49 posts tagged “house hunting” (page 3)

We went out on Monday and Wednesday after work this week to see houses.  None of them were worth getting very excited about.  We have seen so many houses by now (over 30) that I don't worry about remembering the specifics for houses we have seen, and immediately know we don't like.

On Monday, we visited three places in the Art Museum area.  Adam really thought this we should reconsider this part of two -- this is where the Parrish House was.  The three we saw all stunk!  They were in a "progressive" area {translation: crappy and not close to improving soon} and way over-priced given the quality of the workmanship.  So, that was all that was available in that part of town in our price range. 

On Wednesday, we saw 6 houses in the Graduate Hospital area.  Equally disappointing.  One house had MOLD, another had big plumbing issues, and one had the jacuzzi in a separate room from the master bathroom with carpeting around it -- these were all new construction!!!!  And, most of the ones we saw were on less-good blocks and most of what we had seen.  We just can't believe that developers think these houses in bad areas, with crappy workmanship or worth what they are listed at - its insane!  We saw the most fabulous kitchen in one house, but we hated the rest of the place, AND it was the one with plumbing problems -- you could see the water damage on the ceiling in the first floor.

So, we have seen EVERYTHING that is currently on the market in our price range.  There was a house we were supposed to see that had just been listed a few days ago, but it got sold early in the week.  We are at the point now where we will only see things that are new listings.  Seems as if the good-stuff (fairly priced, decent workmanship) goes pretty quickly once it's listed.  Yesterday, I asked our developer to show us some listings slightly above where we had been looking.  We'd like to see what the quality difference is - we can always make a low bid and see if they take our offer.  I have a feeling part of the reason we have even been taken to see some of this crap is because our realtor doesn't usually work at this price point, so she hasn't seen ANY of the houses in our price range and only knows the higher-priced stuff. 

Oddly, our experience this week really made our Kimball developer look pretty good - his bathrooms, closets, layout, and other house choices are much better than anything we have seen since then -- bummer that he was such a knucklehead when it came to HVAC... let it go, Heike, let it go -- still working on that!

I snuck off from work today to see three townhouses that were all in the same area of GHo - all on 16th street.  We couldn't get in to one, so I ended up seeing two.  The first house is actually what prompted our visit as the listing price of this house just came down considerably and was now in our price range.

Townhouse 1: This one had a bit of an awkwardly shaped living room to make room for the staircase, the fireplace, the half-bath, and the coat closet -- similar to the Bamboo house.   The kitchen setup wasn't ideal for me (partly because of this).  I have never been fond of kitchens that has all of the stuff along each side wall.  It seems like a waste of space.  BUT, it had fabulous cabinets - plenty of drawers and a full length cabinet next to the fridge (I can't believe more people don't do that!), with very deep shelves.  Perfect for things like the Food Processor, blender, and all that other stuff that you need close by, but don't use enough... and a lazy susan, perfect for food...  there was a porch out the back, kind of small - half mulch and half cement - a little unusual.  The townhouse also had an unfinished basement, but it has already been studded, so it would be an easy to finish -- a good "Man Room" and plenty of storage as well (something the Kimball House was missing in the basement).  The bedrooms on the second floor were a little small, but again, lots of closet space.  Unfortunately, the recessed lighting on the first floor did not continue to the second and third floors - crappy lights, ugh.  Laundry on the second floor, closets in the hallway and in the bathroom....  third floor is the master bedroom.  There wasn't a door on the third floor, something I know Adam isn't a big fan of.  The bathroom was very nice, but I wish they had put in a jacuzzi tub.  The master closet was phenomenal -- can you tell I value closet/storage space?  No roof deck or porch off the bedroom, which was a bummer.  The developer made great choices when it came to marble/granite/hardwood choices.  Its not EVERYTHING we were looking for, but its a pretty good house - no way it was worth what they were originally listing it for though - no recessed lights throughout?  What is that about??? 

Townhouse 2: I had high hopes for this place because the first floor had great wainscoating in the photos.  The layout was straight-through on the first floor and felt larger/wider than the first place.  Wasn't a big fan of the kitchen - some of the cabinets were in an unusual place that felt more like an afterthought.  The basement was half finished, the front half seemed too small to do anything with, but there was lots of storage space in the back/unfinished half.  The fun stopped here.  The two bedrooms on the second floor had teeny tiny closets and had cheap carpeting (everything else was hardwood floors).    When you walk up the steps there was this funny lost space without a window that was odd.  On the third floor they again had a funny layout, with an office/seating area when you walk up the steps, but then a small area for the actual bedroom and the smallest master closet we have seen so far.  The realtor and I both thought that the developer didn't do a good job making the best use of space.  Why not take some of that lost space and make some decent bedroom closets??? 

The hunt continues.... 

When I was at the realtor's office yesterday, I saw that our townhouse had been relisted (makes sense).  The house is being listed $10K BELOW where we had agreed to buy it.  Our price was already $25K below the original list price.  It's interesting that the housing market pullback began almost at the same time as when we signed the contract to buy the Kimball house.  Wow!!!  Another good reason that we didn't buy that house! 

Now we have a chance to buy things that would have previously been out of our price range.  Of course, who knows how much farther things will slide.  We are going to proceed slowly (mainly because of Adam's very cautious approach).  I am determined to keep looking though.  I know "OUR" house is out there somewhere. 

Yesterday, I met with a NEW realtor.  She came highly recommened by a work friend of mine who just bought a house himself (during the time that we were battling with the developer).  She has an exisiting relationship with one of the higher-ups in his department, so its a great referral.  He also mentioned that she enjoyed haggling when it came to price, which makes me feel better about our realtor actually working for us!

I wasn't hugely impressed with her at first, as I thought she and I would spend a little time discussing in greater details things that Adam and I liked and disliked in houses.  We had spoken briefly the day before and she had  run a list of places that met my initial criteria.  I was procrastinating at work earlier in the day and had a list of 5 places that have come to market in the last month that I thought were worthwhile.  All 5 that I had selected were on her list, which I found encouraging.  Three of them are located around 16th & Montrose, so we are going to look at them this afternoon.  One of them recently had about 40K shaved off the price so it is no in our price range.  My only grumble about this woman so far is that she likes walking to see the listings, which is annoying for me, because it is much harder to slip away from the office to house hunting if I have to tack on 20min each way to walk to the neighborhood where we are looking.  Or, I have to wait for the bus, or pay for a cab.  It was nice that our old realtor was always picking us up on the way to see houses. 

Stay tuned!

WE ARE OFFICIALLY HOMEOWNERS!!!

The developer changed the completion & closing date, but other than that, the contract remained the same.

We close on or before April 30th and plan on moving in early May.  YEAH!!!

I just got informed that the father-developer (its a father & son team - Bill & Will) has signed the contract, but the son was away somewhere and will be looking at it tonight.  So, we are inching closer, but still can't officially celebrate yet.  He also affixed a number to the fixtures allowance and we need to confirm that its an agreeable number.

This afternoon I looked up the bus schedule for the bus we will take back & forth to work (something I probably should have done before we signed papers), and learned that the bus comes every 4-6minutes in the morning, sometimes even more frequently - and will drop us both of directly in front of our office.  How convenient!

I honestly don't know why our realtor insists on putting in a contract deadline of less than 24hours when that makes it difficult to get an answer back by the deadline.  So, we thought we would hear by 5pm today whether or not the developer would accept our offer.  Well, the seller's agent can't pin him down until tomorrow morning, so we are still waiting to officially become homeowners.  Technically, since we didn't hear back by the stipulated deadline, we wouldn't actually be on the hook if he accepted and for some reason or another we had a change of heart. 

I guess I will have to save my jumping up and down for joy until tomorrow.... 

We plan on spending this weekend "playing" at Home Depot learnings about paint, granite, and fixtures.  How quickly things have shifted gears from "home shopping" to "shopping for the home". 

After work today we went down and spoke to the developers (its a father and son), after listening to much boasting as they walked through the place and told us why they made the decisions they did, Adam finally said, "look what will you throw in at this price?"  We talked about things and ended up getting them to agree to exted the kitchen cabinets to the ceiling and give us some say, and possible upgrades (for cost) on appliances, granite, and fixtures.  We will also get to pick out paint.  It was a bit unnusual because the father & son didn't seem to be on the same page, but the son is the one that is on the job site day-in and day-out and he seemed to get where we were coming from.  It't not that we are trying to squeeze them on every item, but if they are choosing between two fixtures that are around the same price, and we have a strong feeling one way or another, w'd like our input to be taken into account.  As the son said, we want "to put our mark on the place - make it our own" -- EXACTLY.

So, we went back with our realtor and rewrote our contract.  There isn't anything in there that should come as a surprise to the realtor, but nothing is official until they get back to us.  they have an open house on Sunday, and it seems to be in the their best interest to walk in to that having a sale under their belt.  It looks like things will go quick if they sign off on things.. they already stalled putting in the granite kitchen counters so we could negoiate.  I will need to pick some fixtures/granite/paint colors before the end of the week - wow, that's quick.  Looks like we will be spending some time at Home Depot this weekend.

If all goes according to plan, we will close on April 13th and be moved out of this place by the end of the month.  Time to start packing!

Would you believe I am still looking at new places?  At least now it is easy to assess and move on without overanalyzing what we want.

#25 (I've lost count - this is my best-guess).  This was s 3BR/2.5Ba a stone-throw from the Kimball place.  It had a garage, but it didn't throw off the layout much, which was nice.  When you walk in, the garage was to the left, and you walked up just 4 steps to get to the main area.  The kitchen was a good size, but the living/dining room was very compact b/c the garage has taken up some downstairs room -- although I prefer this to the kitchen being on the second floor.  The basement was carpeted (it would have been the main TV room).  The bedrooms on the second floor were a good size, and the full bath on this floor was large, (with a double sink), but the layout wasn't very well thought out.  It would have made more sense for the developer to take some of that wasted bathroom space and made the closets larger (they were freakishly small given the place's size).  The master bedroom was a decent size, but again, the layout was stupid, with wasted space by the back porch that had a countertop/sink/fridge, instead of a walk-in closet.  This place was listed 10K higher than what we could negotiate out of the Kimball developer.

#26 - Since J had me in the car, we went to another place he had thought we would really like - he was really off the mark with this place.  The place was also a 3BR/2.5Ba and was in Bella Vista.  It was quirky, eclectic and didn't really suit our personality.  I didn't like the staircase, which reminded me of my grandmothers (break-your-neck) staircase in Germany, which had very narrow steps.  They were also carpeted - yuck.  There was this weird rock-sink in the bathroom, a choice I didn't understand, and no shower in the master bedroom.  It left me underwhelmed and comfortable negotiating on the Kimball place.

Long story short: We have decided to sit down with the Kimball developer tomorrow after work.  We are bidding on the unit to the right of the model unit.  The seller's agent told J that the developer was really nice and we could probably get more out of him in person - whatever that means. 

Still not sure if we are making the right decision by sitting down with the developer to negotiate.  If these townhouses are so great, then why aren't they selling?  I think we are over-analyzing this and need to stop soliciting other peoples' opinions and just do what we think is right for us. 

Not so easy....