It’s funny what a similar line my sister and I have been on with respect to housing in the past 8 months or so. We moved halfway across the country within about one week of each other and are both again sharing some grief over housing. Mine is best illustrated with the picture below:

This is a picture from HousingMaps that combines Craigslist and Google Maps - that big blank area in the middle (between 99 and I-5) that shows no rentals…exactly where I want to live. The area around the lake is insanely popular and any good rentals usually gets snatched up in less than a day. I really would like to buy as there are a ton of places for sale in the area…but I just don’t happen to have $500,000 lying around, which is what most of these places start at…if you’re lucky. I’m hoping the lull in rentals is mostly due to people being away for Memorial Day weekend…but we’ll see.