So remember the house I mentioned a while back that we turned down because of the potential for the fans in the adjacent grocery store to be too loud? Yeah, turns out they’re pretty much silent, so the house would have been totally fine.
That said, I still think we made the right decision. Given the potential for badness there (and the difficult resale that would come with it), we did the best we could with the information we had. It’s just a shame that the house didn’t come on the market a month or so later.

But I think that house is now destined to become the house by which we measure all other houses, because it really was the perfect house. (Certainly everything else we’ve looked at since then has been compared to it and found to be lacking.)

We ended up signing a new lease on the current apartment, so we’re good through next July. Which means we now have more time to look at houses without being pressured into buying due to our lease being up soon.

We looked at another one yesterday (a few blocks West of us instead of North). It had all the right features: 4 bedrooms (actual usable bedrooms), a garage, a reasonable (but on the small side) yard, 1.5 bathrooms, the most amazing kitchen… but for some reason it just didn’t click. There was a while where we were tempted to go for it anyway, because it was certainly “good enough”, but I think our agent ultimately talked us out of it because it wasn’t “right” for us, even if it would probably have been fine. (The shared driveway to the garage and the need to repaint pretty much the entire downstairs were the main negative points for me.)

Speaking of which, I want to call out our agent, Joan Elko, because she is really the best buyer’s agent ever.
We’ve been looking for things with her now since February, and in that time and the many houses we’ve seen, we’ve never felt pressured into anything; really, the opposite… she’s better at talking us out of decisions that probably ultimately aren’t right than trying to talk us into buying or looking at things that aren’t right. (Like how she talked us out of the house yesterday, saying that we “shouldn’t settle” but should instead find and buy the house that we really want.)
Besides that, she knows her stuff. I feel like she has an excellent sense of house values (given that we’ve seen final sale prices now for some houses that we looked at with her, even though things have been crazy this year in the seller’s market with a lack of supply), and she also has really good knowledge of houses… like we’ll walk into a place and she’ll start rattling things off about the house and windows and floors and things that need work.
I also feel bad for her given how much work she’s done for us (over 4 months), and we’re no closer now to a place than we were then. We’re probably the worst clients ever. :P (Certainly one of the pickiest.)

So we’ve had nothing but good experiences with our agent, even if the search itself has been less than ideal.

The house hunt continues.

It’s been a really interesting weekend.

We saw a house listing come on the market last week that was a few blocks North of us. Walked around the area, looked at the house, and decided we didn’t really want it… too close to Penn, had a grocery store being built right behind it with an HVAC and fans, had strange backyard, was even further from work and parks and people than our current place…

But we went to see the house yesterday anyway. And the inside of the house sold itself to us. Fully updated electrical and plumbing, remodeled third floor suite, beautiful living and dining room areas, really well sized rooms… I think we both loved the house. The backyard also ended up being really, really nice, even if it had looked a little strange from the driveway at first.

So we spent this morning looking over and kind of drawing up an offer on the house, which pretty much meant ruining our Easter brunch plans. Went back to the house for its open house with our agent and asked some more questions. Looked up some more information from the current owners about how loud the fans and units would be at the store.

Ultimately, the decision was that the unknown of the fans, along with some schematics and decibel maths, meant that we didn’t want to run the risk of the noise when the store did open, no matter how perfect the house itself might be.

So the end result of the weekend is that we’re right back where we were last week, albeit with some more knowledge of what a sale contract actually looks like.

So onward to more listings and more houses. We probably won’t find one before the lease is up on this place, but at least we can renew the lease and keep looking throughout the year.

We signed a contract on Friday and spent most of Saturday afternoon going to see houses with our now-official agent.

The first one we saw needed a *lot* of work. The bathrooms were rather old and hideous (and had tile coming off the ceiling), the front porch was having problems and was cracking and sagging, the kitchen needed updating, and the carpet was kind of sketchy. Cheap-ish, but definitely easy to pass over.

The second one we saw was huge and had a super-modern kitchen with granite, stainless steel, and the nicest fridge I’ve ever seen. The bedrooms were all large and one of the bathrooms had been renovated and looked really nice. The biggest surprise, however, was when we went down the stairs to the basement, opened the door that wasn’t to the garage, and found a full two-room apartment, complete with its own kitchen, shower, toilet, and entrance on the side of the house. It was cheap for what it was (especially given the complete apartment with the house), but the location (and lack of a back yard thanks to the hill) made it reasonably easy to pass over as well.

The last one we saw I had been excited about from the listing online, and the house did not disappoint. The bathrooms were fully renovated and so amazingly nice. The house itself had central air and forced air heating, really good quality hardwood floors, and updated wiring throughout the house. It also had a huge backyard, really nice bedrooms, and space for me to have an office on the third floor (which was also really nicely done). Its only real downsides were the lack of covered parking (but it had off-street parking) and distance from things we care about.
I spent the rest of the evening and this morning worrying about the house and wondering if we should make an offer on it or risk losing it. It had been on the market already for 2 months with no offers, so it seemed fairly safe to wait on, but I was concerned that we could lose it and not find anything remote comparable again (given that all the other houses we’ve seen so far have needed significantly more work than this one). Still, given that we’d only seen 8 houses total and were therefore at the beginning of our search in a slow market, it didn’t really make sense to jump on it. But it still didn’t stop me from worrying.

In the end, the problem was solved for us, as our agent called this evening and told us someone else had put an offer on the house, to see what we wanted to do. The result was a rather strong, “Don’t do anything now, and wait and see what happens” sentiment, and made the decision to potentially pass up this house much easier. (Neither of us was willing to jump on the house tonight, which is what would have had to happen if we didn’t want to risk losing it. So fate kind of forced our hand.)
Our agent also sent us examples of comparable listings sold in the last 6 months that did a lot to assuage my concerns, since there were many well-priced houses on the list that were also nicely updated and had many of the important features of this house.

So it’s been an interesting hunt so far. Things will continue more in earnest after I return from my San Francisco trip, and we will hopefully find something awesome.