What ARE We Thinking?!?

Because our first pregnancy didn’t seem like enough of a challenge by itself, we decided to put our house on the market, back in November. Intelligent, huh? We figured we’d put it out there for six months, and if it doesn’t move by May, just hold tight for a while.

This decision is to the relief of the hand-wringers within our circle, who seem convinced that our child is forever doomed, should he/she so much as breathe the air in our Trenton neighborhood. When sharing our glorious news back in the Fall, one of the first questions we’d hear from people was “So, you’re leaving Trenton, right?” People confuse Trenton with Sierra Leone on a regular basis. While that’s a discussion for a blog that I may one day start, suffice it to say they’re generally wrong, though there is a grain of accuracy in their perceptions.

Nonetheless, our neighborhood can get…how do I say this politely…vibrant, in the spring and summer months. In a nutshell, what you’re dealing with is many people who are driven outside by a lack of air conditioning, for whom most every night is Saturday night, and who prefer the front stoop to the back yard, for revelry purposes. I mean, if passersby can’t see you drinking that bottle of Hennessy out on the sidewalk, you’re just wasting your money, right? Therefore, it can get annoyingly loud outside, at an hour where members of productive society prefer to sleep.

I hear that babies frequently wake up at all hours of night. Am I close on that one? So, how do you think another summer in Chambersburg will work out for us?

Baby or no baby, we’d recently decided that this house, purchased by me in 2003, and made into a home by Sara three years later, has served its purpose. Built-up equity in the current domicile – combined with a silly buyer’s market for real estate – makes this probably the best time in human history to upgrade the living quarters.

As you probably know, a buyer’s market is great, as long as you’re not a seller at the same time.

Bad! A grand total of three (3) prospective buyers have traipsed through our urban paradise in the past three months.
Good! One of them made an offer.
Bad! The offer, if you could call it that, was just slightly north of “insulting.” Our counter-offer will probably not be well-received.
Good! Our Realtor thinks, with some concessions on our part, we can “make a buyer out of them.”
Bad! Our attempt to meet the other party halfway was scoffed at.
Good! Our Realtor concocts a counter-counter offer, which he believes should be good enough to bring the two parties together.

As of press time, Bad! And Good! are tied, 3-3. Stay tuned.

On the other end, we’ve looked at maybe one half-dozen houses so far, neither of which both of us fell in love with. Our desired geographic area would be a crude triangle, the points of which are Ewing, Hightstown and Burlington City, but you may be interested to know that Trenton is not “off the table,” as far as the search is concerned. That’s the sound of my mother having a heart attack. We’re definitely looking for a less “urban” living experience, which eliminates all but three Trenton neighborhoods, but the architecture and price values in Capital City are very hard to ignore.

“But but but…what about schools?!?!?” come the cries from the hand-wringers. Yes, Trenton Public Schools are a fetid cesspool, and with New Jersey property taxes being what they are, you should be able to live in a town where sending your kids to the public schools is not a dereliction of parental responsibility.

Thankfully, Beloved Reader, that’s not your problem.

As our Realtor pointed out, buying a home “for the schools” is a decision that often leads to disappointment. This, from a guy who has every motivation to steer us away from Trenton, and into its (more expensive) surrounding suburbs! Also, we don’t especially want to live among people who decided to put down roots in a particular town just “for the schools.” We just don’t. Rest assured, we will find a way to turn our children into well-mannered, non-violent, educated young adults, no matter where we happen to raise them.

At any rate, our immediate future in real estate is just so much conjecture at this point, so just relax.

What I do know, is that Sara will probably go into labor in the moving van. I don’t see myself living that down, well…ever.