House Hunting
My wife and I went out with our real estate agent to look at five houses yesterday afternoon. It was a good trip. Here’s what we found:
House #1: This house was builtin the ’70s, and it was fairly obvious. Low ceilings, wood paneled closets, and unusual floorplan. The owners had updated the decor to a more ’90s look, but they succeeded in doing was making it look like a hospital. The walls were white, the decor was off-white, the carpet was cream colored… You’re getting a picture of it, eh? The floorplan was clumsy and cluttered. They had walled in their hot tub area, but they did a shoddy job of it. We weren’t impressed at all. Since this was the first house that we looked at, we were kind of bummed out about house hunting. We just had to hold out hope that the other houses would be better.
House #2: The next house was more promising. The layout was good, and the great room was huge. It had a three car garage, a decent amount of land, but no fence. We need a fence for our dogs. The best thing about the house was that the roof was made of steel and granite. Yep. You read right. Steel and granite. 50 year warranty. Sweet. The worst thing about the house was that the master bedroom was a little small, and it shared a bathroom with one of the guest rooms. The other guest room didn’t have a bathroom nearby, so guests would have to trek across the living room in their skivvies to get to the bathroom in the morning. Not the best arrangement. Despite the bad things, we put this house on our list of possibilities.
House #3: The third house that we looked at made me vomit a little bit in my mouth. It was entirely done in a southwestern decor. I’m not talking picutures on the wall. I’m talking, painting on every surface, wallpaper, and exterior cedar coverings. It was 4700 sqaure feet, which was a little too large for us, but we still wanted to look at it. I wish we hadn’t wasted our time on the house. The best feature was a nice, large, fenced-in backyard. Yeah. That’s it. The fence was the best thing about the house. The rest of it sucked. We toured the whole house since we were already there, but I kind of wish we hadn’t wasted our time on it.
House #4: The fourth house was the diamond in the rough. Fresh paint, fresh carpet, great condition, awesome floorplan, great layout, an office with a perfect view of Pikes Peak, a large fenced-in back yard, and 6.8 acres of land. We loved the house. It’s perfect for us! I can’t wait to get into it. The garage is only 2 car, but it’s oversized with plenty of storage space. It’s only been on the market for 5 days, so we’re hoping to be able to jump in there and swoop up the house before someone else does.
House #5: The last house was the most expensive one of the lot, and it was very unimpressive. It was on 5 acres of land, with a split-rail fence around the entire thing. They had a smaller patch of a backyard fenced in with so-so looking (but expensive) wrought iron fencing. The house was hot, muggy, and uncomfortable. The layout was ok, but the carpet and decor was very ugly. We would have to spend many thousands of dollars (on top of the purchase price of the house) to get it into a state that we wanted to live in it. I wasn’t disappointed in this house because we had already found our new dream home.
UPDATE: Just got a call from my wife. Our loan officer said that we could move forward with an offer on the new house even though we don’t even have our current house on the market! We’re meeting our real estate agent tonight to go over an offer contract. We just started looking a few weeks ago, and things are moving very quickly! There’s so much work to be done in such a short period of time. Good thing my boss is a great guy and will let me use bits and pieces of my vacation and my floating holidays over the next few weeks as we get things ready for the move! I’m so excited!
