Homes, apartments, condos oh my!

So yeah, another topic on homes. If you’re bored please move along… As I mentioned before rentals here are not exactly easy to get, my brother, the one who lives in Aaman Jordan, has been looking for an apartment to rent and hasn’t been finding any luck at all. He has been looking in a nicer area of town, but that’s because that is where their youngest son is going to go to school. He came by with his oldest son today for dinner, I invited them over for hamburgers on my new grill, and I finally got to make my nice hamburgers in Canada for the first time.

• Ground beef
• Diced red onion
• Grated carrot
• Oats
• Egg
• Lowry’s Seasoning Salt
• Pepper
• Liquid smoke
• Mix all above ingredients well and make into thin patties. Then sprinkle Gorgonzola cheese in the middle, place a second patty on top and make sure the edges are squeezed together as much as you can.
• Gorgonzola cheese

Its yummy. Although the cheese will run out the sides still, but you’ll still get a good enough blue cheese flavour for it to taste real good. I’m not a blue cheese fan, but I love this burger. My brother and nephew liked em a lot.

Anyway… my brother was pretty disappointed with looking for apartments. Places he had called last week to look at apts today were either not answering his call today, or said they had were gone already. So he’s kind of weary about that.

One thing my wife and I have been talking about is possibly going in with my brother on getting a house. Multiple times since they have been back  they have said they regretted selling their house here when they went to the Middle East as they could not afford the house now. So I talked with him a bit about this tonight to see what his thoughts were. It would take longer for him to be able to get into a place, unlike an apartment, but it would be an investment for both of us. I said that in 2-3 years we could look at if they wanted to buy us out, or us them, or just sell it on the market and come away with the increase in the market value including the upgrades we will have put in it. So he is going to take that to his wife to see what she says. They have a realtor, one of my sister-in-law’s friends, so that could be a good help.

I also showed him mls.ca and how to look for houses there. Gave him an idea of what a mortgage on a 200k house would be and how that could be divided into two to make it very easy. I also added that when they left their oldest will need a place to live and trying to find a place on his own will be pretty hard. I said if we went together after they left their oldest would pay their portion of the mortgage, which would be cheaper than rent he would pay, and we would also be there to help keep an eye on him. He seemed somewhat receptive, but we’ll have to to see how it goes. I’m not going to pin hopes on it. One thing for sure is to create a document where it clearly states where each of us stands on upgrades, repairs, etc… That way in 3 years time there is no fight over anything, its evenly split. Money is never a good thing to get in between family, so I want to head that off at the pass.

On another note.

My wife tried Lotsa Fizz candy for the first time tonight. I didn’t tell here what they were, or what they did, but I could sure tell when it finally fizzed in her mouth (Relax Cliff, not that kind of fizz… Dirty mind!) cause she was ‘Oh! Yup, its fizzing.’, it was pretty funny. That and I got her some gobstoppers too.