Still Looking...

Andrew and I spent the weekend condo-hunting for my parents, more like pre-screening places for them to check out once they're back in MA this summer (!)

One of the places we checked out in a highly desirable suburb of Boston looked beautiful from a distance - Andrew thought it had a Southern plantation feel, and I agreed.

It was more like a Southern plantation then we realized (think glory of years past), because as you got closer, you could see signs of neglect (peeling paint, crumbling plaster) and it got worse inside with huge structural issues like sloping floors, bowed columns, and rotting wood.

Farewell Tara, we'll continue our search for a place for my parents to live. Luckily, we had a few good prospects out of the seven places we looked at this weekend.

New Year, New House?

Andrew and I took a breather from house searching during the holidays, but starting today, it's game on.

Today should be interesting, considering the roughly six inches of snow we got in the Boston area yesterday - it's going to be hard to get a good sense for what the yards look like when they are buried under snow. Plus, I always feel guilty for the homeowners when all the potential buyers track snow, sand and salt into their clean houses. But I'm moving past that, because we are ready and eager to buy a house!! Our dream house is somewhere out there. And we're trying our hardest to find it, evidenced by our schedule today:

Noon: Open house in West Roxbury

12:30 p.m.: Housing appointment in Dedham

1:00 p.m.: Open house in Canton + a drive-by to determine its potential for a housing appt.

1:30 p.m.: Housing appointment in Canton

2:30 p.m.: Housing appointment in Walpole

Wish us luck!

Too Good To Be True

Our search for a house continues, although I haven't really blogged about it much, because really, all the houses seem to blur after a while. I'm having a hard time keeping track of which houses we've actually visited and which ones we've just read the MLS listing for.

We saw a listing for a house pop up on Friday that for a house in an extremely desirable neighborhood for a ridiculously low price. The listing mentioned that it was newly renovated and the pictures seemed good. As Andrew read of the listing to me, we both mentioned at least three times that it "seemed to good to be true" and "there had to be something wrong with it." But we went ahead and requested a showing with our agent.

Later that day, Andrew takes a look at the house on Google Maps and sees in street view that the neighborhood seems somewhat commercial and it looks like there's a sand and gravel company next door. Still not enough to deter us from looking but we go in even more wary on Saturday.

First off, housing appointments are usually one-on-one with the selling agent. But when we arrived, it was a madhouse that was like an open house, with tons of young couples our age strolling through the house.

More importantly, the house was a piece of crap. Parts of it were OK, but clearly, the only renovation involved some new sections of carpet and quick paint job. I mean, this is what one of the bathrooms looked like:



One of those old fashioned toilets with a pull, in faux wood style with plenty of mold.

I'm not sure how much scrubbing would ever get this clean.


It also had a non-functioning shower head, cement floor and the world's oldest drain. I felt dirtier for having stepped in that space. I'll have to go back to see if the selling agent had the gall to list this as a full bath.

Regardless, I am still hopeful that we will find the right house soon. Preferably before the tax credit extension runs out at the end of April.

Offer Number Two

Quite simply, it was another busy weekend for Andrew and I.

All day Friday was spent going back and forth on the second place we put an offer on.

It was a roomy townhouse in a nice location with good schools - we had originally been staying away from condos but fell in love with the location and the unit itself.

The funny thing was that Andrew and I liked the place, but we weren't in love with it completely. Don't get me wrong, I think we could be very happy in the place. But, it wasn't perfect in terms of proximity to Boston and a large upcoming assessment. Which is why we weren't heartbroken (like the first time around) when the owners wouldn't come down to a price we were willing to pay. The deal isn't completely dead, but Andrew and I did spent time visiting more open houses today (after spending Saturday at a wedding).

Although, the one thing we loved about the place was the kitchen:

I'd prefer darker cabinets but still - all the counter space makes the baker in me drool!

We've learned what is meant to happen, will happen. And so, the search continues.

Random Observations From House Hunting

Andrew and I got back from an open house in West Roxbury tonight. I know, weird that it's on a Monday night but there were plenty of people looking most likely due to the fact that it was an hour long. And on the basis on how bad the house smelled, I think the realtor did it deliberately in a futile attempt to make the house seem desirable. But I digress.

When I look back to myself a month ago, I laugh at how clueless the former me was about house hunting. And, I miss how hopeful I was about finding the right place. Don't get me wrong, I was going in with a healthy dose of skepticism towards "old" houses while Andrew had most of the optimism, but I did have a rosy daydream of finding the right place.



I know we're only a scant three weeks into our search, but I feel like we've seen every desirable place in our price range and there's nothing that has popped up where Andrew and I have looked at each other and excitedly pictured ourselves living there (other than that house). So while we anxiously scan the new listings each night for a dream house, here are the random thoughts that cross my mind:

• There are a ton of house hunting shows on TV these days and Andrew and I are hooked on most of them. Two of our favorites - House Hunters and Property Virgins.
• The aforementioned house hunting shows are extremely annoying and depressing since housing is so much cheaper in most other parts of the country. Like the couple that scored a brand new three bed/two bath house in Iowa for $117,000. Of course, the trade-off is that you'd have to live in Iowa.
• No amount of room deodorant or candles is going to disguise a smelly house.
• Further to this point, I wish you could get a sense for how a house will smell from the listing so you can save yourself some wasted time. We've had some bad experiences with homes reeking of cat urine or really heavy smoke.
• Sellers should really get themselves a decent agent who makes a simple effort to stage the house. Like removing post-its from a wall. Yikes.
• Disclosures should really be reserved for serious things rather than a perky real estate description of "best house in the neighborhood!"
• It's super awkward to run into the homeowners when you have a viewing appointment. We've had showings where it looks like the owner is simply hanging out in a room of the house (an agent is present and does most of the talking, but never introduces the mystery person). Even worse is when you run into a mom ushering her kids into the car, or in one instance, pulling her toddler around the neighborhood while we look.
• I really hope we're not looking at houses into the winter - I can't imagine trudging through people's houses with mucky shoes and I don't know how we'd get a sense for the yard or any outdoor faults.
• If I ever have an open house, I think I will seriously make prospective buyers take off their shoes to tour the house, a la my Asian roots. Although, I'm not sure how much cleaner their socks/bare foot would be. Perhaps I would need to provide cheap slippers (again, like Asian restaurants).

House Hunting Hiccup

I'm not feeling in the mood to disclose much at this point, but in our fourth day of house hunting (today), Andrew and I found a house that we both fell in love with. After a few frantic hours of talking to our agent and our mortgage broker, we made an offer. With literally less than an hour of basking in the glow of the offer and cautiously getting our hopes up, we found out that our offer wasn't accepted due to what we suspect to be shady dealings on the part of the seller's agent. She informed us that the house was already under agreement (she was contacted DURING today's open house by our agent) and we are given no chance to raise our offer, which we were definitely prepared to - and counting on - doing.




Our offer was only on the table for less than an hour, but we had the whole afternoon to discuss the house and our plans for filling it. Sigh, it's back to the house hunting grind for us. I keep telling myself that maybe karma will bite the agent's butt and the deal will fall through or we'll find a house that's even better. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

On the Hunt...

As you may have noticed, my pace of posts has slowed down a bit. I’m still going to try to post on a daily basis, but I’ve got to admit, things are a bit crazy (but exciting) for Andrew and I at the moment. On top of planning our wedding (we’ve just hit the 13 month mark, so I keep telling myself that there’s still plenty of time) we’re also in process of house hunting and ideally, would like to buy before December 1 to take advantage of the federal homebuyer tax credit.

So what does this mean? After being pre-approved for a mortgage, we looked at seven houses and condos in Canton on Labor Day, and just checked out three more places in West Roxbury after work last night. Up ahead for us – 12 places to check out on Saturday and eight open houses on Sunday. We’re not limiting ourselves to one town but are trying to find a nice place along 95 that would have a reasonable commute for both of us, as Andrew is currently spending over an hour each way to work. I think I would go crazy trying to capture pictures of each place we’re visiting, but I promise more details once we’ve narrowed down our final selections.