You may remember that we were encouraged--a big word which here means poked enthusiastically in the gluteal region with a sharpened stick--to buy a house because apartments in our building, which were renting for $849 when we signed our lease, are currently going for $1449.

Regulations state that a landlord must give a tenant 90 days notice before raising rent, but that doesn't apply to us, because the end of our lease is the end of any contract between us and the landlord, and they can offer anything they like for a new lease.

We assumed that that rate would be pretty much around $1449, with a couple of hundred knocked off for good behaviour. We've been pretty good. I've only drilled large holes in the walls and ceiling where strictly necessary.

I was a little surprised, then, when I found a very apologetically-worded notice on the floor this week, explaining about rising costs this and rental market that.

I was even more surprised when I flipped to the second page and discovered that they want to raise our rent fifty bucks for the next year.

Oh well. We had to buy a house anyhow--we'd have been priced out of the market six months from now.

We bought a house! This house!



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It looks like we'll have to buy a house sooner than expected. Currently the rent on our apartment is $849 a month, but yesterday Kyle let me know that our suites are currently renting for $1249. And that's now. What will it be like in October, when our lease is up?

It doesn't make sense to pay $1300 in rent. And if we did that, we certainly wouldn't be able to save for a downpayment. Or anything else.

The first step is to see a mortgage broker and find out what's available to us, and what we could find in that range. It seems stupid to buy when prices are so high, but I don't think they're going down anytime soon. Plateau maybe.

( In better news, my replacement computer arrived this week. )