I went house shopping for a little while last night. Of course I didn’t “go” anywhere. I looked at houses online using the popular Zillow and Redfin websites. We aren’t ready to make an offer on a house yet. We intentionally plan to live in our rental house for another eight or nine months so that we can size up the market, decide just where we want to buy and figure out what are the most important features in our next house. So looking at what is for sale now, even though that is not what will be for sale when we are ready to buy, is a way of preparing for that decision when it comes.

I have to be honest that I have trouble getting up my enthusiasm for looking for several reasons. One is simply that it isn’t the best time to be buying a home in this area right now. It is what they call a seller’s market. There are more potential buyers than sellers right now. Interest rates are low. The pandemic has demonstrated to many city dwellers that they don’t have to live as close to their place of employment and that much work can be done remotely, causing an exodus from expensive urban core areas. This is especially true of those in high technology industries. Seattle, which is home to Microsoft and Amazon and other huge Internet players, has thousands of people who are discovering that they don’t have to live in the city and who are attracted by the surrounding area.

As a result prices are going up. As is true with many other things, patience is probably an important factor in shopping for a house.

Another reason is that we are quite comfortable in our rental home for the year. It isn’t a “perfect” house. No house is. But it is working well for the things that are most important to us. We have space for our grandchildren to visit. We have room for family dinners. We have places for most of the things we moved from South Dakota. As expensive as rent is, it is possible to make an even bigger financial mistake by jumping too quickly at a house.

Of course we will need to become more willing to jump quickly at some point if we want to get a house.

Another reason that we don’t know exactly what we want. This rental home is roughly 3/4 of the size of the home we owned in Rapid City. We are cramped in a couple of ways. We don’t have a study. My desk is in the kitchen. Susan’s is in our bedroom. Our books are in the living room. There are several boxes of office supplies and equipment that are stacked on shelves in the garage. We still haven’t figured out a permanent home for the sewing machine. It would be more useable if we could leave it set up and didn’t have to take the time to take it out and put it away for each use.

The way to overcome the cramped feeling is not necessarily to have more space. There are better ways to make multiple use spaces than we currently have employed. A study/office can double as a guest bedroom. The same can work for a sewing room. Right now we have two bedrooms that double as play spaces for grandchildren that might be better served by a small family room.

We are beginning to question our one-time assumption that it would work for us to downsize to 50% of the space we had in our previous house. That might be a bit too extreme for what we want.

Each time we ponder the situation we come face-to-face with the simple fact that many retired people we know have made multiple moves after their retirement. The home that is right for the next decade of our lives might not be the best place for the following decade. Right now being a bit out in the country with a commute to town for supplies and health care is appealing. It might not be so appealing when we are in our eighties. I’m already wondering about how much grass I want to have to mow in our next home.

Still, a house with projects isn’t all bad, either. I have the tools and skills to do a significant amount of remodeling and we are at a point where we could make some major changes to an existing structure, including making an addition where we would do a lot of the work ourselves. And I do seem to need to have projects ahead of me to keep my engaged and happy.

Along the way, I don’t want to become a complainer. We have it very good in our retirement so far. We are fortunate to have some savings and some flexibility in our decision-making. We are very fortunate to live close to our son, who has a farm with space for my shop and a place to store our canoes, kayaks and camper. We are lucky to be able to be so close to our son and his family that we get to see our grandchildren multiple times each week. Unlike a lot of our peers, we are able to take some time away from working for income to evaluate our situation and make decisions. One or both of us might take a job at some point in the future, but we have the freedom of choice. There are plenty of unemployed people who can’t find jobs right now. There is much to celebrate in our situation.

I think that the reality is that I’m not a very good shopper to begin with. I don’t like to shop all that much. I look at the pictures of houses for sale on the computer for a while and none of them seem like a perfect solution for us. What I want is a world where I could get more space for less money and that world isn’t where I live. While I’m at it, I wish the price of automobiles was close to what they cost 50 years ago, which isn’t going to happen, either.

So some days my mind wanders and I have less to say in my journal. This year seems already to be full of repetition, including a mistake in yesterday’s entry that went up for several hours. I keep thinking I’ll have something dramatic and meaningful to report, but patience might be required for that, too.