James & Carolanne

As many of you have heard or read, we are attempting to sell our condo and buy something a little more family friendly. As we have worked through this process, we have come upon some interesting hurdles.

It would seem that based on our combined income and the amount that we're able to put down as a down-payment, the largest place that we would be able to get in Abbotsford is a lower end townhouse. Having looked through a number of them though, we really haven't been impressed with what they have to offer. Typically, the ones we've been looking at have been older, three level and fairly narrow, so we would have lots of stairs. We did find one place that we were fairly impressed with, but it doesn't allow larger dogs and we would still have to sell our place before even considering buying that one.

Recently though, we were approached by a friend who asked us to consider the possibility of buying a house together. For us, this presents an interesting and very attractive option because it would allow us to avoid things like strata fees, and we would actually be in a house, rather than a townhouse. At the same time, it also brings up a whole bag of questions, such as how is the value of the property split... what happens when things break down... what if one person wants to move, while the other does not?

If any of you have thoughts or suggestions on this, we would love to hear from you. Not having been down this path before, we don't quite know what to expect, or even what questions should be asked.

We would really like to be in our new place, whatever it is, substantially before we have the baby, which means we need to be making decisions about this sooner than later. We would really appreciate your prayer and thoughts for us in this, as we want to be sensitive to the Lord's leading. It's very difficult to leave it all completely up to Him, and not stress or worry about it. Please pray that the Lord would guide us in this decision, and that we would be listening and able to hear His voice.