I haven't posted about the house search for a while because, well, it's been pretty nondescript, aka depressing. The housing market around here is getting more expensive - not totally sure why that is, except apparently everyone wants to live here?
We still learn new things, every house we consider. For instance, if it's over a hundred years old and never been seriously remodeled, run away quickly. Kitchens from the 1960s tend to be a danger signal. I think it would be one thing if we were carefree do-it-yourselfers who were happy to stay up till 2 am every night ripping floorboards and replacing joists, but as parent of a joyful three-year-old, I really draw the line at living rooms slanting downhill. There are projects our church family can help with, and then there's ridiculousness, yours for a limited time only for a quarter of a million dollars!
Ahem.
The process is cementing some things firmly in my mind. First of all, I. have. got. to. have. a. yard. I am going nuts. I need to plant daffodils. Secondly, we have got to get a second bathroom. Not even a choice. Third, I still detest townhouses, for me. I read an article that said an astonishing 25% of young couples/families actually want townhouses. That seems... inflated, for the young couples I know.
I went and looked at two houses the other day. The first, sadly, was only two bedrooms. It was a bit raggedy round the eaves, but cute other than that. Then I went home and read the description, which went "Unsafe - do not enter." Oh. I do prefer being able to enter houses I live in. The other house turned out to be the next-door neighbor to one we looked at a couple months ago, which we had turned down due to wavy floorboards and the presence of neighbors with a yard full of trash. I hear they were very nice people, just... lots of trash. Well, it was the trash house for sale this time, and visions of cockroaches danced in my head. Also - more seriously - that neighborhood is up-and-coming and I suspect developers of harboring trendy little townhouse dreams there.
I'm getting discouraged and starting to contemplate filing house-hunting under "mythical creatures." I'm trying hard not to get all jealous and cranky about it. This was my choice, when I opted not to go back to work after Meg arrived.
A foreclosure just came on the market today. It's sorta kinda mostly actually in our price range, depending how much fixing it'll take, and it's nice and close by. Meg and I are off to investigate in a little bit. As my mom says, when we do get a house, we'll know for sure it was the Lord's provision. So do please keep praying.
Showing posts with label House hunting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label House hunting. Show all posts
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Friday, December 21, 2012
Another house we aren't going to buy
We looked at another house this week. This one would have a been a really great option. It was in our price range and had a yard and had just been redone inside, and it was cute. Really cute. I completely fell in love with it. There wasn't actually anything seriously wrong with it - just some minor changes.
We were this close to putting in an offer, when we realized that our working budget was no longer accurate due to Obamacare's rates and some of the prospective changes Congress has going (or not going). Changes like, we don't know if the mortgage tax writeoff is still going to exist in January. And, we thought, budgeting the same amount for utilities and repairs and whatnot for a house as for our (not maintained by us) apartment is probably not realistic either. At this point we were talking hundreds of dollars difference, which would be hard to squeeze out of the grocery budget. Drat.
I had really hoped to get a house for Christmas. But I glared at the numbers and they didn't care a bit. So we're kind of glum at the moment.
We were this close to putting in an offer, when we realized that our working budget was no longer accurate due to Obamacare's rates and some of the prospective changes Congress has going (or not going). Changes like, we don't know if the mortgage tax writeoff is still going to exist in January. And, we thought, budgeting the same amount for utilities and repairs and whatnot for a house as for our (not maintained by us) apartment is probably not realistic either. At this point we were talking hundreds of dollars difference, which would be hard to squeeze out of the grocery budget. Drat.
I had really hoped to get a house for Christmas. But I glared at the numbers and they didn't care a bit. So we're kind of glum at the moment.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
We're still house-hunting
The five stages of house-hunting in Loudoun County:
1. Denial. It can't cost that much.
2. Suspicion. If it's in our price range, what's wrong with it?
3. Adoration. It has brand-new appliances and cabinets? I'll take it!
4. Bargaining. So what if it was literally built on the property line and has no basement or yard? We can, um, have parties in the common area. Yeah.
5. Resignation. We'll keep looking.
1. Denial. It can't cost that much.
2. Suspicion. If it's in our price range, what's wrong with it?
3. Adoration. It has brand-new appliances and cabinets? I'll take it!
4. Bargaining. So what if it was literally built on the property line and has no basement or yard? We can, um, have parties in the common area. Yeah.
5. Resignation. We'll keep looking.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Mold, one point
We looked at another house on Saturday. This one was a short sale here in town, and we really liked it. It had three bedrooms on the main floor and a reasonable amount of living space, then a basement. You went down and found a pretty good sized living room down there, and opened a door and found a humongous room with a ping-pong table and groovy bar table, and then you opened another door with an even more humongous unfinished room with the washer and dryer, a door up to the yard, hanging racks for clothes, stacks and stacks of boxes, and the heater and hot water heater. It just kept going. It was phenomenal. Also, the people had a cat, which was definitely a mark in their favor.
The mark against them was that the basement was overrun with mold. One wall had been torn out, and the carpet really should have been. Our realtor did some digging, and found out they'd had a mold inspector in back in MAY who recommended massive mold remediation which was never done, and warned of possible structural problems. I get that it's the responsibility of the bank that owns it. But why wouldn't the bank try to, you know, preserve its investment? Nobody is going to win if they have to tear down the house. And if I lived there, short sale or no short sale, I think I'd invest in $5 worth of bleach and start scrubbing. I'd also knock down some spiderwebs. There were a lot of happy spiders.
Our realtor says it's always an adventure looking at houses with us!
I hate to see a house neglected like that. On the strength of it, I washed my strawberries in vinegar water today and bleached a moldy window frame.
The mark against them was that the basement was overrun with mold. One wall had been torn out, and the carpet really should have been. Our realtor did some digging, and found out they'd had a mold inspector in back in MAY who recommended massive mold remediation which was never done, and warned of possible structural problems. I get that it's the responsibility of the bank that owns it. But why wouldn't the bank try to, you know, preserve its investment? Nobody is going to win if they have to tear down the house. And if I lived there, short sale or no short sale, I think I'd invest in $5 worth of bleach and start scrubbing. I'd also knock down some spiderwebs. There were a lot of happy spiders.
Our realtor says it's always an adventure looking at houses with us!
I hate to see a house neglected like that. On the strength of it, I washed my strawberries in vinegar water today and bleached a moldy window frame.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Weekend doings
This weekend we went adventure camping on Assateague, almost looked at a half-a-duplex that sold in about 24 hours of coming on the market, and (just now) discovered that the line between a fancy French cream sauce and a not fancy at all Western white gravy is really, really thin. It's good, whichever it is. I put sage in it. I hope someday to have a house of our own to make it in. Or, of course, I could take the fixings and make it over a Sterno stove while camping, but that doesn't sound very probable.
Also today I was brave and got back up on a horse. Charlie's a good horse, but he doesn't believe in "slow" and he's not as smooth and short and, well, slow as Navarre. But all went well.
Also today I was brave and got back up on a horse. Charlie's a good horse, but he doesn't believe in "slow" and he's not as smooth and short and, well, slow as Navarre. But all went well.
Thursday, August 09, 2012
Breaking news: not going to offer on that house
It was a nice possibility but not, we think, for us. When we considered the numbers, there seemed to be a lot of zeros and eights. In the wrong places, I mean. We don't object to the number eight per se. Also, the kitchen didn't have room for a dishwasher, and I'm kind of spoiled that way.
Thanks for your interest and concern, everybody! Keep sending us possibilities, but don't mind if I take one look at the price tag and laugh. I'll keep you posted.
Thanks for your interest and concern, everybody! Keep sending us possibilities, but don't mind if I take one look at the price tag and laugh. I'll keep you posted.
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
A possibility!
A couple weeks ago, we looked at a little bungalow in P-ville. I'd fallen in love with it, hard, and when it turned out to be in truly lousy repair (mold to the eyebrows, water damage, the works), I cried all afternoon.
Yesterday I cried all afternoon too, because it was a hard day. Meg was sick, so we didn't get to do anything fun, and she didn't feel good and she wanted to watch Winnie-the-Pooh again, and I was bug-bitten and discouraged and about three-quarters convinced that I wasn't going to get a house ever. I was going to be grown-up and realistic in the current market and be doomed to townhouses until I'm forty. It will be awful. Mom said she'd pray.
It just goes to show, you should always have your mother pray for you. This morning a house popped up on the market in the neighborhood we like best. It's older than I am and pleasantly eccentric, with a nice yard and three enormous maples and minor repair issues of the kind I can actually tackle myself, like repainting and pulling vines off the metal siding. I was actually ready to buy it just from the outside. But I didn't. That is, I waited for Jonathan and our realtor and we looked all through the inside and the basement, and then we decided to pursue buying it. It will need a lot of work and some de-weirding. The kitchen cabinets are all really short. The next step is for our financial whiz to do whatever it is she does and tell us whether or not we can afford it.*
In the interest of not crying all afternoon tomorrow, I'm trying not to crush on it too hard. I do think it could be quite cute and I could make the best garden ever on that land. We'll see. I am trying to practice hope and contentment and wisdom and not leaping before I look and so forth. House-hunting is exhausting.
*She did explain. And I paid attention and understood most of it. But I feel it would be selfish to take numbers away from people who actually like them, which is why I was a lit major and now I write about laundry and hyperdrives. This is called Division of Labor.
Yesterday I cried all afternoon too, because it was a hard day. Meg was sick, so we didn't get to do anything fun, and she didn't feel good and she wanted to watch Winnie-the-Pooh again, and I was bug-bitten and discouraged and about three-quarters convinced that I wasn't going to get a house ever. I was going to be grown-up and realistic in the current market and be doomed to townhouses until I'm forty. It will be awful. Mom said she'd pray.
It just goes to show, you should always have your mother pray for you. This morning a house popped up on the market in the neighborhood we like best. It's older than I am and pleasantly eccentric, with a nice yard and three enormous maples and minor repair issues of the kind I can actually tackle myself, like repainting and pulling vines off the metal siding. I was actually ready to buy it just from the outside. But I didn't. That is, I waited for Jonathan and our realtor and we looked all through the inside and the basement, and then we decided to pursue buying it. It will need a lot of work and some de-weirding. The kitchen cabinets are all really short. The next step is for our financial whiz to do whatever it is she does and tell us whether or not we can afford it.*
In the interest of not crying all afternoon tomorrow, I'm trying not to crush on it too hard. I do think it could be quite cute and I could make the best garden ever on that land. We'll see. I am trying to practice hope and contentment and wisdom and not leaping before I look and so forth. House-hunting is exhausting.
*She did explain. And I paid attention and understood most of it. But I feel it would be selfish to take numbers away from people who actually like them, which is why I was a lit major and now I write about laundry and hyperdrives. This is called Division of Labor.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
"A house... a brick residence adjoining the palace... et cetera"
Right, about house-hunting. We have talked to a realtor and talked to a financial whiz loan person. We know our price bracket and are getting regular emails, and basically we're waiting for a suitable house to show up.
It can't be a townhouse or condo - it needs to be big enough to have family come stay with us without anyone sleeping on the couch or behind a pile of books - it needs enough yard for a patio and a garden and running around in - and I have to actually, you know, like it. I figure that's only fair, if we're going to be paying for it for the next thirty years. I'm also attached to functional roofing, plumbing, and wiring, but I hear this can be arranged, depending on your type of loan.
We also have a long list of wishes, starting with a Great Room suitable for banquets and impromptu plays and ending with a stream at the bottom of the garden.* I really want a house older than myself. Eccentric is good. I have an irrational prejudice against split-levels, and would actually prefer the kitchen not to have been remodeled recently, since I don't particularly care for current kitchen fashions and suspect it would just make it more expensive. But our wishes are more flexible.
The nice thing is God provided our current very nice apartment, and no doubt He will also provide a house in good time. I'm actually not worried about it. So we're waiting hopefully... and trying not to think about real estate prices in cheaper parts of the country!
*Unfortunately from a house-hunting perspective, I was raised on The Secret Garden and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and somehow enormous English manor houses keep hovering on my mental horizons. There are a lot of them around, too - a whole enclave just off Route 7. I think they all belong to DC multi-millionaires. I'm trying to fend them off with more realistic(?) visions of The Incredibles' tract house.
It can't be a townhouse or condo - it needs to be big enough to have family come stay with us without anyone sleeping on the couch or behind a pile of books - it needs enough yard for a patio and a garden and running around in - and I have to actually, you know, like it. I figure that's only fair, if we're going to be paying for it for the next thirty years. I'm also attached to functional roofing, plumbing, and wiring, but I hear this can be arranged, depending on your type of loan.
We also have a long list of wishes, starting with a Great Room suitable for banquets and impromptu plays and ending with a stream at the bottom of the garden.* I really want a house older than myself. Eccentric is good. I have an irrational prejudice against split-levels, and would actually prefer the kitchen not to have been remodeled recently, since I don't particularly care for current kitchen fashions and suspect it would just make it more expensive. But our wishes are more flexible.
The nice thing is God provided our current very nice apartment, and no doubt He will also provide a house in good time. I'm actually not worried about it. So we're waiting hopefully... and trying not to think about real estate prices in cheaper parts of the country!
*Unfortunately from a house-hunting perspective, I was raised on The Secret Garden and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and somehow enormous English manor houses keep hovering on my mental horizons. There are a lot of them around, too - a whole enclave just off Route 7. I think they all belong to DC multi-millionaires. I'm trying to fend them off with more realistic(?) visions of The Incredibles' tract house.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
So I have a crush on this house
The great house hunt has begun!
Yesterday I impulsively drove down a street because I'd never been down it before, and jabbed my finger towards a little brick ranch style. It had grass in front and a big tree in back, and a picture window the size of Minnesota. "THAT ONE," I told Meg. "I want a house like that one."
So after I got home I did a little online searching, and lo and behold that very one was for sale. It was even tidily within our price range. There weren't any interior pictures online and it was billed as a "handyman special," which didn't worry me much. After all, my parents bought a house that was a wreck and made it very nice, and if they did it so could I. I fell head over heels for it on the spot.
Driving home with Jonathan, we detoured by the place and checked out the yard. It had honeysuckle by the carport. I went home and emailed the realtor, who wrote back quickly saying his schedule was booked, but here was the code for the front door if I wanted to look around. (I love having codes.) Well! Talked me into it. This morning after Bible study Meg and I and my camera trotted our little selves right over there to look around.
It was even cuter by sunlight. I tried very hard to notice things realistically, like the driveway needing a load of gravel and some cracks in the brickwork. We went in to find the entire house had been gutted, doors, toilet, cabinets, kitchen sink and all, except for wood floors and the ceiling fans (oddly). It had the look of a house that needed total rewiring, and probably plumbing and a heater installed too. I have my suspicions about water damage on the ceilings and some external cracks from a tree. There was a basement, which was a relief, and you could see it through a hole where the tub used to be. The basement was dark and spider-webby and completely unfinished, but there might have been an upturned utility sink down there, presumably by the washer/dryer hookups.
I'm still enamored of the place. The rooms are generously sized and nice and bright. It could be so cute with a little love, and I could even do it. Learn to do it. With a small army of plumbers, electricians, concrete experts, roofers, and appliance installers. And someone to put in a second bathroom. The garden I could manage by myself, probably. Did I mention the back lawn was full of ripe strawberries?
Possibly not the house for us. But I hope someone will buy it who loves it.
Yesterday I impulsively drove down a street because I'd never been down it before, and jabbed my finger towards a little brick ranch style. It had grass in front and a big tree in back, and a picture window the size of Minnesota. "THAT ONE," I told Meg. "I want a house like that one."
So after I got home I did a little online searching, and lo and behold that very one was for sale. It was even tidily within our price range. There weren't any interior pictures online and it was billed as a "handyman special," which didn't worry me much. After all, my parents bought a house that was a wreck and made it very nice, and if they did it so could I. I fell head over heels for it on the spot.
Driving home with Jonathan, we detoured by the place and checked out the yard. It had honeysuckle by the carport. I went home and emailed the realtor, who wrote back quickly saying his schedule was booked, but here was the code for the front door if I wanted to look around. (I love having codes.) Well! Talked me into it. This morning after Bible study Meg and I and my camera trotted our little selves right over there to look around.
It was even cuter by sunlight. I tried very hard to notice things realistically, like the driveway needing a load of gravel and some cracks in the brickwork. We went in to find the entire house had been gutted, doors, toilet, cabinets, kitchen sink and all, except for wood floors and the ceiling fans (oddly). It had the look of a house that needed total rewiring, and probably plumbing and a heater installed too. I have my suspicions about water damage on the ceilings and some external cracks from a tree. There was a basement, which was a relief, and you could see it through a hole where the tub used to be. The basement was dark and spider-webby and completely unfinished, but there might have been an upturned utility sink down there, presumably by the washer/dryer hookups.
I'm still enamored of the place. The rooms are generously sized and nice and bright. It could be so cute with a little love, and I could even do it. Learn to do it. With a small army of plumbers, electricians, concrete experts, roofers, and appliance installers. And someone to put in a second bathroom. The garden I could manage by myself, probably. Did I mention the back lawn was full of ripe strawberries?
Possibly not the house for us. But I hope someone will buy it who loves it.
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