Very Interesting House Hunting Update, Installment Three.
We bought a house. Have a nice day!
Ha ha ha. That is a joke. Kind of. Because we have not bought a house. We are only considering buying a house. Seriously considering. Very seriously considering.
Here is a Rory and Lorelai-esque pro/con list:
Pros:
Room: About 200-300 more square feet than the other houses we were quasi-looking at -- it ends up at five bedrooms, three-and-a-half baths, which is one more of each than each and every house we looked at.
Fun: Bedroom number five is not really a bedroom; it is more of a rec room, and I want a rec room, because homes without basements need rec rooms.
Schools: Second-best of the nine high schools in Henrico County; second-best of the ten middle schools in Henrico County; about the tenth-best of the forty-one elementary schools in Henrico County. (Henrico is a kick-butt school district, by the by.)
Extras: Kim and I are not extras people -- on house number one, which we built, we added a grand honkin' two extras to the base model -- but I do like the half-circle windows above the windows in the front, and I like having hardwood floors in the foyer and living room and dining room, and I like having two staircases although no house needs more than one, and I like having a flat-top stove because I am bad about cleaning stoves.
Cheap: It is a For Sale By Owner that is about $15,000 under what we believe it ought to sell for. (A smaller house with fewer extras with ugly white shutters about three houses down from this one just sold for exactly -- to the penny -- the same price.
Neighborhood: Most of the houses are bigger and more expensive and have brick fronts and such, and it's always better to be closer to the lower end of a neighborhood than higher, I believe.
Work: Ten minutes from my work, and fifteen minutes from Kim's highly-inconvenient-to-get-to work. (About 25 minutes from our church, however.)
Feel: It feels nice.
Cons:
Agua: There are drainage issues in the backyard; the owner will be spending $1200 toward a landscape technician (or whatever they're called) as part of the contingency in the contract, but we wouldn't know how well the corrections went until after the contract was signed.
Price: About $20,000 more than we were wanting to spend on a house.
Busy: About two blocks away from the intersection of two relatively busy roads (the two entrances to the subdivision are each off one of them), which, kitty-corner from our subdivision, will soon be home to a nice-looking, supermarket-anchored strip mall, and we aren't sure we want to be that close to commercial development.
Uncool: Not the "hip, new" area to live in in Henrico County (although the "hip, new" area is largely out of our price range, natch).
Neighbors: Directly behind the house are well-kept, but older, townhomes, and we'd prefer $2 million mansions in our backyard, preferably with forgetful owners that leave sacks of money on the front porch.
Golf: It is not next to the disc golf course.
Boring: It does not have a secret passageway like in "Webster."
So tell us if we should by this house. I will try to put up some pictures tomorrow to help you decide.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
