Okay, so right now I have a couple of processes I need to break down in order to get a better handle on everything involved. First there's dating, which I'm starting to think I'm not doing as good a job at as I could. Second, there's buying a place. And if I really want to, I can pile on finishing the paper and figuring out what to take next semester (i.e. school,) but for the moment let's keep it simple.
I think I'll start with the condo problem, since it's got the fewest moving parts. The elements there are:
-how much can I afford?
-where do I want to/am I willing to live?
-how quickly do I have to/want to move?
How much can I afford?
So the first point is pretty straight forward. I can afford something around 400K, maybe 4.25K if I'm really willing to push it and/or wait until later in the year, when I'll have more money available. But then the question of where the extra down payment money is coming from becomes an issue. So really, the answer to this question directly depends on the official sales figure of my house in Brazil. Dad should have an answer relatively soon, and now he understands the tax constraints I'm working with. But there's more. How did I arrive at the 400K figure? I'm figuring that I can qualify for a 200K mortgage, but I haven't actually verified this yet. In fact, I need to get in touch with a lender to find out how big a mortgage I can get. Okay. That's a first step.
Next: once I know how much money I can borrow, I need to find out how much money I'll have from the sale of my house that I can officially use. The amount currently in the bank is 220K reais, which is like... 123K dollars. If I assume that I'm paying taxes out of that amount plus the realtor's commission, it's going to be more like 100K. But that's if I assume that this is the official selling price. So I need to know how much my house sold for.
So once I've got those two figures I can add them together and get the real price range I should be shopping in. But why have I been working off the 400K figure then? Is it just because it's an easy number to remember? Because it's where stuff starts to look less crappy? It seems pretty unrealistic for me to assume that I was going to have 200K for a down payment. I must have been slowly inflating it as I browsed houses. Oh well.
Okay, so now what? I readjust down to what? 325K? That's terrible! I don't think I've seen a single place at that price that I liked. No wonder I inflated my price range. So I really need to find out the upper limits on both the previous points. At least that's settled.
Where do I want to live?
So I've been saying Cambridge, but after seeing all those places I definitely can't afford and don't even like that much I'm having my doubts again. I saw that nice place in Audubon Circle sell for 400K this weekend, but I didn't want to live in the Fenway, and the gourgeous Harvard Square place in the mid-rise is under contract at 465K, way out of my range. So maybe I need to look at the requirements I've set up for myself and how flexible I have to be with each one of them.
The most obvious is location. I want to live:
-in a dense, active area
-closer to work than JP
-reasonable street parking or parking spot
-somewhere desirable where it'll be easy to re-sell
Cambridge fits all of these requirements. Particularly, Inman Square (although parking is borderline there;) Harvard has kind of the wrong kind of activity (students) but still has movie theaters and places to eat; Central Square is so-so culturally; Porter Square is better than Central Square, plus it's closer to work; Cambridgeport is residential, but near Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, and Memorial Drive so I'll rank it on par with Porter; Kendall is kind of sparse so I'll rank it lower than Central; and the same goes for North Cambridge. These last two are actually on par with JP so if I consider them I have to put JP in the same category. JP has higher quality of life than either of those, with its green spaces. There are still some in-between areas like Agassiz and Wellington-Harrington, which are neither here nor there areas stuck between squares. I guess they rank just above the lowest tiers, but I suspect that if I actually go to a place in those areas the distance is going to push their appeal down for me. Just saying.
So for Cambridge the ranking goes:
1. Inman
2. Harvard
3. Porter/Cambridgeport
4. Agassiz/Wellington-Harrington
5. North Cambridge/Kendall/JP
I'm nominally considering places in Somerville, but pretty much only if they're near Inman, Porter of Davis, in that order. So a place in Somerville near Inman maybe rates the same as a place in Cambridgeport; a place in Somerville near Porter rates the same as a place in the Agasssiz area; and a place near Davis is about par with a place in North Cambridge. Hence:
1. Inman
2. Harvard
3. Porter/Cambridgeport/Somerville by Inman
4. Agassiz/Wellington-Harrington/Somerville by Porter
5. North Cambridge/Kendall/JP/Somerville by Davis
South of the river I'm pretty much only considering the South End and the Back Bay. Back Bay is even a little crowded with students, and the same goes for the Fenway, Kenmore, Audubon Circle, parts of Brookline, Allston, and pretty much anywhere else. I guess Beacon Hill is student-free, but I think I have a bit of a cultural problem with the idea of living there. In fact, I have a bit of a cultural problem living anywhere in Boston except for JP, so these neighborhoods all have that going against them. Plus they're not any closer to work. What they have going for them, or at least Back Bay and the South End do, is that the buildings are beautiful and there's plenty of places to eat, but I'm not sure how to break that down into desirability currency.
I guess the thing about the South End is that because the places are so much nicer I'm willing to live in a smaller space. A lot of places have patios, roof decks, bow windows, and are brick. I don't think I'm quite willing to live in a garden level apartment, but the right patio could make me change my mind. The cats would love it! By comparison the Back Bay has less to offer. It's stuffier, slightly more expensive, and doesn't have the same back patio/deck profile for some reason. So how about this:
1. Inman
2. Harvard
3. Porter/Cambridgeport/Somerville by Inman/South End
4. Agassiz/Wellington-Harrington/Somerville by Porter/Back Bay
5. North Cambridge/Kendall/JP/Somerville by Davis
It sure seems funny to lump Somerville and the South End into the same desirability category, but in terms of what I'm looking for I guess it's about right. It certainly puts those higher prices into perspective, anyway. I guess I should qualify that by noting that resale potential follows a different valuation scale, but I can make that scale up later. Maybe I can put them all into a decision matrix!
The other part of "where" I want to live is the kind of place. My wish list so far has gone like this: One to two bedroom, 800 square feet, second floor or higher in a two to three family, with some sort of outdoor space and reasonable parking. Not a fixer upper. I think these are very good attributes, certainly for Cambridge. As I said earlier, in the South End I might forgive the lower level for an amazing patio. We'll see.
Okay, what else?
How fast do I have to move?
Apparently the Summer is a slow time for real estate, and I can certainly attest to the scarcity of desirable properties in my price range in the places where I want to live. So I have the option of holding out til the Fall and hoping that more stuff comes on the market. The down side to that is that I'll be busier in the Fall with both work and school (and some Pavement shows.) Actually this ties in with what I should take in the Fall, but I'm not going to deal with that right now. At this point I have to figure out whether anything out there is worth buying, and if the answer is no, not try and squeeze into something that I don't really like.
The other option is (again, once the money figures come in) buying something more expensive that I do like and getting it over with. So this again reinforces that the priority has to be getting those two things out of the way before putting any more energy into looking for places.
Whew! That was an hour well spent.
No comments:
Post a Comment