Sometimes you have to make a decision to know it's the wrong one

In September 2009, after a grueling year of off and on looking, we finally bought a house. After all, that's the American dream, right? We were convinced this was our dream house that we'd live in for many, many years. It was a house we never thought we could afford, but it was bank owned and we were able to buy it within our budget. Granite countertops! Kitchen island! Soaking tub! Double sinks! We were thrilled.

In November 2009 I ended up leaving my job if the past 6 years for a new opportunity. This new job is 16.4 miles from our beautiful house. While that may not be far for many of you, that's an eternity away when you live in a city with traffic. The commute is an hour plus each way, making me feel like those people in L.A. that I always laughed at. "Why would anyone in their right mind spend 2 hours a day in their car?" My record commute one unpredicted snowy day (with only about an inch of snow) was just over 4 hours. Yes, FOUR hours. The breaking point was a day about 2 months ago where I hit the one hour mark of driving far from our house and started to cry. I cried the rest of the way home. We had a long conversation that night and decided to sell the house.

While the commute is a huge factor (and I love my job and it's a steady one that I can have for all of eternity if I want to), we also realized that owning isn't important to us. While it's touted as this awesome thing, it isn't really. Our mortgage plus utilities is more than twice what we were paying for rent. We are very lucky that our house is new and has no yard, so we spend very little time working on the house. We do spend so much time cleaning the 2,300 square feet (and we only live in about 1,300 of it). The "tax benefits" were non-existant for us, and although people are always say that you're gaining equity, that doesn't really happen for years. Of the $2,000ish that we pay, a whopping $300 goes to principal. The rest is interest and taxes.

So the house is on the market (first realtor just fired) and we're looking forward to going back to renting whenever we can sell. We are looking to move into trendier areas of town with easy walking/biking to local restaurants and shops. The burbs are nice, but we're young(ish), kid-free, and ready to be urbanites for awhile. I completely understand why some people like to own, but we're happily going back to the rental life.