Moving?

I've posted before about our desire to move to a more urban location. It's something I've wanted for years. We lived downtown when Davan was born and I really loved it. I want to be close to Do Jump and Anthony's work and OMSI and everything, really. I want to be able to ride easily to our most frequented locations. I'd hoped to put the house on the market after the holidays.

Why did we end up in the suburbs if I'm an urban type girl and Anthony works downtown? Well, it's money, baby. Here in Portland, it's really expensive to live in close. Even the suburbs are very inflated from other areas, but it's much worse in close. Anthony really wanted a garage for his project car. We both wanted more space. Anthony's family lives in Gresham. Lots of reasons, really.

Now, though, a few things have changed. Anthony no longer has a project car. His focus is more on bikes. We don't use our whole house. Really. We've got a spare room, which is nice for company, but we don't get company all that much, really. We've got a sitting room that is mostly wasted space. We can definitely go smaller. The years of living in a house have proven to Anthony that we are not yard people. We're happy to go outside and enjoy parks and wild spaces. No one in our family likes maintaining the yard. And it shows.

Because of all this, it makes sense for us to get a small two bedroom condo in Portland, closer to downtown. We've been thinking that we can sell our three bedroom, two bath house in a nice suburban location and get a small, two bedroom, one bath condo in a range with a radius of about five miles in inner Portland as a fairly even trade.

We'll, I've had to face some hard facts. It's just not true. Our house is worth less than we thought and, yes, I'd accounted for the fact that the boom is over. Condos are more than we were hoping. Let's just say we had a dollar amount in mind. We'll call it $X. Well, take $X-1/4X and you have the value of our house. Then take $X+1/4X and you have a place that we might be able to make work (although, even then, space for the bikes might be an issue) in our target location.

We've even talked about renting instead of buying. If the rent was enough less, we could save and invest the difference and still be okay for retirement. However, even rentals appear to be more than we can afford. Sad, don't you think?

Plus, moving puts us behind in getting our house paid off (if we opt for buying again), even if we do an across the board trade, really, just due to expense and financing and that's a big goal of Anthony's.

So, it comes down to this. We're probably stuck here. It's not that I don't like our house. I do. I even like having the yard, if someone else were to take care of it, please. Our neighborhood isn't bad. But the sad fact is that we have to do a lot of driving from here. Our latest budget in regards to gas is kind of tight. In order to feel comfortable with all the driving we have to do, I think we have to up that amount. And I have to face facts with yard work. And face that we're a car dependent family when I don't want to be.

Somehow, I need to get to the point that I'm okay with it. And I'm not devastated. But I am disappointed. Sigh.

One more thing, while I'm being brutally honest with myself. I'd hoped that a move would mean new friendship opportunities for both Davan and I. Yeah.