I didn’t do a 2020 recap, and looking back at my 2019 recap, I feel a sense of loss. 2019 was such a great year, and I had no idea what was coming! So hopeful and energized about the future. Let’s call most of 2020 a lost year, and skip straight to the end.
Moving
In my 2019 recap, I mention the possibility of us moving to Philly. The pandemic waylaid those plans. However, after months inside sharing an office, and the realization that we were in it for the long haul, we said “fuck it” and seriously looked at buying a house in Philly. Why Philly? The cheapest property for sale in our Cambridge neighborhood was $850,000 for a studio. Houses were going for $1.2+ million. In contrast, comparable houses in Philly, a similar old-school East Coast city, were $3-500k. While I miss the hell out of the Boston area and would happily live there forever, it’s just not affordable.
We did most of our search remotely via a local realtor, and our Philly friends Tracy and Mia Levesque, who gave us a bunch of neighborhood advice to narrow down our search range and went and scoped out different houses for us. Thank you Tracy and Mia 🙏
After at least one failed bid, we managed put a successful bid on a house, and came down for the inspection. Unfortunately, that house had a serious mold problem. But now we were in Philly in person, so we extended our trip by a day and looked at a bunch of places in person, which was a much more fun experience than doing video walkthroughs.
It took some more bidding attempts, but eventually we were able to land a house. We moved in November 1st.
Owning a house has been an… experience. Since moving, we’ve had to do electrical work, HVAC, roofing, and plumbing. Our basement flooded several times due to the heavy rain this summer, the first time destroying a bunch of stuff (including my drum kit). We still haven’t been able to replace the drywall and fix the basement bathroom because we’re waiting on the city to install backflow valves to prevent future flooding. Until those are in place, we’re pretty much guaranteed to flood the next time a bad storm comes through. Given 2020 and 2021 saw a huge increase in climate fuckery, we’re assuming bad storms are going to be common from now on.
That said, buying a house hasn’t been all bad. We each have an office, and I’ve had fun decorating: