So, remember when I mentioned that, once Andreas and I head back to Seattle (sometime by 2005), we’re going to look into buying house? Well, that plan continues to putter along. Andreas is doing his part by reading books like “Home Buying for Dummies” and I do my part by surfing around Seattle real estate listings online to see what kind of stuff is out there.

While Seattle real estate is infinitely more affordable than Los Angeles (where people pay $450k for a tear-down crackhouse on a .10 acre lot), it’s still not cheap. I was looking at houses in the $150k-$175k range and finding that most of them were in South Seattle suburbs like Tukwila and Renton and were listed with comments like “great for the handiman!” or “will be gorgeous with a little love!” or “in a quiet neighborhood — nearby meth labs recently busted!” It was a little demoralizing. Lots of these houses were in very suburban neighborhoods. If you have learned anything about me, Andreas, and our lifestyle by reading this blog, it should be that we are not cul de sac people. The only urban Seattle neighborhood housing in our price range seems to be condos. And I don’t see myself as a condo person.

Rather than being suburban, I found myself peeking at housing for cities like Bellingham, a little less than two hours north of Seattle (and, more importantly, only about an hour south of Vancouver, BC, one of my favorite cities). For the price of a scary heroin shack in the suburbs of Seattle, we could get a cute 3 bedroom bungalow in Bellingham. Hmm. It’s a good thing this whole decision is years away, because I have no idea what to do.