Movin' on up...

To Tacoma! Yes, to 27th Street Station in the old Hilltop area of Tacoma. Since the 90's when gangs were roaming the area, the city of Tacoma has cleaned up hilltop making it an urban developed 'hood. A lot of the new construction is bold and colorful with funky designs and lots of windows! 27th Street Stationw will be our home for the next 2-3 years ...we will have affordable payments ($700-ish + $120 HOA dues, which covers water/sewer/landscaping/insurance/garbage) and we will begin a sense of pride in our ownership, learning to be more responsible with our money, knowing we can't just miss rent this month and expect all to be okay. Besides, having that affordable of a house payment, we may keep our condo for longer and just rent it out when we decide to get a bigger place. Hell, they currently rent them for $1040 (including HOA fees) on all the units, and if we'll only be paying about $820, thats easily another $220 profit! Especially thinking about the economy in another 2 years... oh and the best part.. our unit is 'one of a kind'.

We have a ground floor unit so we only have a neighbor above us (the 'neighbor' behind us is our storage shed!) and we have no neighbors to either side because its a narrow long building. When you first walk in you see our double door laundry closet with stackable w/d & water heater). To the right is a door to the master bedroom. To the left is the hallway to the great room, with a window on one side of the wall facing the grassy hillside, the huge 3 panel sliding door to an enormous private patio with views of Mt Rainier, I-5 and the Nalley Valley. The kitchen is just off the slider with a big L shape kitchen, with stainless steel fridigdaire appliances, birch cabinets, black quartz counters and hardwood birch floors throughout the condo. The kitchen sink is in the corner of the L shape with a huge, huuuge window facing the patio and the same views from the patio. The bathroom is enormous with a combo shower/tub, a toilet and a small sink area which is easily expandable. There is also room for shelving across the toilet for towels and decor.

The unit has central air that circulates fresh air every 8 hrs, as well as baseboard heaters in each room. These unit formerly were apartments so during the conversion they did all new electrical wiring, panel & meters so its very, very energy efficient. The community is gated with remote & key pad access, assigned parking spaces and the landscaping is just beautiful... they also run on 'smart timers' that adjusts for daylight savings so every year the land is beautiful. The homes are also pre-wired for Click! cable & Comcast... we have comcast now but will probably see how affordable Click! is... but as for internet I'd love to go with Clearwire because my laptop is wireless & if we keep our desktop computer we'll hardly use it... I don't think Comcast offers wireless internet....

Well overall I am stoked. It was originally listed 2 months ago at $129,990 and we got it for $99,000 with only $500 earnest money down. We also get an $8k buyer bonus for using their lender & $8k obama bonus (which we can amend our 2008 taxes & receive this bonus in 6-8 weeks... or wait until next feb) but we'll probably take it out this year so that we can invest it for emergency money and we also will need to buy a new car once we can sell Ryan's Mazda6 so that I can find a p/t job for extra income. Unfortunately I'll have to wait awhile or find temp jobs because I'm going on vacation in Aug & vacation in Dec... I think I'll host a wine tasting (or make Ryan "host" it) when we have an open house at our condo & try to get people to order some wine, which would be extra income for myself. Then, I can also work on other side jobs, so we'll see. I'm starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel.