Thursday, May 23rd, 2013
House Hunting Update
Last Friday we finally met with a realtor, Nick, for a buyer’s consult, and he is awesome! Our realtor is a perfect match to us. He’s very honest and is not afraid to tell us what he thinks, and neither are we. Plus, he knows what we are looking for, unlike our previous realtors. Since we finally had a realtor, we officially got started with the house hunt. We were sending listings back and forth, doing drive-by’s in our free time, and on Wednesday we set-out to actually go inside some of the houses we picked out. But let me back up a bit. On Friday at our buyer’s consult appointment with Nick, he suggested that we take the list of five houses we had, and drive-by them. He said it’s very easy to narrow down a list by doing this, just by the neighborhood’s alone, and he was right! After our appointment ended we drove around for awhile, and just peeked at the houses like creepers.
As we drove by the houses we jotted down a quick note about them. Most of them were “eh’s”. Did we become Canadian or something? There was one “hell no”, one “yes!” and one “look at”. There was also a “don’t understand the neighborhood” note which was for the house below. It was a weird area. There would be one really nice house, and then one horrible looking house. I think Travis said it best, “I can’t tell if my neighbor is going to steal my lawn mower, or have a beer with me.” As in, are they trust-worthy or not. This house below photograph’s horrible though, it really didn’t look bad in person, but we crossed it off the list because it was just a weird area.
One of our “eh, let’s look at the inside” was the one below. After we wrote that note we kind of forgot about it until last night, when we decided to look at the interior pictures and fell in love all over again. I think it was an “eh” because that awful tree in front of the house cuts off the view. We are hopefully going to see this house this weekend though. (4 beds, 2 baths, 1,928 sq ft)
Our house hunting search REALLY got side-tracked by this house. I absolutely fell in love with it because of the wooded lot. I was already plotting mood boards in my head. We had a showing at this house last night, and I was dead-set on being prepared to make an offer. Our realtor was running a bit late, but he told us to snoop around the outside until he got there. I was instantly disappointed when we walked in the backyard, and then when I peeked in the office, and living room and sunroom. I learned a valuable lesson on this day, that pictures make spaces look way bigger than they actual are. Our current apartment felt bigger than this house. The weirdest thing about the house though…. the half bath and laundry were both in the garage. When would you ever use a bathroom in a garage? Also, Travis’ truck would have NEVER fit into that garage.
After we saw that house, we went to see another one close by. It was a green and brick rancher, which I’m not even going to show because the realtors pictures are horrible quality. After our showings, we went home and went back to the drawing board. We searched the MLS listings for awhile, and then Travis’ picked out three houses to drive by, which were a half hour away, and the sun was going to set in an hour. We went and saw one house, which was the furthest away, and it just was not worth that long commute. After this house it started to storm pretty bad, but we were determined to see these other houses, however, on the way to the second house we realized that it was in the same “weird neighborhood area” as a previous house we drove-by, so we nixed it. The third and final house we looked at is now on our list as a must-see. It’s off of a main street, and there is route signs in-front of it, but it’s pretty gorgeous. This house was actually on my list a few weeks ago, but Travis’ vetoed it because of the busy street, and he didn’t realize that this was the same house last night. Hopefully we will see this beauty this weekend along with the other house further up in this post. (4 beds, 1.5 baths, 1800 square feet)
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