How Did We Do It?

Hintonburg is a happening place.  It's near funky restaurants. There are nice schools and parks. And there are real amenities here, like grocery stores, that make it a neighbourhood where you can not only play but live. And all without having to have a car. For that reason, it's not surprising that lots of people are looking to move here.

Sometimes as Glosette Girl and I wander around the neighbourhood, we wonder, just how did we pull this off? How were we able to find our home without having to pay an arm and a leg or buying a teardown property and hoping it didn't come down on our heads?

Maybe it's because:

• We live on the side of Gladstone Avenue closest to the Highway cutting through Ottawa. Originally we thought that that meant it would be too loud here and we would always here cars zooming by although, honestly we just hear the regular city ambient noise.
• Sadly, our street, Sherbrooke Avenue has less mature trees than some of the other streets around here.
• We just got lucky.

Honestly, we don't know.

An example of an apartment for sale in the area

Hintonburg wasn't always such a hot spot. About 15-years ago Hintonburg was notorious for prostitution and other crime. Glosette Girl and I moved in in 2016 and by then it was pretty well on the route to gentrification. Still, perhaps because it was (and is) still a little bit rough around the edges (which I like) we were able to buy our current home without having to enter into a crazy bidding war.

New build = costs big bucks

Occasionally, while sipping wine, we take a sneak peak at the local real estate websites to see what is selling these days and already it seems the price of many homes are now out of our league. We then take another sip of wine and count our blessings!