There were so many competing feelings about moving: accomplishment, guilt, resentment, excitement, grief, and relief.... pretty much in that order.
Even though Jason grew up in the Baltimore area, both of us were open to living in other cities as long as it made financial and recreational sense. Baltimore is the second most cost-effective place to live in the United States - you're close to DC and high paying jobs, but don't have to deal with the snobbery inside the beltway when it comes to living expenses.
I'm no stranger to moving; since getting clean I've moved 10 times. From DC to VA to CA to VA to DC to DE to VA to MD to VA to MD and again in MD. The last three times have all been to set ourselves up for financial stability. We moved from Fells Point to my mom's to save money for a down payment on a house. Then we used that down payment savings for a house in Charles Village. We chose Charles Village because of it's proximity to Penn Station, so I'd be able to get down to DC and those projects easily, because of the diversity in the neighborhood, and because we could walk to the grocery. #RIPeddiesCV
We felt so good to own one of the painted ladies on Calvert (well, potential painted ladies, it was on our list of things to do to the house - paint the outside as brightly as others' in the neighborhood)
One of the assumptions when we moved was that we would have some financial help to send the kids to private school, because, well, Baltimore isn't exactly known for it's stellar elementary and middle school programs (see all of the Sun articles on broken air conditioners, no heating, also, season four of the Wire). They are very well known for their magnet highschools - and I was holding out for them - until I couldn't anymore. After getting pregnant the third time, we couldn't make that assumption about financial support, and it's reasonable that when the circumstances changed that the financial expectation changed.
We did the math. Three kids, average private school cost per year is $15k, from primary school to 12th grade, equals $675,000. That's the equivalent cost to an upper middle class house in Roland Park! Except at the end of 18 years, we'd have that amount of equity to sell if we wanted. We started thinking of how we could get the kids into a public school district that was ranked better than Margaret Brent.
This is where the guilt comes in. We are in enough of a financially stable situation where we could even have these conversations. I had joined the Friends of Margaret Brent parents group in 2017, as soon as we moved in. There are twelve other kids on our block in Charles Village who were zoned to go there, all the kids would have to do is cross Calvert street and they would be in the building from kindergarten to 8th grade. There are other families who are sending their kids there who are just like us (DC/NoVA transplants). Maybe if I had done more with the Friends group, we could have seen some movement with the school ranking factors. There are a lot of maybes.
Jason was on a bike ride when I took the kids to the Waverly farmers market in October 2020. After picking up donuts and a breakfast burrito we walked over the open space in the Abel neighborhood and met up with our neighbors who had just moved from Charles Village to Armagh, which is a tiny little neighborhood in northern Baltimore/south Towson. They had a covid baby too and had moved during the pandemic, so Lindsay's words were immensely comforting when she said that it was important to do what's best for our family, right now.
When we came to the decision that we would move, we were offered financial support to make the move faster than we had moved the last time to Charles Village (which took two years). Like, we needed to move before Congress counted the electoral votes in December 2020! I resent that I didn't put my foot down and say it was going to take as much time as it was going to take. Instead, when told to jump, I said, "how high?"
That lived with me until ... still lives with me.
Back in August 2020, we reached out to Kim Lally Holmes (our kids have been making her name into one: KimLally) because as much as we absolutely love Charles Village - and the place she helped us find in 2017 (after two years of searching) - we had decided to move to a better school district. There are a couple of things to put this endeavor into context: 1) I had just given birth in June 2020, 2) the pandemic for personal safety reasons, 3) two toddlers - one of whom is currently in hybrid school because of the pandemic, 4) coming out of maternity leave, 5) KimLally had just started her own realty group, and 6) the pandemic real-estate market is BANANAS.
She managed to manage us into the sweet spot of selling our current home within a day of putting it on the market, with multiple offers, for full asking price and some wiggle room for finding our next house. She sent her stager, Julie, over first in October - to be a mediator between me and Jason about what updates needed to be made to the house. From there, we had a path forward and a clear list of things to get done to get the most for our house. When we were done with the house updates, we came up with a selling strategy in January and within a week it was on the market AND under contract.
On the buying side, there were times over the past seven months that I didn't think that we were going to find a place because the current inventory of homes is so low. KimLally is a staple of the Baltimore real estate community - whenever I'd show up at random open houses, the seller's agent would always have something positive to say about her. She dug deep into her network to find us our new home. She was always available to take us to see houses - some of which were just excursions to see what a huge budget could buy us. She was always pragmatic about the pros and cons of a house and never tried to sway us one way or another.
She also has a great sense of humor. On the night we visited the house that we would ultimately come to buy, we saw three homes and it was the second of three. The third was an immaculate renovation, very chic, like straight out of a Pinterest board. While we were walking around Jason made a comment that the second house seemed like we should be shooting heroin while listening to Nine Inch Nails in the kitchen in comparison. When we closed on the second house last week, KimLally sent us a text saying, "The heroin den is yours! Congratulations!"
That being said, we absolutely love the #hOme we chose and KimLally and her team hustled so that we could close within 19 days of submitting our offer. This buy has enabled a $675K cost avoidance. It was a rough year, but we positioned ourselves well financially for the future and that's what's important.
