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June 2, 2008

So, condo ()

by fluffy at 12:20 AM
I haven't had a lot to talk about on here but I guess I should mention that I just put an offer on a condo in Bernal Heights and the sellers accepted my offer. Woo. Closing is in two months (by the seller's request!), which works out great for me since that means I only have a month and a half of double-housing and plenty of time to prepare my savings accounts for the $53K hit that's about to happen to them, assuming none of the contract contingencies happen (e.g. inspection failure or whatever).

It's a very awesome place, by the way. It's on Mission and Virginia (basically the border between Mission and Bernal Heights), and is huge - about 1025 square feet, with a parking space included. Gigantic living room, two large bedrooms, a nice bathroom, a HUGE kitchen (recently-remodeled), and a nice balcony with a great view of the shared back yard. It's also amazingly quiet. Even with the windows and balcony door open you can't hear the street at all.

Also, hardwood throughout (real hardwood for most if it, and decent-but-not-wonderful photolaminate in the kitchen which I will probably replace with bamboo eventually).

Another nice thing is it's about 3 miles from work and is decently bikeable, with actual bike lanes for most of it and flat streets. It's also not too far from a BART station, although a BART-based commute would probably be slower than biking. I might get a Vespa also.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about this. I've been getting pretty sick of this cramped, badly-laid-out, overpriced apartment lately.

Comments

#10939 06/02/2008 06:25 am
Sounds awesome. Kinda makes me wish I had a bigger place, though I wouldn't give up my 0.9-mile walk to work for it.

If I had a spare bedroom, one of them would look like this.
#10940 06/02/2008 10:50 am
Yeah, I was hoping to keep my 0.5mi walk to work but a 3mi bike ride isn't so bad. At least I won't have to take Caltrain or get a car or whatever.
#10944 06/05/2008 07:42 am
Ah, the joys of living in the midwest.

4BR, 2.5ba, 2800 sq ft (including the basement) 2 story house on 13000sq. ft. of land for 200k. We've not only got a spare bedroom, but my wife and I have seperate home offices. 600 sq ft theatre in the basement along with 800 feet of storage Smile

On the other hand, there is that 20 mi commute to work. But it only takes 20 minutes.
#10945 06/05/2008 08:54 am
Yeah but what's your walk score?

Meanwhile, yesterday I had all the inspections and appraisal and so on. It's in good shape, aside from some termite damage on the balcony, which needs to be replaced (and a little bit in the garage which is reparable). Not a huge deal (or unexpected, since termites are very common here and the balcony is 28 years old and wasn't built with pressure-treated wood). Also, the balcony is quite ugly anyway so this gives me an excuse to do some simple renovations. I'd probably just replace the floor with pressure-treated wood and then do some open slats for the sides (rather than the current ugly closed wood paneling), since I think I'd like that better than, say, a poured concrete floor and metal slat barriers.

Fortunately, the balcony is deeded (rather than an LCA like it was on my Seattle condo) so I don't need HOA approval. Of course, the upstairs neighbors' balcony is also rotten and so the damage is being reported to the HOA (both for the garage and the neighbors) since it needs to be addressed.