And the winner is . . .

Last night we checked out the property I mentioned in yesterday’s entry. This unit is a penthouse unit and is on the fourth floor; you climb five flights of stairs to get to it because the building’s entrance is a full flight of stairs above the street. I will say the kitchen was fantastic, and I really liked it a lot. And the apartment was very bright because in addition to the windows, someone had put in a lot of skylights.

But all those skylights limit what can be done on the roof (the unit has roof rights, which is considered a selling point). Boston code requires that any roof structure be set back three feet away from the edge of the roof at all points. Because of the large number of skylights, we’d have had space for at most a four by four deck space. To us, the juice just wouldn’t be worth the squeeze. So combined with the unit being further south than we really wanted to be, plus the huge number of stairs required to get to the apartment, plus no outdoor space since the roof was useless for renovating—we decided against that unit.

As we hiked down the stairs (why did I wear my cute Van Eli sandals?), Kent and I briefly touched base just to make sure we were in agreement, and we were. By the time we reached the second floor, we’d told Paul we were ready to make an offer on 3 Claremont Park.

Now here’s another interesting difference between how real estate is handled in Boston compared to Kansas City. We still have not seen a seller’s disclosure form because apparently those are not shared until an offer is received—the buyer just puts in a contingency about the disclosure. And we don’t know the owner occupancy rate for the building yet—another item that is done after an offer is made. Finally I know if we’d told our realtor in Kansas City that we were ready to make an offer, she’d have hauled out her paperwork on the spot. Paul smiled and said he would pull everything together the next morning.

We had dinner at Stella’s last night. Paul said it was good and he was not wrong. Of course this morning I’m wishing we hadn’t split a bottle of wine. Running will not be much fun.