House Hunting

Well ... we must be grown-ups now.

We've started house hunting.

It is ... well.  It's intimidating.  We are talking about committing hundreds of thousands of dollars here; that's a terrifying number!

We aren't buying our dream home; we can't afford it yet.  But we are tired of throwing money away in rent, and definitely need room for our little family to grow.

So we are looking at houses.

We are basing everything around the location of Mark's office; I want him to be able to run home when he needs to, to be able to schedule an extra patient here or there, to sign up for a booth at a race or some other event in our own community, to be able to make it to t-ball games on Saturdays and on days he has to stay late, I want him to be able to jet home in minutes.  Plus if I'm doing a late-night cleaning or decorating stint, I don't want to have to drive miles and miles there and back.  I get too sleepy.

However ... Mark's office is in a very wealthy location.  That's great for business, terrible for home-buying.  If living at this apartment complex has taught us anything, it's that we need other kids around.  Mac and Belle need friends, Mark and I need friends, and I really need my two noisy, like-to-run-and-jump-and-do-healthy-normal-kid-things children to not stand out to the point that they're annoying.  It's just not fair.

I need a place where I won't be threatened with a call to the police.

So we've spent all summer looking at the west side of I-15.  Looking at town homes.  Looking in areas where there are loads of kids in small amounts of space.

We haven't found a single thing that we feel we can spends hundreds of thousands on and stay comfortably for 5-ish years.

So we hired a realtor.

And started looking at houses.

We feel like we're on HGTV.

We've looked from Riverton to Holladay and everything in between; we've been inside more 40 homes and town homes.  We put an offer in on a house that in and of itself was perfection, though the area was not.   We were one of ten offers .... and we lost.  I had mixed feelings about that.

So now, (I'm writing this in October), we've got an offer in on a house.  It feels like it's the perfect mix of all the things we're looking for.  Not gobs of kids, but enough for ours to make friends.  Not next to the office, but 12 minutes.  Not a giant, 3,000 sq ft home, but bigger than a town home and open enough for us to feel comfortable for at least five years.  The yard is not incredible, but it's a fenced-in grassy area that could fit a play place and maybe even a dog.  It's not brand new, but it's not a tiny, squished 70's home either.  It needs some updates, but most are cosmetic, not structural.

It feels kinda perfect for us at this point in our lives.

The only problem is that the owners are out of money and are just not negotiating with us at all.  We feel it's fair for them to get the house move-in ready with some minor repairs, and are waiting to hear back on what they will fix before they go. We don't want to move into a home feeling cheated ... so we're waiting on the appraisal to come through.  If the price we pay for the home is actually what it's worth, we don't mind fixing up things that need to be done.  If it's already over-priced?  Well ... then we'll have to keep looking and possibly bring this third baby home to our tiny apartment instead of a new spiffy house.  (Eek.)

We have until October 24th to back out.

Say some prayers for us, there's so much to think about!