A con­do­minium town­house, more specif­i­cally. Two weeks ago I went to the bank, got my credit rat­ing checked, and was pre-approved for a mort­gage at one per­cent below prime (hav­ing no stu­dent loans, no bal­ance on my credit card, no line of credit, no out­stand­ing bills, no debt what­so­ever, comes in handy). I also have a size­able sum of money, left to me by my grand­par­ents through an inheri­nance, which I’m putting towards a down pay­ment. The good thing is that the down pay­ment is more than 25% of the mort­gage, so I won’t have to spend a cou­ple of grand on mort­gage insur­ance alone. Within a few days, I had a real estate agent keep­ing an eye out for prop­er­ties for me. One morn­ing, she sent me the pro­file of a place a lit­tle east of down­town, com­plete with a series of eight pic­tures or so. The place looked great, so I got a view­ing booked that same day.

The house has two floors. The main floor has an eat-in kitchen, pow­der room, din­ing area, and liv­ing room. The lower floor has the mas­ter and sec­ond bed­rooms, a full bath­room, and a stor­age closet. Out back is a lit­tle patio with enough room for a bar­be­cue, and a lawn that can fit enough patio fur­ni­ture for a small gath­er­ing. The pro­file listed six appli­ances included with the house; stove, refrig­er­a­tor, dish­washer, microwave, washer, and dryer. There was only one pre­vi­ous owner, and he was a non-smoker. Everything was clean, solid, new, and, most impor­tantly, com­fort­able. It was a place I could see myself liv­ing at for the next few years, and I had a feel­ing that this was the right one. Even though it was the first place I actu­ally went to go see, I made a bid that evening. At the end of the night, after a bit of nego­ti­a­tion on the pur­chase price, my bid was accepted, and a clos­ing date was set for the mid­dle of March.

In order to pro­tect me, my agent drew up the offer with four con­di­tions; finance, insur­ance, inspec­tion, and approval of sta­tus cer­tifi­cate. I waived the first three con­di­tions within four days. My finances were already approved with the bank, although I did a lit­tle bit of extra nego­ti­at­ing on the rates and saved myself a con­sid­er­able amount of money (based on a 20 year period of todays rates). I also already had a blan­ket insur­ance pol­icy through the condo man­age­ment, and I was sat­is­fied with the house inspec­tion, which found no major problems.

The approval of sta­tus cer­tifi­cate took a lit­tle longer, because I had to review the sta­tus cer­tifi­cate with my lawyer, and there were a few com­pli­ca­tions. The main com­pli­ca­tion was an on going law­suit between the build­ing com­pany and the gov­ern­ment. It turns out that the patios and bal­conies need to be rebuilt because of a mis­take in the mate­ri­als used. If the build­ing com­pany is found at fault, they will be foot­ing the bill for the repairs. If they are not at fault, all condo own­ers in the area will have to pay a con­sid­er­able sum, most likely as an increase in monthly condo fees. I got my lawyer to do a hold­back in trust, for an amount slightly higher than the esti­mated repair cost, with the seller get­ting the resid­ual. My agent got the seller to agree to this (as an amend­ment to the offer of pur­chase), so I won’t have to pay for these repairs no mat­ter what the out­come of the law­suit. The beauty of this is that prop­erty val­ues in the area are expected to increase more than three times the cost of repairs, once the repairs are all done. I waived the final con­di­tion, two days ago, which made the deal firm and binding.

It’s a buy­ers mar­ket right now (no one wants to move in the mid­dle of all this snow), so I got the house at an amaz­ing price. While all of this was hap­pen­ing, my bank did an appraisal, and esti­mated the value to be con­sid­er­ably higher than what I paid for it. On paper, I’ve already cov­ered the cost of land trans­fer tax, lawyers fees, and made enough money to buy car.

I will be able to walk to work. Across the street is a series of plazas, includ­ing a Timmies, a 24-hour Loeb, an M&M Meat Shop, a Wendy’s, a McDonalds, and a Pizza Hut. Right out­side my door, not more than a ten sec­ond walk, is the bus stop for the #2, which can be taken down­town all the way to the west end where I am now. I’ll also have a park­ing spot, which I’ll try to rent out to some­one in the area with two cars. My monthly condo fees cover main­te­nance, so I’ll never have to shovel snow or mow the grass.

Trolley will be rent­ing a room from me to help cover my mort­gage. I decided to amor­tize over 20 years, although it actu­ally comes out to 18 years and 11 months because I’ll be mak­ing bi-weekly pay­ments. I chose 20 years to be a lit­tle con­ser­v­a­tive (even though I’m on a fixed rate), because there are a few things I can do to pay down my mort­gage quicker once I’m more com­fort­able with all the bills. My goal is to pay it off by the time I’m 40, and only move to a larger place when I can afford it or when this condo appre­ci­ates enough to keep my mort­gage payable within the next 15 years.

Can’t wait to move in.