Are you sure you're reading the same blog as us?
[/quote]
Lol, I wondered the same thing. I personally don't think that a neutral granite will ever really go out o style. From a purely practical standpoint, it's probably not worth it. However I subscribe to the "if it makes you happy" philosophy of frugality, so from an aesthetic standpoint, nobody can answer for you. I would not call granite a huge financial mistake, as long as you get a good price (cheap granite has been flooding the market for a while - so consider if $5k is competitive). I also don't think bathrooms need to match kitchen.
Edit: the surprise about this post isn't so much about granite as the fact that buying a condo direct fr a builder IS often considered a terrible financial move. I'm not saying this transaction in particular, just in general.
[/quote]
Okay, now I understand the first comment. Thanks for your thoughts. Why is it normally a bad financial move to buy a condo from a builder? I am not disagreeing in any way, I honestly want to know. We looked at older condos for the same price range and they looked like crap compared to this one.
I guess I haven't read the blog long enough to know that this is the general consensus. The reason that we chose a condo is because we're moving to a more expensive area where we could not find any house that we could afford. But, we can easily afford this smaller (1200 sq ft) brand new condo in a wonderful area in walking distance to everything. I understand that people don't like the condo fees that never go away, is that the main reason? The fees here are low, $200/month, and I'm glad I don't have to buy a lawn mower or deal with anything outside like a house.
What other things do others not like about condos? We want to move to this area because we can walk everywhere and it is very close to a very large university and many large companies, that I think we would not have any trouble finders renters later on and the people who would rent in that area would be educated and hopefully more responsible than other areas and they would pay a higher amount for rent in that area.
Thank you for any of your thoughts and opinions!
Oh, by the way, we already decided to NOT upgrade the counter tops. The standard counters will be Wilson Art's high definition line. I'm just learning about these things, so I don't know if those are good, but they looked just fine to me :)