House Hunting

In November, Matt and I started looking to buy a new house. At first it was really exciting. We would go out every Saturday with a fervor and look at scads of houses. After about the third week, though, it started to get a little old. Here's why:

1) We had really odd realtors.

Our first realtor looked no older than us and came to meet us wearing khakis and some Sperry's. Come on! I am not buying a house from someone my age who still dresses like they just rolled out of class at the local college. Realtor #2 actually met us at the house wearing gym clothes. She also told us that we didn't want to live in that neighborhood because of the fact that it was inhabited by a racial group that was not the same as our race. She thought that I wouldn't "feel safe at night." Discriminating against an area because of race can actually cause you to lose your realtor's license. Realtor #3 looked like a goth chick and actually was complaining on the phone, about her other clients, the whole time we were at the house. It lasted about fifteen minutes and Matt and I actually showed ourselves the house. And when I asked her how much the utilities in the house were, she proceeded to tell me about how much her heating and AC bills were. I was like, What? I asked you what the bills were HERE, Dummy. Realtor #4 also complained on the phone the whole time and ignored us. So finally we got a realtor who was a church member, and that made all the difference.

2) Lots of foreclosures that are junk

There are a lot of foreclosed and "as-is" houses on the market right now. People can't afford their house, much less afford to make repairs on the house that might make it sell better. So you can expect to get a fixer-upper (and there are degrees of fixing-up that you have to do: major vs. minor.) I cannot count how many houses we went into that just needed to be torn down and built again--that's how little there was good about them. We even went in one house that had crime tape in the window. I was like, We're not going to find a chalk outline on the floor are we? There very well could have been an outline on the floor, I don't know, we only got as far as the front entry. As soon as we opened the front door there was a huge stench that hit you in the face and a roach that just walked past us. Walked! Not scurried. You know the place is over-run with roaches when a roach no longer fears the sight of light or humans.

3) Bad timing

There are so many people looking for homes right now that if you see anything good, you need to put in an offer THAT DAY or consider it gone by the next day. We lost two to three houses in bidding wars and one went under contract as soon as we walked out the front door of the place. It sold while we were in it! The market is cut-throat right now.

So finally we were in the right place at the right time with the right realtor and we were able to put an offer on a really awesome house with 3 bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths. It's 1450 sq. feet and has a garage. It's two stories. It's yellow with white shutters. It has a great deck on the back with a built-in gas grill and gas fireplace inside. It also has plantation blinds on most of the windows. We close on Feb. 18th and move-in on Feb. 27th. We're so excited!