The process

Perhaps you've noticed a bit of recent buying and selling activity documented on this blog. We do have a plan to all this madness, moving, in-laws' houses and storage units.

While we dearly loved the original slc202 condo, we wanted eventually to live in a house. Preferably a modern house of our own building. With land prices being what they are in these parts, we knew that we couldn't afford a lot without using the equity in our condo. We also didn't want to find the perfect lot and still have to sell our condo, perhaps for a lower price than we knew it could fetch with a little extra time. Thus, the logical first step to us was to sell the condo, then stash away the equity from the sale, and finally make our next move.

In the interim, however, we didn't want to pay rent. That's where the Center Street condo comes into the picture. We're hoping to renovate and live in this new condo while we look around for a great lot and start the house building process. The Center Street condo appeals to us because it's in the neighborhood in which we hope to eventually build — west Capitol Hill, also rechristened the "Marmalade District" by Rick Howa's mixed-use development on 300 West and 500 North.

Our immediate future holds a few months of renovation and snooping around for lots in that neighborhood, or any of the other great nooks Salt Lake City has to offer. We hope our long-term future will include a smallish, green, modern home near downtown. So buckle up and stay tuned.

Homeless

...only in the sense that we're now abusing the patience of relatives.

We closed the slc202 deal on Aug. 10 and moved out Aug. 15. From the initial contract agreement to closing, it was a whopping three weeks — three weeks filled with no small amount of anxiety, packing, trips to a sketchy storage unit, praising of our Honda Element's utility, and disposable packing-tape dispensers.

We got a bit teary-eyed the night of Aug. 15 as we stood at our living-room window for the last time. This was, after all, our first place together — we planned for it, he renovated it, we furnished it together, we moved in the night before our wedding (talk about stress...), and lived there for the first 2 1/2 years of our marriage. It was a wonderful house for us.

But.

It's time to move on. Thus, it is with great pleasure that we decided to keep the virtual slc202 to commemorate the original abode. We'll be updating this page regularly (no promises on frequency, you'll note) with news from our real estate adventures in a very unadventurous place.