Home, Sweet Rental

David and I have really enjoyed living on Vancouver's North Shore for the past year and a half. I must admit, the first year and a half was a bit of a shock. We moved from downtown Vancouver where

1. we were two blocks from the beach and the 10km seawall walk,

2. we were one block from Stanley Park (an incredible place to visit if you come this way),

3. four blocks from a huge public swimming pool and kid's playground,

4. spitting distance from the main drag with restaurants, grocery stores, drug stores, coffee shops, etc.

We rarely got into the car on the weekends and our stroller had about 100,000 km on it. (It showed it too.)

When our landlords sold the condo we had been living in for almost three years, we couldn't find a big enough place in our (at that time) restrictive budget. So we moved to the north shore to the bottom floor of a house. I'll spare you the details of the place we were renting (I swear to god there was a meth lab next door), but suffice it to say that the fact that we had to drive to get to anything was not only a shock to our systems, but spiralled me into something of a depression.

We managed to move into a lovely area of North Vancouver, one of the only areas withing walking distance of an entire village full of every service needed. We've decided that we would like to buy in this area (conveniently the most expensive one on the North Shore). Join me here where I talk a little about the fears involved in buying real estate on the lower mainland.

(How's that for the world's longest "intro" post. Don't despair though. You're bound to hear a lot more about our real estate ventures over the next year or so.)