My name is Trent, and I am a 30-year-old computer technician for XYZ Corp.

I’m tired of tossing my money away on rent and I wanna plant some roots, ya know?

So, I’m looking for a condo, and I’m also trying to figure out how to “get started.”

God, I hate my job!

It’s the same thing day-in, day-out.  I sit at my desk and wait for the phone to ring, the Blackberry to buzz, or the pager to go off (yes, I still use a pager), and for somebody in my company to say they have a problem with their computer.

I am “the computer guy” at XYZ Corp and I go around fixing stupid people’s stupid issues.

I’m not a nerd – don’t get me wrong.  I’m just good with computers and stuff, so I ended up with this gig.

Yesterday, I was called up to the 32nd floor to deal with those morons in Sourcing because this one lady’s computer wouldn’t print.  It turns out, the printer was never turned “on.”  She gave me some line about how somebody messed with her work station or something.

This morning, a guy from Systems on the 8th floor called me away from a wicked article on TMZ.com to help him find some documents that he saved….since he didn’t know where he saved them to!  He’s been using a computer all his life, yet he had no idea what folder he saved these docs into, and it was my job to search for them.  Go figure.

Yeah, that’s the kind of stupid stuff I have to deal with…

I’ve been at this job for six years, basically right out of Sheridan College.

I moved out of my parents’ place when I finished school, and I lived with a buddy in a 2-bedroom rental apartment on Broadway Avenue near Yonge/Eglinton.  That move turned out to be a bust (he was a wannabe bodybuilder and our place always reeked from the various meats he would cook), so I moved out on my own when I found a place on Ossington Avenue.

I lived there for about two years, and then when I had saved enough dough, I moved into my first condo down at 218 Queen’s Quay.  I liked it during the summer, but it was desolate and cold in the winter!  I saw Chris Bosh in the elevator once a few years ago.  The guy is on TV every night and he lives in my building.  Go figure.

From there I ended up moving to The Met at 21 Carlton Street, which would have been great if I was 22-years-old and liked puking in the lobby of my condo at 2AM while my friends cheer me on.  I tried to get out of my lease there after three months, but the landlord wouldn’t budge.

After that, I moved into 92 King Street West which is an older building with a more mature demographic.  This is where I live now.

I’ve been saving every penny I could for the last six years, and I have about $35,000 stuffed in my mattress (I’m kidding – it’s with ING Direct).  I had about $42,000 at one point but then the stock market crashed and I lost a bundle.  I took it out last May, which I kinda regret since the market has risen about 20% since then!  Go figure.

So I wanna buy a condo and of course I’m already feeling like a bit of a space cadet.  I talked to a guy at Royal Bank about mortgages and I was bored and confused after about ten minutes.  He went on about variable-this, fixed-that, and then about leverage or something.

A couple months ago, I went into an open house for a condo at 1005 King Street, which I kinda liked.  The agent there was a nice dude, although I found it pretty lame that he didn’t feel the need to shave for like the past two days.  He added me to some auto-search and I get inundated with these emails from MLS every morning.  It’s kinda random.

Then a few weeks after that, I went to another open house and this lady was all over me!  She basically chased me around the condo asking me to sign a form or something, and then once she had my phone number she called me like twice a week.

I’ve learned now to put down a fake name and number when I go to open houses.

I found this guy on Facebook that I went to public school with – he’s a real estate agent now so I contacted him.  I never really liked him back then, so it came as no surprise that I didn’t really gel with him now either.  I met him for a coffee to talk about real estate but he stuffed these contracts in my face right off the hop.  He was all like, “Sign a buyer’s agreement with me and we’ll know that we can trust eachother!”  I didn’t trust him in grade seven when he cheated off me on the history exam and then told the teacher that is was me who cheated, so why should I trust him now?

So I started browsing a lot of Internet sites, but most of them suck.

You search “Toronto Condos” and its all these agent websites with no current listings.

I felt like a moron when this girl I work with named Kathy (who I’m pretty sure I could get with if I really put some effort in) told me to go to www.mls.ca to search for condo listings.  Was I born yesterday?  Seriously?  Here I am searching “Toronto Condos For Sale” on Bing and there’s a dedicated site for real estate listings.  Go figure.

I’m a freaking comp-tech and I didn’t even know this.  Go figure.

So then I basically started to find condos that interested me and I’d call the agents to go view them.

I went to see this one place on Camden Street and the guy immediately asked me if I was “working” with an agent.  I made the mistake of saying “no,” and told him that I was going to see a place on Spadina right after.  So he tells me, “I’ve got an hour until my next appointment – why don’t I go with you?”

I told him that I just wanted to do some research on my own, ya know?  Like, just window shop for a bit until I find what I’m looking for.

So he gets all waterworks on me like, “Well thanks a lot!  Thanks for wasting my time!”  I spent like ten minutes with him and he’s upset that I won’t spend $350,000 right then and there.

I think I really wanna live in a loft, like a really authentic New York style place – kinda like what Monica and Rachel had on Friends.  I know they’re pricey, but I’d be willing to take a smaller place.

I started to find some pretty awesome websites for lofts in Toronto, so I basically keep a folder on my desktop for photos of buildings and units that I like.  After searching for a while, I found a few great sites and a lot of them have write-ups on the history of the building and stuff.  It’s pretty cool.

I went to see this one place a couple weeks ago called the “Massey Harris Lofts” but the agent there said that even though he was doing the open house, the unit had already sold!  Go figure.

It’s tough to buy something when it’s not for sale, eh?

He said nothing has come out in that building since October of 2009 so I guess they’re pretty rare.  I don’t wanna wait like another five months though.  I’m on month-to-month at my place at 92 King Street so I want to find a place N-O-W!

A friend of mine’s mom is in real estate so I met her at Druxy’s like two weeks ago for lunch (at least I got a free corned-beef sandwich out of it!).  She was pretty awesome; she told me that she really only deals with like million-dollar houses in North Toronto or something, so she doesn’t have a great handle on condos downtown.  But she hooked me up with this guy at her office that is like a condo guru or something.

He emailed me and we made chit-chat for a bit, but he’s totally on the ball.  He sent me a list of basically every loft in the downtown core and rated them with a star-system that he came up with himself.

I met up with him that week and he looked super-familiar.  Turns out I played hockey with his brother in MTHL in like 1990 or something.  Go figure.

So we went out last weekend to look at a whole slew of places, all lofts like I want.  I get a little razzled because I know them as like, “Candy Factory Lofts” and “Toy Factory Lofts” but he’ll call them “993 Queen Street” and “43 Hanna Avenue.”

He’s super detail-oriented, which is great because I’m not.  Yeah, I’m a totally techie, but that stuff just kinda flows…..like Matt Damon in the math movie from Harvard or something.  I can’t explain it.  I just know that I don’t like keeping track of all the places I’ve seen; I just like keeping the photos on my computer.  So this guy keeps track of everything and he sent me like this weekly summary of what’s sold and what’s still available.

I think I’m in pretty good hands with this dude.  He’s a keener for sure but he’s got an eye for what I want.

This morning he sent me this email with a loft on Adelaide Street which I couldn’t even find on the mls.ca site.  He said he has access to it about a day before the public does, so we’re gonna see it tonight.

He says there will be a lot of interest since it’s priced low at $329,000, but I have up to $350,000 to spend so I’m ready.

I have to wait a week before I’m allowed to even make an offer.  Apparently the sellers are overseas or something.  Go figure.

Okay I’d better get back to work.

This old lady in Supply-Chain left me a message saying that the “q” button on her keyboard is stuck and she can’t get any work done.

It’s a living, what can I tell ya?  At least I parlayed all these years of helping stupid computer users into enough dough to buy my own place.  I can’t wait to see these digs on Adelaide tonight.

The crazy part is – my boss lives in the building next door.  What a small world eh?

Go figure.