A Little Place Called Home

As much as I like to say that I am a person who just does something - often times without much prior planning - I have to admit, I'm taking a lot of time and planning on figuring out what I am going to do when it comes to my housing situation.

You see, I am in no hurry at all to buy anything. I am living in a prime spot and have a good roommate/landlord/slum king who doesn't charge me too much. But eventually I want to either find a place of my own or move on to my next adventure. I figure I'll give Charlotte a chance though.

Now most people figure that when they are looking for a place to live, a house is where it's at. After all, isn't it the American Dream to have property of your own, with 2 cars and maybe 1 retarded dog? Me being the American I am have definitely done my fair share of scouting out houses. Tonight, in fact, I looked at a couple of houses. One of those - by the pictures - seemed to have been a very well done renovated house. Solid brick with beautiful dark hardwood floors. Open floor plan with a bit of a backyard. The only problem is that while driving down the street to the house it occurred to me if I were to have gotten out of my car, I may not return to it again.

The other house held more promise. It was an abandoned house on the edge of a neighborhood. The cons - which are many and highly expensive - included no central heat, rotted wood exterior and was across the street from a commercial lot and a busy intersection of 2 highways. But all that aside, the neighborhood was very well decorated still from Christmas, had large old trees, and the view from the front porch was, well, quite amazing:

That is Uptown/Downtown Charlotte (depending on who you ask). The location is maybe 2 minutes from I-77 and about a quarter mile from Bank of America Stadium. Although the asking price is within my budget, the estimated renovation makeover would nearly double what I'm looking to spend.

But me being me, I have other ideas too. A thought has crossed my mind - as well as the motivation - to look for a commercial building that is two stories. The second story would be converted to a loft apartment while the down stairs would could be rented out to a business - or I could become creative and use it to start my own. There are surprisingly quite a lot of older all brick two-story buildings all around Charlotte and its surrounding towns - in fact in nearly every Main Street in America. The hard part is finding one that is priced reasonably and located in an area where renting out either a loft apartment, commercial building or both is feasible. If it were easy, some idiot would've done it already.

Only time will tell what exactly I will be doing, but for now I am enjoying the search for something that I may one day call home.