Disadvantage of Renting

We are currently renting a two floor house on our yishuv. For the past three years we had been renting a three bedroom on the second floor of a house. We have tons of stuff since I have not been able to part with many of my things. We had a shed outside and a whole bedroom inside used for storage. We felt the apartment was small once we had our second. When we found out that our good friend who were renting bought a house across the street from their rental we were thrilled. They needed someone to take over their lease and we wanted a house. They didn't even have to advertise. They also wanted to hand pick their neighbors so they didn't want to advertise to the whole yishuv that the house was up for rent.

Now I know this is selfish and not nice but we rented the house even though we knew that there were families with many more kids who were more desperate to move. I'm sure a lot of people were jealous and resentful and it made me uncomfortable.

So now that we've been living here for about 6 months and we're b"H very happy, let me tell you what happened today. My daughter was sick with a virus so she stayed home with me. She was really sick yesterday and today was just to make sure that she was over the virus. So basically she had regained all her strength by this morning. I had spent all morning with her until 12. I couldn't take it anymore and decided to go for a walk to the park down the street until I had to pick up my son.

As we are walking to the park, we see a neighbor. This is someone Israeli who usually barely says hello. Here she not only said hi but also waited for me and my daughter to catch up to her. Then she asked us if the owner of our house would be interested in selling. Boy did that blow me away. I wonder if my shock was aparent on my face. It probably was. I told her what I knew. The last tenants had asked him this question and he wasn't really interested and only for a price that was about $70,000 more than the value of the house. He lives in Jlm and needs it to cover his rent. Also, he got grants from the gov't. and would have to pay them back if he sold before a certain amount of years. I didn't tell her that last part though. She said to me that she had some friends who live on the yishuv and recently had to relocate within the yishuv. They are sick of moving and want to buy. Because there isn't much choice (since there's no building going on), they are willing to pay (I guess any price).

This knowledge made me very unhappy to say the least. Here we are, in our new house, which we like so much. Along comes a neighbor and tries to oust us out of our home so her friend can live nearby. Now she apologized for being the intermediary and knew that it would mean that we'd have to relocate. The thought of moving to another probably smaller rental was so overwhelming to me that I'm glad I didn't fall down right then and there. I told her that I didn't have the owners number on my but that she could call me for it. She said that it wouldn't be for a while that her friends would move, like the end of the year.

So we said our goodbyes and I turned around, headed home and called my hubby. He tried to reassure me that the owner wouldn't sell, even for a high price. I'm not 100% reassured though and the thought of moving is not pleasant. Let's hope that it doesn't happen until we've bought a house to move into.