House Browsing

Every once in a while, my husband and I amuse ourselves by pretending that we can afford a house. Not just any house, mind you, I have standards:

1) The house must have at least one more bedroom than we have now. Moving into a place that is the same size as our condo just seems redundant. Also, William will one day need a sibling and that kid will want her or his own bedroom. (hypothetical children are so demanding!)

2) The house must be in Burlington. Sure, I know we can afford a house in Nunavut for six bucks and change, but then I'd have to learn a whole new city. I have such a bad sense of direction that even a quaint inuit village would be intimidating for me to navigate. I'll stick to the place I've lived since I was six, thank you very much. The housing is more, but both my parents and inlaws live here, so we'll save a bundle on babysitters.

3) The house must be just slightly less expensive than the cheapest house in Burlington. And without condo fees.

We've been eyeballing a few properties and even went to the bank this afternoon for a reality check/mortgage consultation. If we buy a house/any deals fall through, I'll post more details, but I'm pretty sure it's a bad carma to tell the entire internet which houses you're looking at. You have to pretend you're not really interested or they'll jack up the price. (I guess, but what do I know about buying and selling realestate? The only place I ever bought was off of my alzeimerish grandmother. Plus I always, always, lose at monopoly).

Just for fun, I looked up the most expensive house listed in Burlington. They're asking 8.5 million, but perhaps we can lowball them?