The house post I've been promising you

Each place we buy is smaller and more expensive than the last. The condo we will be moving into in about a month (pending contingencies) has one less bedroom than our townhouse in Wilmington and is costing us roughly three times as much. And before that there was the house in Mobile, which seems now like a flat out amazing deal. We're used to living below our means, so it will be interesting to see how stretching to pay a mortgage out here will impact our lifestyle.

We looked at places that were less expensive, places that were closer to the beach, and places that had more space and better views of the mountains. But the best feature of the one we settled on is its location in the town of Santa Barbara (see point A on the map). It's three blocks from our favorite coffee shop, about the same distance from the best tacos I've ever had, and still only 20 blocks from the beach. There's a trolley stop close by that will take us down State Street to the ocean and pass through an area filled with restaurants, bars, and shops along the way. And I'll bet we could walk to that awesome movie theater I've told you about in less than 10 minutes.

The inside of the condo looks great: hardwood floors, nicely updated kitchen, fresh paint. (I'll post more photos after we move in.) We considered getting a fixer-upper this time but decided to save that for next time instead. Who wants to spend their time in California working on a house? As you probably know, I'm not terribly handy anyway.

This place reminds us of the house we owned in Mobile in that it's older but in good shape, stylish, and move-in ready. We loved that house, especially in the way it had more character than the cookie-cutter townhouse of ours in Wilmington (which we still really liked for other reasons), so let's hope this new place works out just as well. Being that it's in a fourplex, it's a little more like apartment living, but I think we can handle it. If we can't, we'll just spend more time at the coffee shop.