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 |
- 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)
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