Pretty pretty houses
Mar. 12th, 2006 06:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ambericaOMG I WANT THIS ONE THIS ONE THIS ONE!!!
OK, maybe not right now, but anyway...
We've been running around on weekends looking at open houses for months and months, mostly just for something fun to do, but also to get design ideas for either building, decorating, or remodeling a home someday. The Parade of Homes is a ton of fun, and obviously way out of our range, but that's why it's fun - you get to walk through all these huge fancy-ass houses that you would otherwise never get a chance to see the inside of, and they are AWESOME. It really is fun - we'll probably keep doing it well after we've built/bought a home of our own!
But anyway, we decided to start doing our running around on the heels of a really cool realtor lady named Angela - she's about our age and lots of fun, plus she has a pretty good idea of the kind of stuff we're looking for to buy after we get married, and boy does she keep us busy when we go out with her (it's fun but EXHAUSTING)! Yesterday I think we went through about 7 different houses, and then she asked if we wanted to also swing by this one that she saw an Open House sign next to on the way into Hugo (smallish town just outside the cities), so of course we said yes. That was the one that I linked to above, and just beautiful in all ways. In MY opinion, it's the best one we've seen yet. I think Jon likes a couple other ones better, or at least as much, but if I had my way, I'd just go grab this house right NOW (or maybe get married really quick and THEN do it)! Well, actually, I'd probably hold out a little longer. It's already been on the market for like 100 days (!!!!!) and the price has been reduced once, plus Angela said that if this was one we wanted, she could even get it down to $269K for us... but I bet it could even come down lower if no one else is interested in it anytime soon. Heheheheh... The realtor who was in there for the Open House said that most people are kind of turned off by a road that goes near the back of the house. It's a tiny, quiet road, and the entire time we were there, only one car drove by. Plus, there is a walking path that is literally on the edge of the back yard! Several of the neighbors had fenced in their yards with a gate opening right onto the path. It looked really nice to me. Oh, and there's a really nice fire pit in the back yard, too. Then again, almost every place we've looked at seems to have a fire pit lately. I guess it's really the cool thing to do. I thought they were more rare than that, and figured I'd just build my own once we bought a place, but hey, I might not have to!
Another place that we saw yesterday, and probably a very close 2nd in my mind, is this one. It's a really cute 3-level, a little smaller and slightly less pricey than the other one, but still beautiful and actually a couple years newer! The house itself was a dream - I especially loved the super-spacious master bedroom and the adorable kitchen with the bay window - the only real problem I had with this place was the back yard. The yard itself was fine, but the view from the back was pretty crappy. There's kind of a drainage stream-thingy that runs between this house and the lots across from it, so you can see all these really boring, flat, rather ugly backs of houses, separated from you by this really ugly, greenish, scuzzy little stream in a ditch. Jon and I found that really kind of yucky.
Today we walked through an open house for a place that we would NOT be able to afford at all, and it also faced the backs of other houses, but they were attractive and spaced out in a more pleasing-to-the-eye way. There was also what we initially thought was another ugly drainage ditch, but when we got inside the house and peered out the back windows, we realized it was actually the beginning of a rather pretty little pond with cattails and a small pebble "beach" area. So I mean, backs of houses and water from the back yard of a house are not UN-desirable, but they can definitely look good OR bad. So we were glad to see that. Too bad the place was like $316K or something ridiculous like that. Although the mortgage guy told us on the phone that we COULD afford something like a $400K house, but hell, that wouldn't leave us many options if we maxed out on our mortgage and then couldn't even consider switching jobs or one of us staying home if we ever started a family! I think it would be seriously, dangerously foolish to go into something that would REQUIRE our incomes and expenses to stay exactly the same as they are today. Not us, no sirreebob!!!
OK, maybe not right now, but anyway...
We've been running around on weekends looking at open houses for months and months, mostly just for something fun to do, but also to get design ideas for either building, decorating, or remodeling a home someday. The Parade of Homes is a ton of fun, and obviously way out of our range, but that's why it's fun - you get to walk through all these huge fancy-ass houses that you would otherwise never get a chance to see the inside of, and they are AWESOME. It really is fun - we'll probably keep doing it well after we've built/bought a home of our own!
But anyway, we decided to start doing our running around on the heels of a really cool realtor lady named Angela - she's about our age and lots of fun, plus she has a pretty good idea of the kind of stuff we're looking for to buy after we get married, and boy does she keep us busy when we go out with her (it's fun but EXHAUSTING)! Yesterday I think we went through about 7 different houses, and then she asked if we wanted to also swing by this one that she saw an Open House sign next to on the way into Hugo (smallish town just outside the cities), so of course we said yes. That was the one that I linked to above, and just beautiful in all ways. In MY opinion, it's the best one we've seen yet. I think Jon likes a couple other ones better, or at least as much, but if I had my way, I'd just go grab this house right NOW (or maybe get married really quick and THEN do it)! Well, actually, I'd probably hold out a little longer. It's already been on the market for like 100 days (!!!!!) and the price has been reduced once, plus Angela said that if this was one we wanted, she could even get it down to $269K for us... but I bet it could even come down lower if no one else is interested in it anytime soon. Heheheheh... The realtor who was in there for the Open House said that most people are kind of turned off by a road that goes near the back of the house. It's a tiny, quiet road, and the entire time we were there, only one car drove by. Plus, there is a walking path that is literally on the edge of the back yard! Several of the neighbors had fenced in their yards with a gate opening right onto the path. It looked really nice to me. Oh, and there's a really nice fire pit in the back yard, too. Then again, almost every place we've looked at seems to have a fire pit lately. I guess it's really the cool thing to do. I thought they were more rare than that, and figured I'd just build my own once we bought a place, but hey, I might not have to!
Another place that we saw yesterday, and probably a very close 2nd in my mind, is this one. It's a really cute 3-level, a little smaller and slightly less pricey than the other one, but still beautiful and actually a couple years newer! The house itself was a dream - I especially loved the super-spacious master bedroom and the adorable kitchen with the bay window - the only real problem I had with this place was the back yard. The yard itself was fine, but the view from the back was pretty crappy. There's kind of a drainage stream-thingy that runs between this house and the lots across from it, so you can see all these really boring, flat, rather ugly backs of houses, separated from you by this really ugly, greenish, scuzzy little stream in a ditch. Jon and I found that really kind of yucky.
Today we walked through an open house for a place that we would NOT be able to afford at all, and it also faced the backs of other houses, but they were attractive and spaced out in a more pleasing-to-the-eye way. There was also what we initially thought was another ugly drainage ditch, but when we got inside the house and peered out the back windows, we realized it was actually the beginning of a rather pretty little pond with cattails and a small pebble "beach" area. So I mean, backs of houses and water from the back yard of a house are not UN-desirable, but they can definitely look good OR bad. So we were glad to see that. Too bad the place was like $316K or something ridiculous like that. Although the mortgage guy told us on the phone that we COULD afford something like a $400K house, but hell, that wouldn't leave us many options if we maxed out on our mortgage and then couldn't even consider switching jobs or one of us staying home if we ever started a family! I think it would be seriously, dangerously foolish to go into something that would REQUIRE our incomes and expenses to stay exactly the same as they are today. Not us, no sirreebob!!!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-03-13 10:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-13 10:30 am (UTC)