There was an article in the paper a couple of months ago about a young-ish couple that bought a house. They both had pretty good salaries and they got the "get an ARM, you can refinance in a few years" thing, and they figured they deserved a nice house, so they bought a really nice house. No down payment, so they had money - they furnished the house and fixed it up. Took some nice vacations. Bought a pedigreed puppy and hired a dogwalker. The wife got pregnant and went on maternity leave. And then the whole thing hit. oops. So now they can't refinance, they're trying to make the payments on one salary, they're looking at the rates going WAY up in a couple of years.

The response wasn't terribly sympathetic; MY response isn't very sympathetic.

A woman in my office was talking about how she was looking last year and they were willing to pre-qualify her for something like $400K ... and then she thought about it and decided not to take a chance.

And, to add, one of the "hidden costs" that comes up is when people go to closing and suddenly there are hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in additional fees that have to be paid or they can't close.

okay, Plei, could you please explain what you mean by overlift and lift?

Most colors will lift the underlying natural color by a couple of levels and deposit a second color on top of it. This makes the overall color brighter/more uniform/blah blah blah. But it's all a balance, and the hair closest to the scalp is prone to bleaching/lifting faster, while being less damaged and absorbing less of the actual color part of the dye. (I'm using highly non-technical terms here.)

A no-lift color just deposits over what's already there.

ETA this is a good example of what roughly the same amount of $ will get you in my current neighborhood: [link] It would probably be a better choice in any number of ways, but that is NOT a shining example of architectural beauty.

The first house is a short sale (note the subject to lender approval). Cute, but small (1400 square feet total living space per King County records), and in a so-so area.

Looks like the one up in Northgate is also a short sale, based on the price at last purchase.

The mid-century split levels are shockingly livable. We saw one that we'd have purchased if it had been half a block down from where it was, just because the space was nice and the floorplan excellent. They also tend to be well-constructed, from the last era of good construction for everyday homes.

The mid-century split levels are shockingly livable. We saw one that we'd have purchased if it had been half a block down from where it was, just because the space was nice and the floorplan excellent. They also tend to be well-constructed, from the last era of good construction for everyday homes.

Yeah, I'm just trying to come to terms with the fact that unless I write a book that somehow turns into a major movie, I'm never going to get my dream Seattle house, which would be something like this: [link] or this: [link] That's the one bad thing about going to church in that neighborhood--it's just about impossible to make it to Sunday morning services without committing the sins of Greed and Envy between parking the car and walking in the sanctuary doors!

I'd love to live in a beautiful 100-year-old house. But I also love living in Seattle, so I just have to live with the tradeoffs.

The reality of homes like that is that they are gorgeous, and utterly unsuitable for life with a toddler.

We did see one at the upper end of our price range. Gorgeous, box beams, walking distance to everything, updated but well done kitchen. (No real yard, thus the price.)

And I realized that all that gorgeous woodwork was cruisin' for a bruisin' with the girl around, and that as gorgeous as it is, that's not my lifestyle.

The house we're moving to is over 100 years old, but never was a fancy thing. It's got character, while not being museum quality. More importantly, MUCH more importantly, it's in a neighborhood I know and love.

I want to squish this puppy [link] or possibly chomp on it.

Okay, that's a bit disturbing....

that as gorgeous as it is, that's not my lifestyle.

I've been thinking about precisely this! Lots of the things I like are totally not conducive to a child. And, frankly, now I make choices based on appropriate for kid vs. desire of mom. Which I guess is one of the things that parenthood is about.

Which reminds me of this Billy Collins poem. I've never appreciated my mother more than I have this year. Or I should say I never really understood the sacrifices she made for me and what a deep well of love she has for us.

I'm on chapter 3 of The Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians and I'm not even scared yet!

The reality of homes like that is that they are gorgeous, and utterly unsuitable for life with a toddler.

Well, those aren't so much the houses I'd like to buy now as the ones I'd love to think I'll someday be able to afford but probably won't.

I think why I lust so strongly after the older houses on Queen Anne Hill is that when I lived in Philly, I rented houses of about the same vintage that had once been fine single family homes that had turned into cheap, shabby student housing for Penn and Drexel. So they were banged up and abused, but you'd look at the woodwork, the moldings, the hearths, and so on, and think how absolutely beautiful they'd be with a good remodel and proper care. I used to dream of buying one and fixing it up, back when I thought I was going to live in Philly forever. And whenever I visit friends from church who live in houses like that (though I haven't seen any quite so very posh as the two linked above), I think, "This is the kind of place I always wanted to live." But it's not going to happen.

Sigh. All this is making me think of the house that I really, really wish I could have--my grandparents' house, the house my dad and aunt grew up in, which in the early '50s could be had in Oakland, within walking distance of Lake Merritt, on a neighborhood grocer's salary.

Three bedrooms upstairs, nice gently sloped and carpeted, very kid-safe stairway down to the formal dining room and living room and big, feast-preparation-worthy kitchen--and a huge, huge basement/rumpus room, full of toys and boxes of old magazines and trunks of old books (one of my grandparents' friends was either a publisher or a reviewer, and kept passing them masses and masses of reading materials; I remember finding everything from old Mad magazines to a Yiddish-English dictionary to a Reader's Digest from the '30s with a cover article by an American Quaker who had just gathered up her family and moved back home from Germany, with her report of the troubling things she had started to see in her neighborhood and local government), plus a full working bar (soda pop only, but actual neighborhood pub-sized). And front and back yards.

Perfect combination of spaces for grown-ups and kids and neutral in-between everyone on their best behavior rooms. I don't know what its current value is, but I'm pretty certain that if my grandparents were alive now they could barely afford to drive past it, much less get out and look. And anything even a tenth of that is so far out of our range--even if we were both employed and debt-free--it's ridiculous.

Yes, Seattle, the Bay Area envies you your housing prices.

I can't believe I disturbed ita!?!