July 07, 2004

The Hunt

As Archi-Sapper mentioned on his blog the other day, we're house hunting. When we initially started the wild, weird journey I thought, "No big deal. I love shopping. This is just shopping for something a whole lot bigger than say, a pair of flip flops. Okay."

I'm going to have to retract those thoughts. A house is MUCH bigger than a flip flop.

We have signed up with an excellent local realtor who has been showing us houses. This is, of course, the fun part. This is akin to going to the mall to try on clothes, only without the salespeople trying to peek over your dressing room door to see how you're doing (does that happen to anyone else?), without the bad music played in each store and without having to find your car in the parking lot when it's all done. We're not planning on making any immediate offers at any of these houses, so no pressure. Right?

We saw one house that had a cat lurking outside, and when we walked inside, it became apparent that the cat had been living in the house. Alone. With no one to deoderize the house. Note to real estate agents who list houses: they're much easier to sell when they don't smell like wet cat.

We saw another house that had foundation problems. Most houses settle after a few years, and in southeast Louisiana, you expect quite a bit of movement beneath you. However, prior to selling a house, most people fix their foundation problems. Not this seller. I knew I couldn't move into that house because I would've been afraid to put our dog in the corner, for fear that she'd tumble paw over paw until she landed face first in the door. And if we're going to fix the house's foundation, we're not fixing the door.

We saw a couple of houses that weren't "fixer-uppers", they were "tear down and rebuild"-ers. If I'm going to build a house, I'll either buy an empty plot of land or consider buying a house to raze if it is dirt cheap. These weren't.

After looking at house after house, our favorite one is still the very first one we saw. We liked it when we walked in, and after seeing numerous houses which would undoubtedly propel us into some sort of protracted litigation at some point in the future (for brain damage to our dog, if nothing else), it looks even better.

Anybody have a lawnmower we can borrow?

Posted by Kitty at July 7, 2004 05:52 PM

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