In January, my current relationship at the time ended and I was in the need to find a new place to live as soon as possible. I had the choice of buying a new place in the suburbs or buying a place downtown. Having lived in the burbs since I moved to Iowain 2003, first in a townhome in Glen Oaks and then later to a large home in Clive, I knew I wanted to try something different. Over the past few years, I, like many others, would go on open house tours around the area and my favorites were always the downtown lofts.

So the next question decision was which lofts to choose from and budget was a main consideration since downtown living tended to be a lot more expensive than buying a townhome out west. Since I had toured most of the locations downtown previously and only had a couple of weeks to make a decision and get the closing process started, I narrowed my choices down to the following:

• Whiteline Lofts
• Liberty Condos
• 111 City Lofts
• Brown Camp Lofts

 Big factors for me where:

• Cost
• Square Footage
• Parking
• HOA dues & Utilities
• Tax Abatement
• Location / View

I drug my friend Todd along with me as we set out on my search for where I would call home for the foreseeable future. Our first visit was to the Whiteline Lofts. This was a cool looking new trendy building near the Science Center. Within my price range, I could get a unit on the 6^th floor with a southern view. The space was a little small for me on the square footage size, but in my head I figured I could do it, just sell a lot of my existing furniture and buy new small sized stuff. I didn’t really care for the southern view that much and it over looked the parking lot. Oh, the parking lot, I would have to park outside and I wasn’t really keen on that with dealing with the snow and stuff. This was a huge drawback for me, so we ventured on but not before falling in love with their rooftop patio. How great it would be to bring my friends up there!

Next we stopped by Liberty Condos. From what I had remembered these units were priced a little out of my price range, but with the down turn in the housing market, maybe I would be able to come up with something. What I really liked about the Liberty Condos is that they were finished more like a New York City apartment than an Industrial So-Ho Loft. There big selling point for me was Skywalk Access and a parking garage and the view from my unit of the Capitol. One thing that Liberty Condos didn’t have that Whiteline Lofts had, was the rooftop patio. I liked that it was right in the heart of downtown, but I wanted to see what other options were out there. In my head, if I could swing it, Liberty was my first choice and Whiteline was my second choice.

Now we headed over to 111 City Lofts. I remember seeing their really cool model the summer before. This building was a huge transformation. I remember when I worked at the downtown Wells Fargo Financial buildings, that I could see the old LookBuilding and how bad it looked on the outside. I knew someone would eventually buy that building and transform it, and what a success the 111 City Lofts are! So of course starting with my price range, I looked at a second floor unit in the building. Ah, living downtown, I wanted to be higher up, that’s what downtown living is about. I was enamored by most of everything I saw. I thought this would be a nice home, a little more than I wanted to pay, but I could easily live here. The biggest drawback on this place was it wasn’t connected to the Skywalk. I know that wasn’t one of my first considerations but after seeing the Liberty Condos had the connection, it became more and more important to me, especially with the fact I could still get out and walk around in the winter without freezing my ass off.

We were off to the last place; it was a re-sell at the Brown Camp Lofts. It was by far the biggest square footage for my money, 1,800 square foot, but it was ground level. It was a nice space, but being a finished unit I was taking what somewhat else had chosen for finishes, appliances, etc. and the main entrance door was on the street that isn’t that attractive of an area of town and the parking that came with the unit was outside, again a big “no-no” in my book.

So now I had to go home, read a lot of information on these places, do some researching, number crunching and make a decision. After a few days of research, I was ready to make my offer, I was going to try and get into the Liberty Condos, but wasn’t for sure that it would happen.

See my next blog on “Purchasing a Liberty Condo”

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closeAuthor: MulderDSM Name: Larry Bradshaw
Email: admin@livingdowntowndesmoines.com
Site: http://www.larrybradshaw.net
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• 2009 Downtown Housing Sales Update
• Downtown Housing Sales Updates through August