Today we turn in our signed lease on a house and get handed some new keys. The rent on the house is reasonable by Austin standards, but will be considerably more that the rent on the apartment or, for that matter, more than any other single monthly payment either of us have ever had in our lives. But that's not the only leap of faith we are taking since we are also breaking our lease on the apartment, just two months after renewing it. That will be a rather expensive thing to do, unless we are able to sublease it quickly.
The circumstances that brought us to this point were what most people would call a strange mix of coincidence. A co-worker has a rental house that we were hoping to get before we renewed the apartment lease, but his tenant decided to stay another year so we renewed the lease on apartment instead. Then about three weeks ago, my co-worker's tenant gave notice and moved out immediately. That made the house available, but we had renewed the apartment lease and besides, we didn't have the extra cash needed to pay another deposit plus double rent for at least a month. My co-worker advertised the house for a bargain rent price so it would rent quickly and we figured that was the end of that.
Labor Day weekend came along and the RV sold "as is" on the same day that I had it scheduled to be it moved into the shop for some minor repairs. At that point I had some cash, but did I really want to spend it on breaking a lease and moving into a house? And was my co-worker's house at the bargain price even still available?
I returned to work on Tuesday and talked with my co-worker who said the house was still available. Despite my misgivings about the whole idea, I decided to go take a look at the house on Wednesday so I could make an informed decision. I was not expecting to walk in the door of the house and get one of those "gut feelings" that I've had so many times in my life. But that is exactly what happened; I got that feeling of "this is the next logical step". But just the same as I did with the RV purchase, I tried to talk myself out of it. I had the idea that there was no way Rob would agree to go look at the house that day after work since he always wants to go straight home (which is understandable, I usually feel the same way.) Even if he did go look at it, he might not like the house and I already knew how he felt about the hassle of moving since we had discussed this prior to renewing our lease - he wasn't going to go for it unless it was the right house.
Much to my surprise, Rob not only went and looked at the house, but he also liked it. That left me with only one thing to use against the whole idea - the expense of breaking the apartment lease. That could cost me several thousand dollars, maybe more. Or it might only cost $200 if we were able to sublease quickly. That made it a gamble and I'm a person that has a risk-adverse personality. Despite my worries, all that night long and all the next day, no matter what I said to myself, I couldn't shake the feeling that getting the house was the direction I needed to take. And so I took the leap and dragged Rob along with me. It will be interesting to see how it all works out.
