Deciding to move from the Suburbs to a Downtown Condo

My wife and I had been considering a move from our 2,400 sq. ft ranch in the suburbs to a down town condo for more than two years. We spent countless hours on-line and many weekends visiting potential units. We agonized over the pros and cons, drew up financials comparisons and sought advice from anyone who would listen (and some who would not).

So, how did we decide? Sure we went through lists of pros and cons etc. (see below) but, in the end, it came down to a fear of regretting not doing it.

Our Old Home

Our home was a beautiful three bedroom ranch in Westlake (Austin, TX) with fantastic views of the Hill Country. It was located in a very safe gated community only 15-20 minutes from down town surrounded by two acres of land.

Our Old Home

Sounds and certainly looks idyllic, right? Well, in many ways it was, but for us, it required a lot of our time and some quite unpleasant tasks:

• Cleaning 2,400 sq. ft and using/living in less than half of it 
• Pest proofing our crawl space (mission impossible) 
• Cleaning up rat poo in the crawl space on our hands a knees (after losing the battle to pest proof the crawl space, multiple times) 
• Mowing the lawn (not so bad really) 
• Cleaning gutters, pressure washing the deck, mulching the beds, weeding the garden etc. 
• Living smack in the middle of acres of cedar trees (cedar fever anyone?) 
• Chopping down fifty cedar trees (the first one is fun, especially if you have never used a chain saw, the remaining 49 are brutal) 
• Nursing a 15 year old A/C unit 
• Nursing a 20 year old septic tank 
• Nursing a 25 year old roof 
• Maintaining a pool (Oh, those were the days) 
• Putting off replacing the windows 
• Installing a de-humidifier in the crawl (we need to keep the rats comfortable after all) 
• Covering 600 sq. ft of crawl space floor in thick plastic (don't ask) 
• Driving 15 minutes each way to get to the trail at the weekends 
• Having to get in your car to do pretty much anything 
• Managing stuff (boxes with stuff, drawers with stuff, stuff with stuff in it)

Pros & Cons of a Condo in Downtown Austin

Now that we have established some of the reasons we wanted to move let's look at how we assessed the Pros & Cons of Condo Living.

Pros

• See list above (enough said)
• Living in the heart of it all 
• Walking to the trail, grocery store, restaurant, bar (insert your favorite down town destination here) 
• Driving against traffic (well mostly, we do live in Austin after all) 
• Moving to a one car family (we'll see how that goes) 
• Using your bicycle again (well at least when the wife has the car) 
• Having a front row seat to all the action (car accidents, watching the ACL crowd walking home) 
• Stuff (we had to reduce our stuff by 60%, tough but it feels great afterwards) 
• Living in the space you need not the space you have 
• Making your other married buddies jealous that you can walk to the bar (even though you never do it) 

Cons

• Money (houses generally appreciate more and are a safer investment than condos) 
• HOA (there are generally significant HOA fees associated with condos) 
• Privacy (people above, below, to the left and to the right) 
• Peace and quiet (traffic noise, people noise, pet noise etc.) 
• Not being able to walk out of your front door (without spending 10 minutes waiting for / riding an elevator) 
• What do we do with all our stuff? 
• Visitors (where do your out of town visitors stay?) 
• Pets (no yard for fido) 
• Kids (no yard for Billy) 

So we finally put all of the above together and decided to dive in and move to downtown Austin. Keep reading to follow the story of our transition.