take this house and keep it

At some point during the long winter I decided that I needed to move this summer. It might have been when we had yet another 3 feet of snow fall on the 150 feet of sidewalk I'm responsible for shovelling. Maybe. I started dreaming of a condo with a balcony and a view... one where the sidewalks were always shovelled and there was no massive patch of grass to mow in the summertime either. So I contacted my real estate agent and started looking once spring hit. And we looked, and we looked, and we looked, and everywhere I want to be is of course the most expensive areas to live in. I bought my little house for $54,000 four years ago. A 2 bedroom condo in City Park costs $250,000. So yes I can sell my house for almost $200,000 (how's that for an investment? Score!) but then I turn around and have the same mortgage as I have here PLUS $300 a month for condo fees. $300? That seems a bit steep, but again, the areas that I want to live in (the "old" areas of town, not the new fancy ones) have the most expensive condo fees for some reason. Plus the taxes are more than what I pay in my house... that's fucking dumb. Then I talked to my brother and he needs somwhere to live come September, so I started including houses in my MLS searches... and saw quite a few houses with basement suites for around the same price as a condo. So we start looking at houses. The last one I viewed was 445 sq feet - AND it had a basement suite... the door to the suite was about 1 foot wide and I said "my brother isn't even going to fit through the door!". I've looked at about 12 houses so far and nothing is as nice as what I already have. Sure, maybe a bigger house, nice yard, double garage, but the insides are rotten and all of them need some kind of fixing so why the hell would I move down the ladder so to speak? And the real estate agent said "I hate to talk myself out of a sale, but... we're not finding anything as good as what you already have". And I said "uh yeah." So it looks like I might stay here for another year or so. Which would make it 5 years that I've been here, which very well may be the longest I have ever lived anywhere, including while I was growing up. That's kind of funny. But my little house is awesome and the only thing that really bothers me is the shovelling in the winter, so I will take the $300 a month that I would have spent on condo fees and hire some young kid to shovel for me. Or buy a massive snowblower. Either way, I think I'm staying put.