I found the one...

[MaggieTheCat]

So, I have heard from some people that when you go house hunting, you sort of instinctively know when you find the house you want. When you walk in, you sort of get a "this is the one" feeling.

I got that feeling tonight at one of the houses we looked at.

I loved it instantly. It has almost everything we are looking for: No carpeting (my husband has some allergies and definitely doesn't want carpeting in the master bedroom; if we pick a house with carpet in the bedroom, the first thing we are going to do before we move in is tear it up and put wood flooring in); built-in bookshelves in the living room (we both have a lot of books and DVDs and will need a lot of space for both); stainless steel appliances and a BEAUTIFUL kitchen (I cook a lot so a nice kitchen is an absolute must); a secondary living area, which we can use as a game room to play D&D in; a fireplace (not necessary but nice); trees and a nicely landscaped backyard; master bedroom on the same floor as the washer/dryer; 4 side brick exterior. About the only thing it doesn't have that I would like is either tile or granite countertops in the kitchen, but I can live without those for now, especially with all the other things this house has.

Unfortunately, my husband doesn't seem to be as sold on it. I'm not entirely sure why; possibly because it was late in the evening when we saw it, after a very long day of having to take our cat to the vet early this morning and him having to work through lunch so he could leave early to pick the cat up, and then look at houses. He also said it was a little bit far from work for him, but mile-wise, it's actually slightly closer to work than the other one that he really likes. I'm hoping that if someone else at work lives on that side of town, they can tell him how the traffic is during the morning/evening rushes and hopefully it won't be too bad. Besides that, I guess I'll have to butter him up a bit.

[Food Lady]

Cook him a terrible meal and blame it on your current kitchen.

[bookworm]

When we were looking for our house, we found one that my husband just loved. I was meh about it, but he liked it so much we went ahead and made an offer. Luckily for us, we didn't get the house and ended up finding one that we both loved.

Of course, we literally looked at over 400 houses before settling on ours, but I'm so glad that we did.

[Amina516]

Similar thing with my current house. I loved it, husband didnt. I think i spent like 2 weeks singing the praises of the house that he just finally went along with it. Lol. He hasnt regretted it.

I also second FoodLadys idea!

BTW, it sounds lovely!

[LewisLegion]

I found the one I wanted, and I knew the moment I walked in.

My roommates also loved it.

Ended up getting a different one. Why? Because unless we wanted to pay to get it USDA inspected (about a thousand dollars) before the bank MIGHT consider a loan on it, we had to pay ten percent down.

I didn't have 14000 to spare at the time. Also didn't have 1000 to spare on a MIGHT either.

*sigh*

[r2cagle]

Take him back to see it (if you can) after he's rested. That was my husband too on our house. He only agreed to buy it cause I liked it. After a year, he agreed that our house was definitely the right choice. But I knew within the first 30 seconds of walking in the front door.

[MaggieTheCat]

Take him back to see it (if you can) after he's rested.

We're going to do just that, actually, tomorrow. We're looking at a couple others that we liked too, although after seeing the one that really took my breath away, the other three kind of pale in comparison. He still liked them, though. Maybe after he sees all 4 of them together he'll see why I like the one so much more.

[Primer]

Maggie, you don't say where in Texas you are, but if it's the Austin area, I can probably help with info about traffic.

[MaggieTheCat]

Maggie, you don't say where in Texas you are, but if it's the Austin area, I can probably help with info about traffic.

We're actually in San Antonio. Thank you, though!

[penniless student]

It's funny, I had that exact same feeling with our house. So did my husband, actually, but after seeing about 50 houses.... this was the only one that made us feel that way.

So funny to think of the washer/dryer being on the same floor as the bedroom. Here in the uk the washer is usually either in the kitchen or in a utility/laundry room on the ground floor (often off the kitchen!)

[MaggieTheCat]

So funny to think of the washer/dryer being on the same floor as the bedroom. Here in the uk the washer is usually either in the kitchen or in a utility/laundry room on the ground floor (often off the kitchen!)

From what we've seen, it's the same here. However, none of the houses we've looked at have basements; the city was built on top of a limestone quarry, so it's difficult to dig much more than a few feet down to make a basement. Houses in the city that DO have basements are generally pretty expensive, we haven't seen any in our price range yet. In houses that do have basements, it's not uncommon for the laundry room to be down there. Anyway, my concern is that in a 2-story house, a lot of times the master bedroom (well, all the bedrooms) are upstairs, and the laundry room is on the main floor, meaning a lot of hauling up and down to do laundry. It's not the end of the world, but it's something I'd prefer to avoid if possible. In the house that I like, the master bedroom is actually on the main floor, even though the house is 2-story, so it would make doing laundry a lot easier.

[taxguykarl]

Our house (built 2001) has the laundry room on the same floor as the bedrooms. Wonderfully convenient. You've probably already heard my spiel on moving (espeically buying a house), so I'll dispense with it this once.

[MaggieTheCat]

Well, we went and took a second look at four homes today: The one that I really like, one that we both thought was pretty nice, and two that my husband liked. After viewing all four of them a second time, I think we've pretty much ruled out all but the one that I like (and not because I guilted him into it or anything!) The one that we both thought was pretty nice, is kind of small, the backyard is completely undeveloped, and the porch leading out to the backyard needs some serious work (as in, we'd probably have to rip it all up and have it completely rebuilt. The current owner took really good care of the house, but not the porch. The wood on the porch doesn't look like it was ever stained or finished, and is very bent and rotten in some places and I don't know if it would be easier to try and repair it or just completely rebuild it.) One of the ones my husband liked has a really nice living room/kitchen layout, but the rest of the house is very average all around. The other place he liked has a HUGE master bedroom (almost as big as the living room) and a nice porch in the backyard, but again, pretty average all around (and we're not sure what the heck we'd do with that ginormous bedroom.)

That's not to say that the one I like is 100% perfect. The main thing that my husband didn't like about it after seeing it the first time was that the kitchen is not very open to the living room (it was built in 1991, so it doesn't have as open of a floor plan as newer homes do.) We also noticed that there are a couple of good-sized holes in the soffit (the part of the roof that overhangs past the outside wall) and one of them looks like it has something in it -- either insulation of some kind, or possibly a nest of something that's living in it. Also, the vanity in the master bathroom is pretty low set, which would make shaving for my husband uncomfortable since he'd have to lean way down to avoid getting shaving cream all over the place (his mother's house has a similar kind of vanity, so he's already familiar with this issue.)

All of these issues are workable, I think. Regarding the holes in the soffit, we would ask the owners to fix them before we closed on it (or lower the final price appropriately.) Since we wouldn't need to rip up the floor in the master bedroom to remove the carpet (the other three all have carpet in the master, which we'd want to get rid of; this one has laminate wood) we could instead look into ripping out the vanity in the bathroom and having it replaced. And in the kitchen...well, I told him that if we decide to go for this place, we could always live in it for a few years and see how we like it (and save up some more money) and if we still decide we want the kitchen to be more open to the living room, we could hire someone to come in and remodel the whole kitchen for us (and I could get my granite or tile countertops at the same time!)

Anyway, we're going to sit on it for the weekend. Our realtor has us set up on a sort of mailing list that sends us new/updated/price changed locations that go on the market every day, so we have plenty of other places to consider, if we decide to keep looking.

[taxguykarl]

No house is perfect. Consider a home inspection. The $3-400 they charge will be a great investment on your part--if only to avoid surprises later on.

[MaggieTheCat]

Oh yeah, we're definitely going to get an inspection done on whatever house we decide on. I'd even like to get 2 independent inspections done, depending on how much each of them would cost.

We had our realtor talk to the sellers and it turns out the hole in the soffit was caused by squirrels. The squirrels have been "taken care of" but I find it odd that they'd get an exterminator or whatever to deal with the squirrels but not fix the hole, since something else could easily move in to that hole. We also found out that some of the seals around the windows are missing or broken, so we'd need to get that fixed or ask them to fix it before we close. Obviously there are a few issues with the place that an inspector would find (hopefully) but I still think it's a good place for us and my husband is really starting to lean toward this one as well.