Seven (well, 6 really) Yellow Reindeer
Posted by Patrick on Sunday, September 24, 2006Today we met with a local real estate agent who drove us around the 'burbs of Raleigh in search of a place to live. She was pretty knowledgeable on what was going on in the area we looked in. We started at 8am and looked at houses until just after 1pm. We stopped at seven houses and looked inside six of them. Each of the houses was empty of furniture and people, so that made it easier to get the vibe on each place.
Here's a quick rundown:
House Number 1
While a little older, this house was way affordable, was in good condition, and had a nice sized yard. The neighbors had a short fence with some large angry looking dogs, but other than that it was good.
House Number 2
The next house needed a lot of work. So we moved on. While we're both open to doing some work when we move in, we didn't move this far away to become general contractors.
House Number 3
The next house was better! It had a huge yard, on 3/4 acres. Mowing that thing would (1) take most of one weekend morning each week and (2) force me to mow cool crop circles that would hopefully one day appear on maps.google.com. A little pricey, but a nice house, yard and neighborhood.
House Number 4
Number four had a nasty kitchen. Something bad happened to the stove, like an evil spirit had been exercised from it. When Kate opened the fridge, another evil spirit of smellyness shot out. Attention home sellers: If you're going to leave appliances, don't leave the ones with rust on them.
House Number 5
The next house, while kinda small and close to its neighbors, seemed pretty nice. The kitchen was new, with no evil appliances. The rooms were brightly painted. One room, clearly indicating that children once lived here, was painted green with stenciled John Deere logos as a border around the room, with tractor decals on the wall. Of all the toys your kids can be into, tractors don't seem so bad.
House Number 6
What a bum deal this was. This just-within-our budget house is practically brand-new, very clean with all new appliances and no weird stains on the rug or tractor decals on the wall. Everything was cool until we took a look at the crawl space under the house (no basements in NC) and found that it was totally soaked under the house, in a possibly bad way.
The previous homeowners had some dehumidifier set up there. While the underside floor and insulation was dry, the dirt ground was still muddy and damp. The agent was going to check with the seller on with just exactly what the deal was... but my limited real estate knowledge tells me that maybe this isn't the house for us - too bad because it was really nice otherwise.
House Number 7
We didn't actually go in this house, but it allegedly had the same floor plan as house number 6. Kate's meeting up with the agent again on Tuesday, so hopefully she'll check it out then.
More to come
All in all, not a bad first day of house-hunting. We'll post more about them as we see them, and hopefully remember to take a camera with us.
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