Hold the Moving Trucks!

Don't forget - the next round on What Inspires Your Senses? is coming this Wednesday, November 26. Get your photos and creativity ready for this monthly photography-inspired linkup!
Last week I made the big announcement that we recently bought our own place. It's been about a month and a half since we signed our life away, and its finally starting to sink in that we're both poor and homeowners.

But, before we get too excited, I have a confession to make - you won't see any packing photos or stressed tweets coming from this camp for quite a while. Our boxes remain taped shut in closets and basements at my parents' and inlaws'. Why? Sadly, the place we bought is in preconstruction. Meaning they haven't started building. Our future 2 bedroom condo with our massive terrace is still a vacant lot and we're still almost 2 years away from using our wedding gifts.
So why did we buy a preconstruction? For us, it was a no-brainer. In Ontario, the down payment for a house is 20%. Sure as first time homebuyers theres ways to get around it, but we didn't want to go there. In Toronto, the cost of housing is extremely high, with the average starter home well over $400,000. I'll let you do the math on that one, but can tell you that not many people in our position have that kind of cash to hand over upfront. And so, buying preconstruction allows us to save and stagger the down payment over the two years. We also couldn't really pass this place up. It's in a fantastic neighbourhood, close to transit, family, Lake Ontario, good schools and all of the amenities we need. We would have been silly to walk away from it.
But have no fear, while the moving trucks are on hold, there will be plenty of pins and dreaming posts around this corner of the web in the time being.