House-Hunting: I'm not in love

[rowyn]

And I think, if I'm going to spend $50-100,000 on something, I ought to be in love with it. That's just too much of an investment to make on something that I only think 'eh, I could make this work' about.

I looked at three houses last night, ranging from $54,900 to $94,500 in asking price. Remarkably, those two prices were for the two houses across the street from each other. I'd say that's the biggest advantage to looking for a house in an old neighborhood: every house is different.

The cheapest house is probably the most tempting, in fact. It has no basement. This is a disadvantage in all ways except one: it means the washer/dryer is on the first (and only) floor. In the garage, to be exact. OK, I'd rather have a laundry room, (or laundry closet) but it beats trekking to the basement to wash my clothes. Especially since I'm sure Lut would have the same mildew-allergy reaction to a basement in a house that he does to the laundry basement in our apartment complex. So I'd still be dragging his clothes up and down from the wash. Plus I'd be doing it lots more often, since I couldn't do six to eight loads at once any more.

In theory, I suppose that if I buy a house I can move the washer/dryer where I want. But in practice, I'm not sure how costly doing so will be. And I'd rather avoid doing major remodeling, and I'm betting the necessary plumbing for washing machines qualifies it as "major remodeling".

None of the houses had a dishwasher. The cheapest house didn't even have a stove.. (Apparently the last tenants had run off with it.) But, OK, I can have a dishwasher installed; that's not as big a deal as the washer/dryer thing. Same for buying a new stove.

The big disadvantages to the cheap house were:

a) It's tiny, especially the kitchen. Squeezing in a dishwasher would be a challenge. Heck, I'm not sure there's room for a full-size stove. (At least it'd be a gas stove, woo.)
b) It's in sad shape. Needs a new garage door (they've got vinyl or something taped over the bottom half of it). There are blinds in all the rooms, most of them held in place not by installation, but by sitting on top of long screws. The owner's already replaced the hot water heater and the furnace, so at least I don't have that to worry about. I'd need to put the litter box in the garage, which would mean installing a cat flap on the door from the house to the garage.

Most of these are cosmetic: OK, if I own the house, I can install proper blinds. It's not that big a deal. But I noticed cracks in the concrete of the front stoop, so I'm betting there's some significant risk of serious, non-cosmetic problems with the place. Like that it's sliding off the hill that it's on, for example.

And, moreover, I'm not in love.

I want to be in love. This is too much money to spend on something I'm not enthusiastic about.

I don't know if I'm going to find a place I'm in love with. I want a house that's close to my job, and all the ones I've seen are old. If they have a basement (and I think most of them will), the washer/dryer will be in the basement. And I don't want to trek around an unfinished basement doing laundry. I'm not wild about using a finished basement for it, either, for that matter. I want the machines on the same floor with my clothes and my bedroom. This is a common design in new construction, and has been for the last, oh, ten-fifteen years, I'd say. But in 50+ year-old houses, it'll be a rare duck.

Anyway, I gave the realtor a couple more addresses last night, and after we left, I saw two others for sale in the neighborhood. So I'll take another look. Maybe there's hope.

And there's always Whispering Lakes on Saturday. Maybe I'll be in love with that.

Comments

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Know what you mean. I walked into my house and said "This one" virtually instantly. I looked at the other two choices, but it was the first I saw that I liked. The second might have been easier to keep clean, but was very "old people", the third was miles from anywhere. Which at the time didn't seem bad, but with the subsequent development (in only 3 years!) getting out there would be another half hour now.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Your house is cool. =) I prefer houses that have upstairs/downstairs areas, but Gwendel was dead set against anything with stairs in it. What I really, really miss about Florida houses is ... a basement. (Water table is too high, I guess.)

[rowyn]

Yeah. I'd be quite happy to have a basement, especially living here in Tornado Country. But that whole washer-hookups issue makes the basement less attractive to me, simply because I know: if it's got a basement, that's where they'll stick the hookups. :P The storage space of a basement is appealing. But I keep telling myself: basements aren't that nice to the stuff stored there, and I could always buy one of those $5000 sheds Home Depot sells, which, frankly, are probably more water-tight and mildew-resistant than the typical unfinished basement. And put the shed in that big yard I'm going to be stuck with no matter where I live. (The lots around here are sizeable; all three of the houses I've looked at so far have been way bigger than I'd like.)

I don't have much of a preference between whether or not the place has an upstairs or a downstairs, really. But I'll probably end up in a one-floor home simply because I don't need that much space. Two story homes, unless it's a townhouse, are much larger than Lut and I need. The 700 sq foot house was on the small side for the two of us, but the one that was 864 sq ft was plenty of room. And the three-bedroom house was much larger than we'd need. (And not well-laid out for us, either. I'd rather have a big front room and no dining room, instead of a small front room and a small dining room.)

Realistically, we don't need a front room. We hardly ever use it for ourselves, and I think the last time we had company over was when Kagetsume and Sophrani visited around Christmas 2001. (Dang. Yes, it has been that long since we've had company. Frankly, my best argument against buying a house in Emerald City is that neither of us have close friends in the area.)

[rowyn]

Somehow, walking into the first house you look at and saying "This one" seems very like you. :) I hope I find something I'm that happy with. I almost had that reaction to the first apartment we looked at, until I realized just how long it'd take the bus to get out that far. Sigh.

Yep.

[kagetsume.livejournal.com]

If you don't love it, you shouldn't get it. First rule of house buying. Wait until you find one you *want* not one you can live with.

-- Kagetsume

Re: Yep.

[rowyn]

Thanks for the confirmation. :) I'll keep looking.

One advantage of having Lut look at one of the houses last night is that it let me confirm he's not too picky about size, either. So I needn't be intent on finding a house as big as our current apartment.

Re: Yep.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I thought that wasn't going to be a problem? Most houses can easily out-cubic-feet most apartments.

Anyway, yes, you can afford to be picky about houses.

Re: Yep.

[rowyn]

Most houses do, yes. But (a) I currently have a huge apartment (about 1100 sq ft). My building probably has the largest 2-bedroom apartments available in Emerald City; if there's anything larger out there, I haven't seen it advertised. And (b) old houses are little. If I was looking out houses built in the last 10 or 20 years, yeah, they'd all be much larger than my current place. But a lot of the houses built 50-75 years that are much smaller. Like I said, one of the places I looked at, a two-bedroom house, was just 700 sq ft. You probably could've fit the whole building on Kage's first floor. :)

And my realtor used to live in a house that was 560 sq ft, which isn't much bigger than the studio apartment I used to live in. (!) Now that's small. There was one house that looked so little I decided not to bother looking at it. (Well, that and the ad said that it had had "foundation repair" work, which just sounded bad. Of all the problems I don't want in a house, foundation trouble tops the list.)

Hmm.

[sandramort.livejournal.com]

Whispering Lakes sounds SOOO Anneish. :)

I dunno what the cost of housing is where you are, but where *I* am, 50k might get you something good for demolishing. The house we are getting was 115k, needs work, and we lucked out when they moved out of the US and their deal fell through, so they marked it down to 100k. It's definitely nice to have a first floor laundry room, I'm finding!

Re: Hmm.

[rowyn]

Anneish?

Re: Hmm.

[sandramort.livejournal.com]

Anne of Green Gables.

Re: Hmm.

[rowyn]

I was wondering if that was who you meant. I've never actually read or watched any of the Anne of Green Gables stuff. I don't know how that happened; just turned out that way. :)

Size

[sandramort.livejournal.com]

WOW. OK, ok, now that I've read the comments, I understand the price range better. Here I am looking at 2k sq ft houses (plus basement) and comparing it to your 7-900 sq ft houses. I need 4+ bedrooms (ideally kids' room, adults' room, guest room and two office), a good size living room (I entertain, have LLL meetings, and hooe eventually to do a playgroup and possible some adult ed classes here... wow, don't I sound all grownup or something?) and a schoolroom, plus a decent yard (2 kids and 2 dogs). We didn't get a great yard, but in this area, the lots are puny :(

Re: Size

[rowyn]

Yup; location and size make a huge difference in price. If I were buying a brand new house in the 2k square feet size (which I could probably get within ten miles of the bank) then it'd be in the 125-175k range, I expect.

But the neighborhoods I'm looking at are all old houses, and 60 years ago, they built 'em small. Even the three bedroom I looked at, which was 95k, was probably only around 1200 sq ft. I bet you'd like the yard around here, though. :) Pity I don't! Here, you can have my yard. :D

Anyway, I think the combination of not-so-great neighborhoods, old houses, and small size really drag the price down. You can't find a new house that's 800 sq ft! No one's going to build anything that small nowadays unless it's a condo (and probably not even then).

Love May Be a Lot to Ask

[telnar.livejournal.com]

I also think that you're right to wait until you can find a place where you'll be happy, but happy is a far short of being in love.

You're not really spending, say, $75,000. About 10% of that represents the cost of getting into and out of the house. The rest is a mixture of investment and rent substitute. Do you need to be in love to spend $7,500? You'll recover that $7,500 over about 5 years, btw, so it's probably not going to be a total loss (although there are other risk factors).

Anyway, I'm not saying that you shouldn't try for the best place available in your price range. On the other hand, if being in love requires a private subway to your submarine, it's ok to settle a little. After all, most people aren't in love with their jobs and where people work usually has a bigger impact on their lives than where they live.

Re: Love May Be a Lot to Ask

[rowyn]

No, I don't think it is. You're probably defining "love" differently from the way I do.

Re: Love May Be a Lot to Ask

[telnar.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. My current place meets well over 90% of my expectations from a house including being within walking distance of my main client and turned out to be far nicer than I would have predicted my next residence to be before I found it. On the other hand, while I'm quite happy with it, I wouldn't say that I'm close to being "in love" with it. If you can plausibly imagine that a real house could make you fall in love, then you almost certainly have a different standard than I do. In any case, I hope that you find what you're looking for.

Re: Love May Be a Lot to Ask

[rowyn]

If you can plausibly imagine that a real house could make you fall in love, then you almost certainly have a different standard than I do.

When I (and, I daresay, most people) apply the word "love" to an object, I don't mean the same thing that I do by, say, loving a person. Obviously. :)

To be specific: I mean "a house that I am excited about the prospect of living in and which I believe to be a major improvement over my current abode and a significant improvement over any of my rental options". "Improvement" is a combination of price/location/house amenities/condition. It doesn't have to be in all ways better but I want an improvement in at least three of the four areas over my current location, and two of the four over any rental options. (Probably location/amenities/condition -- the cost of buying a home will almost certainly be more expensive, at least for the next several years).

Re: Love May Be a Lot to Ask

[telnar.livejournal.com]

Don't worry -- I wasn’t assuming that you meant romantic or even platonic love.

I suppose that the reason that the metaphor of loving an object didn’t resonate with me is that my first reaction to it was to think of a desire for that object which was strong enough to transform one's mood. Being "excited about ... living [there]" is closer to what I had in mind than the most cost/benefit oriented follow-up.

Anyway, I didn't mean to steer the conversation towards technicalities, so I'll just stop here.

[kelloggs2066.livejournal.com]

I know nothing about buying houses, so I'll just sit quietly and wish you luck in finding something you'll love. :)

A launch pad or a secret submarine pen would be nice though. :)

Scott

[rowyn]

You know, I've thought it over, and I don't believe I really need a secret submarine pen. Especially in the midwest. :D

[kelloggs2066.livejournal.com]

No Secret Submarine Pen?

Well, if you're in the Mid-West, how about a demilitarized nuclear missile silo? :)

Scott