The hunt continues

This is a really long and boring post about houses.



I will probably post something about our house hunting (while it is in full swing) one a week so be warned.

So where where we, ah yes starting the hunt.

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that we had actually looked at houses. It was a nice change from just creepily driving by like we are casing the place.

We looked at 5 houses that day:

Small, older home : this was the house that we had been looking at for some time. It had been completely renovated, and looked amazing in the pictures so we were really excited that this was the first house to see. After looking around, for about 30 min we had made up or minds that this house needed to be taken off of our list. While walking around we just felt that 1. it was way to small 2. there was absolutely no storage and 3. they did some shotty renovation. Lets just say a door fell off its hinges while I was trying to see the laundry room and I freaked out. I was stuck in the mind set "you break it you buy it."

Bigger, remodeled home: This house was it. We loved everything about it, the open floor plan, the nice size bedrooms, the big finished basement. Hubs and I both look at different things first when we walk in to a house, I go directly to the kitchen and he goes outside to see the back yard situation. We both didn't have to compromise what was important to us and that was awesome. Oh and the Neighborhood was Ah.Mazing, we just sighed and thought... "yeah, we could live here."

More traditional home : This house was a close second, although I didn't like the lay out. It was more traditional than say a split level or a bi level so all the rooms were closed off I felt. It had 5 bedrooms, one of which was a surprise because it was in the huge finished basement, hubs loved his potential man cave. The work they had done was ok, the kitchen was great but the bathrooms and such were ok. This was the first house where there was an actual Master Bathroom even it was tiny. The neighbor was good although the next door neighbor was a bit odd.

The newer build : This was almost a no as soon as we walked in. We want our house to have some character and this didn't have it. It looked and felt like a pre fab house and it kind of creeped us out that people were still living there. We went in to the basement and there were dirty clothes every where and it was just a little weird. We would have had to build a fence and replace the carpeting, not something we want to do right off the bat. Oh, and it smelled weird...

The bank owned property: This house has some serious potential for someone who has the money. The house was a big open ranch that had a really nice lay out. The issue was it was sold as is and that meant, holes in the wall, nasty carpet (in one room there looked to be a huge blood stain on the carpet, which in all actuality was probably paint but in my head was blood), broken fixtures. It was just sad because it was such a nice house, you could tell it once was. We just don't have the money to fix it up.

We left our first day of hunting feeling pretty good, we knew which house we wanted and decided to talk to the bank when we got back in town on Monday. Well, we did and it didn't go over as well as we had hoped. The original amount we were pre-approved for was actually higher than what the bank will loan us based on our salary and such. We weren't discouraged though because we knew this is just one of those things that happen when you are trying to buy a house. So we regrouped and talked with our realtor and now have sooooo much more options... who would have thought that less money meant more to choose from?

This weekend we start the hunt again.