I am impressed by your workarounds! It sounds quite doable, if not pleasant.

It's that "if a place really sang to me" part. This ... is not quite that. Certainly not immediately, and (to be honest) only maybe after a year and a lot of work and money.

It's mostly the frustration of "what do you mean there are things that can't be fixed by throwing more time and money at them", coupled with uncertainty about whether we'll even find a place at all.

[wohali]

Still dreading this potential move to Vancouver. At present if it goes through the plan may well be "keep the Toronto house and just rent something small in Vancouver until the job goes away." That said I am having multiple panic attacks about relocation, so perhaps we won't do the move anyway. Who can say at this point?

I'll be out for an interview on the 7th but probably won't have time to meet up, but I'll wave in your general direction while I'm there ;)

[jazzfish]

Oof. :( Panic attacks are No Fun. *tea* *hug if appropriate* I hope it works out well, whatever that might mean.

Enjoy your superfast trip through the San Francisco of Canada! :) And feel free to ping me should you discover you've got time.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Pity. But, yeah. "Kitchen" is basically a dealbreaker. Almost everything else can be worked around one way or another, but if you don't have a kitchen you can work in, then you either have to be a person whose lifestyle includes eating out 100% of the time, or it's just plain not gonna be doable.

[jazzfish]

Exactly! Add to it that we've got, you know, a decade's worth of accumulated Kitchen Stuff, because we use the kitchen. And the greater majority of it gets used at least a couple of times a month.

I really did not expect the kitchen to be a dealbreaker anywhere. We don't require a huge kitchen! Just one that's big enough for one person comfortably and with either a pantry or cabinets that are capable of storing food. But then I also didn't expect Vancouver to have quite so many "master bedrooms" that won't fit a queen-sized bed plus a dresser.