we’re not moving — at least, not moving out of mount pleasant — but there are a couple things going on that make us (er, the lady sparkler) think that it could be time to upgrade.

• interest rates are down 2+ percentage points from when we signed a last mortgage. when you add that savings to what we pay each month in condo association fees, we can have about a 50% larger place without paying a dime extra per month.
• we were planning on moving in the next 2 to 3 years anyway, and *man* our place seems a lot smaller than it did, saaaay 16 months ago.
• the market has stabilized enough that we’re sure we can get all our money out of our current place.
• the economy is starting to show signs of life again, which means that housing prices only have one direction to go (and that would be “up”).

that said, if we can’t find a nice little fixer-upper row house in mount pleasant that we can afford now, we’ll just stay put until we’re on the other side of our daycare payments.

we love our neighborhood, and haven’t given up on the idea that we can raise baby sparklet here. we love our friends, we love our nanny. we love the fact that our vote for federal office is basically meaningless (wait, scratch that last one).

and, besides, there aren’t a lot of other options …

within D.C., we certainly wouldn’t move east of 16th street (too speculative), nor south or west of mount pleasant (we couldn’t afford it), and there really isn’t much in D.C. that’s north of us (all residential, little commerce, reduced transit).

outside of D.C., we have the same problems we’ve always had: new england and chicago are too cold (for my beloved); texas is utterly without seasons (for me); the pacific northwest is really far away and people there actually slow down at yellow lights (the latter is a “third rail” for the lady sparkler).

and besides, we all know how much my beloved likes change.