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April 1, 2006
On the hunt
(I actually copied this post from another blog about our move. I can't seem to keep up with all my blogs!)
I’m having a really hard time writing this post. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say, it’s that I have too much. Summing things up doesn’t seem to do the whole “moving blog” concept any justice, but nobody wants to read my 3 page blow-by-blow either.
We spent last weekend in Houston, house hunting. Friday consisted of checking out a new subdivision and looking at a floor plan we loved on paper, but was lacking in person. (For some reason I can’t let this go – the flow and layout of the house were great, but the proportions were off – the auxiliary bedrooms were just too small for the size of the house.)
Saturday, we met up with Wendy, our realtor, bright and early. She is an interesting combination of friend, former neighbor and former realtor. The first two houses we looked at were ruled them out for the same reason that I loved them – they were in our old neighborhood. I loved the old neighborhood – the location is great, the people are nice, the park was close, but the property values just weren’t appreciating well. After the hit we took when we sold our first house, I don’t think Rex or I are willing to take the chance of making the same mistake twice.
On to the next subdivision. Imperial Oaks was probably highest on our list before we even got to Texas. We have some very good friends there, the schools are decent (although not quite as good as The Woodlands) and there are homes of all ages and prices. We had two homes that topped our list on paper, and they held up in person. Those two homes are the same size on the same street and the same price, but the similarity ends there. One of the houses (pretty house) is on 2,000 feet less lot and has no sprinkler system, but it showed BEAUTIFULLY. The other (big yard house) is nice, if plain, but the space is used more effectively for the way we live our lives. The back yard is bigger, with nice trees that give it shade and privacy. But the turquoise wallpaper in the master bath that just HAS to go!
We looked at maybe half a dozen homes in that neighborhood, some very nice and some not. All of them had something that made them less desirable than pretty and big yard. We decided to go look in Spring Trails, the new subdivision we had driven through the night before. We looked through one existing home and a couple new construction homes, but they were either terrible floor plans (one had no garage, just a garage door!) or too expensive for what you got.
Then we turned into a section that was waaay out of our price range. I ran into their construction trailer just to see if they had any spec homes. Wally had one. One that they had been close to selling when the deal fell through 3 days before closing. One that they were willing to deal on considerably.
Even though this house was way our of our price range, we decided to walk through it. This house is perfect! I love the floor plan. The rooms are all big and open. The kitchen is stunning. The yard is large, in spite of the 3 car detached garage. It has tons of energy efficient and convenience features built in. It is at least $30k above the max we wanted to spend.
At this point, Rex and I were in house overload. Katie was starving and pooped after 5 hours of no food and no naps. Wendy took us back to our car, and we headed out to lunch to do some thinking and talking.
By late afternoon, Rex and I had decided to make an offer on the house with in Imperial Oaks with the big yard. We decided to offer $10k less than they were asking, figuring they would counter right in the middle and that would be fine. We headed over to Wendy’s to sign the contracts. Somewhere in the middle, we started looking at some more homes online, in our friend’s section of Imperial Oaks. There was one that looked quite promising, and the price was acceptable, so we ran off to look at one more house. It was nice, aside from the power lines in the back yard!
At this point, I was close to having a meltdown. We decided to sleep on it, and headed out to see some of Rex’s family.
The next morning, we went ahead and signed the contract and submitted our offer. By this time, neither of us could really remember the details of the house we were trying to buy, we were just going with our gut reaction from the day before. We also decided to look at our perfect house one more time, and see if we could get them to drop the price a little more. I had figured out the numbers, and we can afford that house, we just hadn’t planned on wanting to afford something that expensive.
On our way to the perfect house, we heard back on our offer, it was accepted with no counter-offer! After walking through the perfect house, we decided it really was perfect and put an offer in writing on that house, too. Then we made a mad dash for the airport.
In the end, the builder of the perfect house went up on his price instead of down. He strung us along for a while first. So as it stands, barring any inspection issues or other catastrophes, we’ll be the proud owners of a house I can barely remember as of April 19th.
Whew! And that was the short version!
Posted by me at April 1, 2006 8:46 PM
Comments
HEY! Congratulations :)
Posted by: Rhonda at April 1, 2006 9:20 PM
Thanks!
Posted by: Becky at April 1, 2006 9:40 PM