Another House

So, I’m starting the process over again, this time with a much nicer house.  I’d post pictures, but I’m going to wait until closing to do that.  No need to brag about a home I don’t yet have.

We made an offer on a foreclosed home.  It wasn’t a great house, but it was in pretty good shape for a foreclosure.  It would need some work, but it felt like a place we could turn into a home.  I honestly didn’t expect a whole lot to come out of it.  We offered a couple grand below the listing price, even though my mother-in-law thought we could have undercut that by twenty grand.  They decided to take a higher offer than mine, and even at the time, I didn’t mind too much.  We weren’t crazy about the place, anyhow.

Friday, we began our day looking at a couple more foreclosed homes.  The first one looked nice from the outside, and had a terriffic floor plan.  It had a stairway that halway up were two rooms, and then another two rooms at the top.  Unfortunately, the people before us were not happy with being foreclosed on.  The place was completely gutted.  All the appliances, light fixtures, and even some plumbing had been removed.  The basement was finished at one time, but the walls, toilet, sink, and shower were ripped out.  It didn’t take us very long to decide that we didn’t want the place.

The second house was near some railroad tracks, which set off a bit of a red flag to me.  The last thing I want is train whistles at two in the morning.  The house looked as though the nature around it had not been tamed in years.  The trees, bushes, and plants nearly enveloped the place.  Inside it was in decent shape, although there waqs distinct evidence of flooding in the finished basement, which was something I did not want to deal with.  Besides, we were attacked by insects contantly there.  Zai had a huge swollen bite on her hand that’s just now starting to go down.

The third house still had people living in it.  I honestly don’t remember much about it because it was very uncomfortable.  The lady let us in and basically cut us loose.  So we’re wandering around someone else’s house while children eye us warily.

By the time we got to the fourth house, I was feeling as though I’d never find a good home.  I set a price goal for myself and that was beginning to seem more and more impossible to meet.  We pulled up to a beautiful two story brick home, deep green ivy climbing up the walls.  My very first thought was, “There is something definitely wrong with this house.”  As I’ve discovered on my house hunting, generally the nicer the home looks at first glance, the worse it is.

We almost get to the front door when the owner opens it and asks us to hold on a moment, as he’s rounding up his four dogs.  I grimace as I hear that and picture the desctruction and smell that four dogs can produce.  After a moment, he leads to incredibly energetic and friendly dogs out the front door where they run arond us begging to be petted before the owner tells them to get in the back of his SUV, which they obediently do.  A third dog had to be led with the leash, and the fourth, a tiny little thing, had to be picked up and placed in the back.  “Just close the door when you leave,” he told us before driving off.

If nothing else, those energetic dogs did lift my spirits a bit.

I braced myself and walked in the front door.  Unfortunately, that did not prepare me properly for when my jaw hit the floor.  The living room was perfect, dark but not too dark, and clean.  There was not a hint of dog smell.  In fact, it was as clean as my mother would make a room.

And that’s saying something.

I walked through the house, waiting to stumble on the fatal flaw.  Through the decently-sized dining room, past the kitchen loaded with new appliances, and down into the partially finished and clean basement I strove to find something wrong.  I then head to the second level, with three bedrooms and a nice bathroom, complete with cats roaming around, again with no smell emanating from the litterboxes.  The place was spotless.

We head to the back yard, where I find the first and only thing wrong.  There is a swimming pool that has seent better days.  The lining was gone and many plants were growing in it.  It would be a bit of a project, but at that point it did not even faze me.  We were in love with the house and decided to put in an offer.

Come the night of the fourth, the owner’s accepted.

So the process begins anew.  Here’s hoping that nothing screwy happens this time.

Zel-kun out.