New home, new blog
After some nail-biting uncertainty and a brief relocation to the Red Roof Inn, we are thrilled to have a closing date for our new house nailed down for the coming week. While it’s been challenging, it has also made us exceedingly grateful for the many blessings we have — the friends and family who offered us so much emotional and material support, and the resources we have to draw on when confronted with a housing emergency. Even in a country as developed as the U.S., so many families are just one crisis away from disaster. We’re so thankful for the opportunity and hefty helping of luck that we both have had to allow us the security and comfort that we so often take for granted.
Once we’ve moved, my goal is to have a lot more content for the blog on a regular basis, including a description of our house search process and why things got so tangled right at the end. In the meantime, I just wanted to write this quick post mentioning that with a new house comes a new blog title and location. It feels strange to leave Beacon Street Manor behind, but it’s not like my readership is so high that it will confuse anyone for me to make the move ☺ I also wanted to give this new blogging platform, Medium, a try, so it seemed like the right time to make a change.
You might be wondering about the title of the new blog: Malden Place. Melrose is the city to the north of Malden, and it’s where we were originally hoping to buy.
We were seriously considering a house in Melrose (a very old house that was in decent shape for its age but still needed a fair amount of work), but then we found our house in Malden a few days later and fell in love. Melrose has a better school system right now, but is also more expensive. Malden is more affordable, is steadily developing, and also has the benefit of having several T stops (that’s the subway, for those of you not familiar with Boston public transit). So we’ll be a 15-minute walk from the nearest T stop, and it’s a straight shot to downtown Boston where we both work. That was a huge priority for us because we really didn’t want to have to drive to work or take a bus or commuter rail to get to the T, so it ultimately made Malden more attractive than Melrose (the last T stop is in Malden, so the very southern border of Melrose is walkable to the T but in a seller’s market that doesn’t leave a lot of flexibility). Also hopefully now Fox is less likely to sue me for the title of the blog… (lawyer friends, please weigh in)
I should be able to post again with another update by the end of the week!
