House Hunting

My husband and I have decided to make the ultimate grown-up move and transform from perpetual renters into home owners. Even though our current apartment is very nice, we had The Talk and decided it was time. Our community is a nice place, our friends and families are here, and our careers (my library job and his music school) are here. It's more practical and, dare I say it, grown-up than continuing to rent indefinitely. 

So at the beginning of the month we began the time-consuming hunt for the perfect house. (By the way, this is my excuse for being absent from the blog. And from the world of social media in general. But I'm still waiting for responses to the queries I sent out at the end of April, so it's not like there's anything new happening with Deep Blue. Not even the playlist I promised to work on. Oops!). I'm having fun with it. Give me a research project and I'm on it like a dog on a steak. I don't let go until I'm done and everything is perfect. Professors loved me in school. I was the kid who had her Final Project done by midterms. (Yep, I was that annoying student). 

So far we've seen 11 houses (with 3 separate agents) and not one screamed "Welcome home, Alissa and Jim". But the ones we looked at... Well, they ended up not being what we were looking for. Since then, we've refined our criteria. Now it's narrow enough that we won't have to sort through a bunch of undesirables, but not so narrow we'll never find anything. In fact we're going to go check out a couple places today. Agent #4 is a friend of Jim's mom and a super nice lady. So we know she'll go above and beyond to help us find what we want. 

I have learned a few things so far:

1. The photos on the listing don't always match the reality. 

2. If you, the potential buyer, know more about a place (from research) than the listing agent, it's not a good thing. 

3. Even if the house looks pretty on the outside, you can tell a lot about the actual condition by looking at the pole barn (if there is one). If it looks like it belongs on the set of a horror movie, RUN! The house will be in similar condition.

4. The things you want to look at are: Roof, Foundation, Windows, Well, and Septic. (Plumbing in general)

5. No matter how much you like the listing pictures, if you get a bad vibe in reality, you'll never like the house. 

6. Most important, know what you want and don't stray from that list. Never settle until you find what you're looking for. 

The house hunt and Deep Blue are both well on the way to having something happen. My goal is to have both resolved by the end of Summer.