Adorable, Needs Some TLC

My husband and I have lousy timing. We moved to the Bay Area in 1997, just as the dot-com bubble was inflating. Finding housing of any kind was a challenge, and buying wasn't even on our radar. When we moved to Long Beach in 2004, we thought it would be easier to buy our own place, but prices quickly shot up, out of our reach. And having witnessed the aftermath of the dot-com meltdown, we knew a bubble when we saw one.

Finally, four years later, prices have come down a bit, and we've started looking for a house. We don't want much, just a roof over our heads in a safe neighborhood with decent schools. We saw a little Spanish house over the weekend. It's far from perfect. It's small. It's a foreclosure, so as a real estate ad would say, it "needs some TLC." A window in the living room is broken, and the kitchen looks like it was last updated in 1979. But we'll take it, if we can get it. We put in an offer and we're waiting to hear back from the seller.

Sometimes, okay, often, I question why we live here. Yes, the weather's great, and I love the beaches, but in a lot of other places we could get a turnkey four-bedroom house in a fabulous neighborhood for the same amount of money we're going to spend on our 2/1 fixer. So what about you? Do you think it's worth it to live here? Or do you think you might have a better quality of life in some other place?

Long Beach Mama writes about Korean culture and parenting at Kimchi Mamas, and life in general at Kitchen Fire.