Moving???

So we've decided to start thinking about moving. Our destination will probably be Eagan at this point. There is a lot of draw to Eagan for us. One, my work is there (even if I'm not there that much); two, we have friends who live in Eagan; three, it's closer to everyone we visit a lot than Hastings is.

What we really need is more space. Our house is two bedrooms and one and a half baths. When we only had one child, this was fine and even now it's ok, but the kids are sharing a room and it's getting harder to manage their sleep schedules in the same room. Lately Kate has been waking up when Ben wakes up early. It's fine for Ben, he takes one to two naps a day as necessary, but Kate should really be sleeping longer in the mornings than Ben sleeps.

So, I'm hoping to find a house that is at least three bedrooms. Honestly, I would like to have a four bedroom so that we can have an office/guest room. A two car garage at a minimum, but a two and a half would be nice. Two bathrooms would be good too, but I think we could live with one and a half. I'm not going to put our target price range on here, but we can afford a bigger mortgage now since interest rates are lower and, frankly, I make more now than I did three years ago when we bought our house. Plus, if we buy a single family home, we will not be paying an association fee, that's just more money we can put towards a mortgage. A big yard (or at least any yard) is also very important. You don't realize how important until you've had to live without one with two small children for over three years.

Now, here are the problems we're facing. One, our house is worth about twenty thousand dollars less than we bought it for, if you take the optimistic look at our situation. Two, there have been anywhere between three and eight houses for sale in our neighborhood at a time over the last year. Many of them still haven't sold and some were taken off the market after not selling. Others went up for forclosure after not selling. So, the competition will be fierce to sell around here.

Our solution is pretty smart, I think. Janice's mom will be soon putting her house up for sale. Her neighborhood doesn't have as many houses for sale and her realtor is confident that she will be able to sell soon and at only a small loss. When she sells her house, we will find a house and put an offer down. We will then move out and Danita will move into our house and rent it until it sells. We figure that it will be easier to sell with a single woman living in the house than it would for a young family.

Hopefully, that puts our timeline for moving at the springtime. I'm very excited for this opportunity to get out of our house faster than we could have otherwise. I think that without Danita's (Janice's mom) help we would be stuck trying to sell our house for months (or longer) before we could get out of it. That includes months of constantly keeping our house spic and span just in case someone wants to look at the house. Ugh, I was not looking forward to doing that and I shudder at the thought. I would like to give a quick shout out to Danita, the best mother-in-law that a guy could ever ask for!

So, if anyone is looking for a nice townhouse in Hastings, please let us know! I know of two that are great that could be yours! All joking aside though, I know that in this age of the internet, word of mouth and networking are very important. If you do know someone who might be considering a move to or around Hastings, let us know, or let them know about us. I'll post Danita's listing as a comment as soon as it's up.