visitors beware... our new place is very very small...

So here are some photos of our new little apartment. It also has a one car garage that we can use for storage or a workshop.



We signed our lease today and can start moving stuff in tomorrow. Its a small place, but very well lit. I wonder if it will feel too small, but I hope that if we set it up well, with decent furniture, it will be just fine. Like a little mini hotel room, only more personable. Crazy though to think that for the same money 7 years ago you could rent a 3 bedroom house in the same neighborhood!  Reason to look at buying, but we're completely priced out of the market here too.  Traveler will soon be going batty if I don't stop fretting about the housing market.  I currently blame the banks/lending insitutions.  If they lend people 5 times their salary, the housing market suddenly is filled with 400-500k houses because average people buying such houses make 50-100k.  Granted us consumers of mortgages could say, no thats crazy, but that is hard to do when there is so much rhetoric and dreams and other strange social pressures to buy...   that is my current thinking, sure to change in the next weeks or so.  

If any one has any good information on understand real estate or any web commentators on housing stuff, I am increasingly interested in it. I just can't figure out how people afford 4-8 times their salary on a mortage. Over the next year I'll start checking out the surrounding suburbs, but who knows by then we might be priced out there too. Which is fine, but I can't figure out where all this money comes from... who are the other first time buyers, and what amazing jobs do they have.  For now, you'll find me living in a little attic room hoping to save up enough for a 40-60% deposit so that I can then afford the remaining mortgage:)