MK and I are back on our endless quest of finding a house. Her mother sends her links to houses that she thinks we might we like, but are wildly out of our price range. Yes, we find the stone tudor mansion with six bedrooms and five bathrooms aethestetically pleasing, but who is going to live here? The Brady Bunch? And who is going to clean this place and keep it up? Not to mention the property taxes on a house that size. If we lived in a house like that I'd shut off 3/4s of it during the winter to save on heat, so what's the point? Space is like time, and it should be used wisely.
Here are some things that we're looking for in a house:
1. Not ugly either inside or out.
2. Really an extention of #1, but no wallpaper. I hate wallpaper more than Bush (but not as much as Cheney). The wallpaper that one person chooses is never something that anyone else would ever choose, so then you have to rip it off the walls, which is a lot of work. Work that I don't want. One house we looked at had a very nice den, that was completely ruined by the mountain scenery wallpaper. A person could go mad looking at something like that, become like that guy in The Shining.
3. A functional fireplace. A real fireplace, not one with gas logs. Gas logs are a lie.
4. A yard. Bela needs a yard. She told me this very thing one day while chewing the hem of the curtains. She said, "I would behave more admirably if I had space to romp in and exhaust my boundless energy." She's so clever for a beagle, a breed typically not known for their vast vocabulary and reasoning prowess.
5. Related to #4, a garden. Fresh produce is wonderful, FREE fresh produce is the best thing since the glide tampon applicator. Lettuce, tomatoes, onions, carrots, beets. My attempts to grow silver queen sweet corn failed miserably last year after a violent thunderstorm knocked every single stalk down.
6. A basement that isn't a spider kingdom.
That's about it. We're not in a hurry to find a new place, so MK is really immersing herself in the hunt. I'm just along for the ride, and the viewings, and to look up the chimney.
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5 comments:
oh, this was very true and very entertaining! you are funny. and your wants are spot on. i think prices will keep getting lower for a while, so hopefully you get all you want for a good deal. i'd like to buy a house, too, but don't think i've saved enough. gotta keep socking it away, and hope the lottery comes through or something!
Aw, thanks Droll!
As for the house thing...good luck:) You're definitely in a buyers market out there. Here, we had no housing bubble, so our housing is pretty much the same as it was a few years ago. So, basically we'd just be switching out MK's townhouse for a house-house. We know our price range, and the realtors have been good about sticking to it, but MK's mom is another story ;)
"A basement that isn't a spider kingdom."
That would terrify me. Good luck with that one. The key is probably to have a finished basement versus one where you can see the floor joists and insulation.
When I was looking for a condo I had three requirements outside of the price range requirement:
1. Located near where I was already living, but hopefully closer to my then business office.
2. Two bedrooms.
3. A REAL fireplace.
I ended up compromising. To fit my price range I had to either give up on the fireplace or one of the bedrooms because at the time the foreclosure market was still favoring "fix and flippers" in the preferred area of town in which I was looking. I also ended up deciding I could spend a bit more if I didn't need to reserve cash for fixing up a foreclosure.
As a result, I got a LARGE one bedroom condo with a real fireplace in the right area AND the complex has a pool right behind my building. I also found the next best thing to a foreclosure, an estate sale! The owners had inherited the condo and after a year of on and off the market, had finally decided to fix it up for the rental market and the marked it down into just outside my price range. I low balled an offer and they were so tired of dealing with the condo that they accepted it! Good thing too, because 3 declining market years later it's worth about what I paid.
GOOD LUCK!!!
FYI, the search continues...
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