Christopher and I bought a condo! It occurs to me that I haven't actually mentioned on this site that we were looking, but we've been searching for at least a couple of months now. It's been an interesting process. We've gotten to know the real estate market here a little better, so we know what kinds of prices are reasonable for this area, and we've gotten to see units in a few different buildings, which is satisfying in a purely voyeuristic way. I always like to see different floorplans and decorating. It's interesting to see what can be done.

Anyways, our ideal condo, the one we joked about daring to hope would come on the market and even then we just laughed because we knew we would never be able to afford it—it came on the market for a price we could afford two days ago. It was underpriced by at least 20 grand, if not more. We were the first people to view the unit and we signed an offer right away, knowing that if we didn't snap it up, another unit like this wouldn't come up for years. And by some stroke of luck, they took our original offer!

It's a large two bedroom in our favourite building downtown. It's right beside my favourite park here, and a just a short walk to both the subway and to Chinatown and Kensington Market. My work is only a 10 minute walk away. The building is really well managed and all of our utilities, including air conditioning and basic cable, are included in our condo fees. We have a storage area with room for a washer and dryer, two good-sized bedrooms, a huge living/dining room, a kitchen with room for a breakfast nook in it, and lots of closets.

It's funny, before I moved to Toronto, I took all of those things for granted. Whenever I go home, I marvel at how large my childhood bedroom was, and how I can't IMAGINE having that much space now. What would we do with it? The thought that we just bought a condo with more room than we know what to do with is quite staggering, given the size of all of the other units we've looked at. It's so rare to have a space like that in downtown Toronto, because space is at such a premium, and developers don't really build units that you can grow into. It's actually a large problem. In some areas, they build 7000 units, and only a few hundred of them are 2 bedrooms or more. They build entire neighbourhoods that are based on a transient population—the post-college pre-children crowd—and I can't predict that that will turn out well. No one will really care about the neighbourhood, because they're only there for a few years. No one's planning to spend decades there!

Anyways, this unit is more than enough space for us and it's in an area we're crazy about, so we plan on staying there for at least a decade. So exciting! Now we get to learn more grown-up things like how to paint and put down carpeting and install faucets and washers and such things! This whole fall has just been one massive "holy shit, I think I might be an adult already" crisis, what with being out of school and in a serious relationship and working full-time and having friends with babies and now we OWN A CONDO, excuse me?? It's not seeming quite so bizarre today, so either I'm getting used to it or I'm still in denial that we actually got it!