Walkthrough

We met with our potential home buyer last night (HI CHUCK!) to hammer out a deal and make him the soon-to-be-ACTUAL buyer of our home. Once we get the contracts written up and signed, we are on our way! Yessss!

Seriously, in the kind of market we’re in now, the fact that we are able to sell our house to a friend and eliminate all the hassle of using a Realtor and paying commission and stuff, well, that’s just a godsend. We are seeing houses that have been on the market for almost 8 months, so you know those people are probably sweating it.

Now that we’re on our way to making a deal on the sell side, it’s our turn to get real serious real fast about buying something. Our Realtor sent us a list of all the houses in our pathetic price range in the areas where we’re looking. How many? 42! The answer!

We quickly narrowed that down to 7 in the “yes, definitely we must go see this house” pile, and 6 in the “eh, maybe” pile. Today we went and had a look-see at five of the top seven.

The first one we looked at is one that I have been eyeing for some time now. I love the street it’s on and I like the look of the house from the photos (which, as we are well aware, are COMPLETELY misleading most of the time). The kitchen desperately needs to be re-done, but the rest of the house seemed to be in pretty good shape. The backyard is nice and level and the house is just really clean overall.

The 2nd house we looked at was a little (okay, a LOT) older. It was built in 1910 and was more or less GINORMOUS but it was crowded on a wee little lot and still would have needed some serious work, especially in the kitchen area. There were NO cupboards! No counter space! Where would I put all my gadgets?

Plus, I’m pretty sure that house was haunted.

The third house was one that I wanted to see but not Freddie. It was an estate sale, so it was really priced to move, but it hadn’t been redecorated since about 1968 and it showed. It was really really horrid inside and the lot was tiny and crowded with the neighbors, so that was a NO.

House #4 was just disgusting. You could tell that the people who had lived there were serious hard-core smokers because even though the house had been empty for quite some time (judging by the cobweb), it stank. It absolutely REEKED. Plus, it was a piece of crap anyway.

House #5 was one that Freddie had been wanting to see since we started this process in April or whenever we first got the idea to find a bigger house. The photos made it look really groovy, with a spiral staircase and really interesting tile in the kitchen and bathroom. But we got there and it was a shithole. It was disgusting and dirty inside, and it turns out that the spiral staircase was the ONLY way to get upstairs. The hell? So…. no.

We are going to make and offer for the first house we saw, since we both really like it and think it has a lot of potential. Plus, it follows the basic rule of Real Estate: buy the crappiest house on the nicest street you can afford. And that’s what we’d like to do, if they accept our offer.

There are a number of things in our favor – the current owners have already moved out, so they probably have another mortgage or something. It’s been on the market almost two months, and that’s helpful, too. Plus, we can pretty much close any time. I’m not placing my furniture just yet, but I’m hoping that this works out somehow.