househunting and cool sisters

Picture to the right: house listings that Jeff and I are going to see today and tomorrow. Wish us luck.

I feel as if we've been househunting forever. It's nothing compared to stories of those who have been searching for their perfect house for years, of course, but sometimes it seems as long to me.

We've seen detached houses, semi-detached houses, townhouses. Both small ("cozy" in the listing) and spacious, in perfect condition and "needing loving care." Houses which have obviously been staged, where the owners filled the house with someone else's furniture and accessories. Houses that have been on the market for a long while and where the owners have clearly gotten tired of always keeping the place in pristine condition.

I always feel a bit strange, walking into someone else's home and knowing that (like us several months ago) the inhabitants are probably sitting in a coffeeshop around the corner or pretending to browse a nearby street shop, fervently hoping that we'll be the ones who buy their place so they can get on with their lives.

How far I've "walked" across the U.S. since mid-January. Fitnessjournal.org.

I've also become familiar with many different types of neighbourhoods around Toronto. As someone who does a lot of walking, running and travelling via the TTC (Toronto transit), I know I'll be using the immediate neighbourhood much more than Jeff. For any potential house, therefore, I've usually done a pre-visit exploration, checking out TTC access, how far the house is from coffeeshops and bookstores, whether the main street DOES have things like coffeeshops and bookstores.

According to my pedometer, I walked about 12 km yesterday and used the subway system about near a dozen times (I bought a day pass).

Here are a few online tools I've found useful in our househunting search in Toronto:

TTC schedules/map

MLS.ca: a bit out-of-date compared to the database that real estate agents use, but useful because I can search for houses within different areas, streets, by price range, etc.

Toronto area MapIt: Found out about this from my brother-in-law Kaarel. Especially cool because I can view pretty much any house from a real aerial photograph.

On a completely different topic, I now have a copy of my cool sister's new book, Me and My Sister:



...and a copy of the Newfoundland/Labrador Easter Seal campaign package (helps children with disabilities), for which she did the artwork:



Less than four weeks until FilKONtario!

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