So, I mentioned in this post that my wife and I are finally looking at buying a house. A very adult thing to do. I’m trying to pretend not to be freaked out about it… “it” meaning being an adult, not buying a house.
We’ve started looking at properties, and oy vey, what a trial this is turning out to be. We have yet to find that one perfect domicile that we’d want to call home for at least the next 10 to 15 years. I take that back. We have found the ONE, but some other family who doesn’t realize just how perfect this house is for us and is probably just settling – though they’d never admit it- swooped in before we even had a chance to make an offer and bought it. Poopers.
So now we are trying to find a clone of this magical house of rainbows and kittens that should have been ours.
It is SO much harder to find a house when you’re trying to find an exact match to something you can’t have.
I’ve also been amazed at how many houses we’ve looked at where the outside is AWESOME and the inside is ZOMGWTF?!!?
Oh, yeah, see this is cu--
AAH!
We’re also looking at a lot of early 20th century homes, mostly Craftsman, and we’ve been surprised at how big they look on the outside and how teeny-weeny they are on the inside. Totally the opposite of a TARDIS.
Nice! This is HUGE! We'll totally be able t--
WTF?!?
Luckily, we’ve given ourselves loads of time to find the perfect house. If we end up re-leasing our current rental it won’t be a tragedy. In fact, one of the reasons we’re leaning so heavily toward Craftsman homes is because we like our rental house so much (and it also happens to be a Craftsman).
I’m hopeful that we’ll eventually cross the threshold into our dream home, but until then, the hunt continues…
You've Never Heard of Jen Tidwell 
Holy crap – do those inside pics really go with the outside ones?!?
Maybe you can convince the other family that the house is haunted!
(If not, you can at least have lots of fun trying!)
(hehehe)
Eets a sweater! 😀
El G, thankfully no, those insides don’t go with those outsides… but they’re also not an overstatement of some of the houses we’ve seen…
Ugh! I don’t envy your search. Home ownership is awesome, though, and it’s not a bad time to buy. Plus, after a thorough (and testing) search, I imagine you’ll be quite happy.
House shopping is no where near as much fun as it sounds. Kinda like doing your baby registry. I’m glad you’re taking your time and waiting for just the right one to come along. It will be worth it!
when my husband and I first started house hunting, we fell in love with one, but were so new to how the real estate business worked that we lolligagged too much and missed out. so when we came across our current home, we weren’t totally in love at first, but it fit all our basic requirements and wasn’t a total train wreck and we were sick of looking so we just went for it without thinking too hard. and guess what?? it turned out to be our dream home!! the more we live in it, the more we love it, and even the parts we don’t love we get excited about dreaming up ways to improve. so don’t worry too hard, the right one will come to you when it’s supposed to. best of luck to you on your search!! 🙂
If you’re willing to do most all of the legwork yourselves, I highly recommend using Redfin as your realtor or at the very least signing up to check out their forums and all their buying guide information.. Hubby and I bought a house at the end of last year (which is where I disappeared to, it’s a lot of work if you’re a perfectionist and insist on educating yourself about even the things you probably won’t need to know about) and we liked that they give you around half of their share of the commission which you can basically apply to your down-payment.
Also, Angie’s List has been quite helpful. I can’t stress enough the need to get a completely hard-core house inspector, especially when looking at older homes like you are. You want the guy who is known for causing deals to fall through because that means he found all of the potential and not just known problems that may exist with the house.
The swooping in and stealing thing happened to us as well, sorta…we never got to see the inside of the house as it got an offer within 2 days of being listed so maybe it wasn’t perfect, but it WAS in our top choice neighborhood and had the best house number ever…404, how great is that, right?
Squirrel!! I have missed you! How are you?! Thanks for the great advice, especially about the inspector. Can you send me the name of the person you used? Glad to hear from you 🙂
I found the perfect home to have someone else grab it. But dewstiny is destiny. The realtor called about six weeks later to say the deal fell through and did I still want it. It has been mine for almost 13 years now. No mortgage since 2008, when I paid it off! Now I am thinking of selling to retire overseas…we’ll see! Good luck in your search; it is half of the fun of home owner
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