our next chapter

house hunting.

we have a limited budget. we only have 1.5 incomes, but we have a large down payment. we are the opposite of the typical homebuyer. i dont think our wish list is that large, you be the judge. 3 bedrooms, at least 1.5 baths, a basement, somewhere to park the car, workable kitchen with some space, in our budget close(ish) to where we are now. we know that certain parts of this neighborhood are typically out of our budget. we know that anything we can actually afford is going to need some work. fine. we'd love to move asap, but clearly we are going to wait for the right one to come along, since it will be the biggest purchase of our lives.

here are the three houses we've seen in person so far.

house #1. the too small ranch house. 2br ranch with a basement being used as a master. had some backyard space which was really nice. only one bathroom which was upstairs. small kitchen even though it was nicely updated, definitely not enough room for our larger gatherings. felt small, felt like an apt to me. i want our house to be and feel like a house. one of the key reasons why we looked at it was for the yard space and the zoned school, which is the best in the neighborhood. it was also listed out of our budget. we knew it wasnt the one for us. good to get into a house in person and look at it, we really needed to get the first one out of the way.

house #2. the quirky house. a legal two family house with lots of old charm. priced very attractively (aka needed a lot of work). nice part of the neighborhood from the online pics you could tell that it was super old and needed a lot of work. we walked into it for the open house, and we were concerned that it was going to fall down with us in it.

house #3. the crazy clutter house. it was listed way out of our price range, but our realtor felt like the owners might be negotiable since they had listed the house for at least 10 months total in the last year. from the outside pictures this looked like a house we could like. it had everything on our wish list. HOWEVER. we walked in there today. there was so much junk in this house, it was amazing. there were also loads of structural problems and water damage that were visible to even an untrained eye. there was also no oven in the kitchen. the selling realtor had no idea the last time the roof was done.  the house was dirty, like it felt dirty, and im not someone who gets easily grossed out by a little bit of "living" dirt/dust/etc. the basement was big, there was a 2 car garage, but not a lot of outside space. it was the first house that we walked into and liked the layout. it was a 3bd 2 bath colonial and it seems like the kind of house we want.

thats all we've gotten to on the house hunting front. we've been "actively looking" for almost a month. hoping the spring brings us some more options, and negotiable sellers. so far it has been funny and interesting. i wonder where this will take us.