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.