Housing options 🏘️

The other night I was looking at various housing option should the day come when I have to move out of my run down apartment in the suburbs. People have suggested condos and townhouses for somebody looking for something smaller in the city, while having the tax and financial benefits of owning property rather then sending a check every month to the landlord.

Truth is there is nothing as inexpensive as where I live now, because I’ve lived here a long time and rarely request repairs or bother the landlord except when things are critical like a dead refrigerator, no heat in winter, a failed water heater or leaky faucets. Not only is the rent inexpensive but because I keep the heat low in the winter, don’t have a lot of electronics or light, and it’s small space, my energy bills are about as affordable as they can get.

So I was looking at Condos but there is nothing really out there advertised except really high-end, modern units – and even those aren’t that nuermous in the Capital Region. Condos are small, which I like as it’s less to heat and light and clean. There are more options for Town Houses, but they require more work and maintence – and generally are much larger. You don’t really find many studio or one bedroom Town Houses out there. Most have two or more bedrooms, which you have to heat and light. I also don’t want to have to be responsible for repairs and dealing with contractors and spending my weekends painting and repairing stuff when I could be out in wilderness.

So I’m back at looking at renting options. One option is to move into the core city, maybe North Albany or Menands offer some interesting options as those cities are either close to my office or near the 22 and Blue Line Express buses that I could easily take to my office on a one-seat ride. I would want off-street parking, as while I don’t enjoy motoring around the city, I do think owning a truck is the best way to escape the city. Another quite affordable option might be to rent a mobile home in a trailer park. I actually saw a ten acre parcel in Westerlo with an old trailer for sale but it was very old and diapolated – maybe best torn down and landfilled, a good site for building a home but I don’t want the commute or necessarily something so permanent in New York.

But hopefully I won’t need such an option in the immediate future, that I can squeeze out another year of my now very worn apartment with decades of neglect and relatively  low rent. Every month I can continue to rent here means another month to learn, think, research and invest towards the property I really want – that off-grid cabin in a state without the burn ban and gun laws – where I can really settle down, call my home, have livestock and do the rural thing rather then either living in a city or in a suburban house that smells like cow shit that involves a stressful, long commute.

Eventually, I want a house that looks like a cross between a hunting cabin and a run down rural homestead with livestock in yard and a burn barrel out back. And lots of wildflowers, native species, with as much of those trash invasive species removed and replaced with native species that bring pollinators and wide  variety of native species. Not something sold on Zillow like your typical plastic-covered suburban house.