We can't find a decent place to live, again.

We moved to the DC area about three years ago and have lived in our current home for the past two years. We're renters. We move when we feel like it, aren't tied to a mortgage, and honestly don't want to buy a house anyway at this point. It's come around to that time when our lease is up for renewal, and once again I set out looking for a bigger/newer/nicer place to live.

We are slowly outgrowing our current place, but we have big requirements for our home - we need space, and lots of it. We're from Texas and to us space is like grazing pasture - seemingly useless to some, but necessary in every way to us and our four kids. You can imagine the trouble we have to go through to find places big enough to fit all of us in the way that we want in the DC Metro area.

Surprisingly that's not been a problem - there are larger houses that pop up that aren't breaking the bank. But this go round I'm running into a slightly different problem - there just aren't the same number of rentals in general on the market as the prior three times I've looked. Two of those times we eventually found places and were all set, but the third was last year about this time and I wasn't seeing a whole lot of choices, so we stayed put. We're back hunting again, and I was assuming (and you know what they say about that) that with the housing market being the way it is that more folks would want to rent. But no. that's just not the case this go round. There are rentals that are popping up that are 4+ bedrooms and under the price we want to pay, but they are few and far between. I think that homes are being foreclosed on and sold, but not that many home owners are deciding to rent their places out (which may not be such a bad thing since you don't flood the market with first time landlords - that's a whole other gripe of mine). So here we are starting our home search a good two and a half months before we need to move in the hopes that the just right for us house pops up, and that it won't cost us an arm and a leg.

But don't even get me started on what we are paying in this area - that's a whole other story...that we'll let slide for now. I'm sure that a good sized, decent place to live is out there, waiting for us, but it just might take a little more patience on my part.  

This is an original DC Metro Moms Post. When not house hunting, Suzie writes about her adventures over at Confessions of a Not So Well Behaved Woman.