Now that we are finally in NC, the search for our new house has begun in earnest! We’ve already been out looking about 4 times and have seen around 15-20 houses so far. It’s been wild seeing how much you get for your money here. We’re looking in the $300K range and you can get a ~2500 sq ft home with 3-4 bedrooms, 2 car garage, living/dining/den, and a bonus room. In CA, a 2 bedroom 1300 sq ft condo in our building just sold for $410K. Insane, right?
So you’d think we’d quickly find something awesome and get this show on the road, right? Well, there are many things to consider:
- Schools: They are great in some areas, and not so great in others. There are also a million magnet school options.
- Location: If we decide to live closer to work, we pay more money for less house. If we decide to move a little bit out, we get more house, but it is very much suburbia. Cookie cutter homes that would be perfectly fine for what we need, but we’d really like to have a home with a bit of character. We are probably driving our realtor nuts as we go back and forth between favoriting smaller older homes with character in the city and giant newer homes in suburbia. We just can’t decide.
We want to wait to get that feeling we’ve gotten exactly two times before. Once was when we first saw our CA condo. The other was the house we loved when we were house hunting in CA a couple of years ago. Both times we knew within a few minutes that the property was The One. We’ve seen perfectly lovely homes so far, but nothing yet that had us like YES! Weird right? We’ve had 2 houses so far that got us pretty excited, but still not that feeling.
House 1
We actually eliminated this one as the schools weren’t well-rated. It had 4 bedrooms, tons of storage, huge already fenced in yard, beautiful wood floors. Still had some weirdness – laundry room was between kitchen and family room. Kitchen, while it photographs well, needs work. They just slapped granite countertops on and added a backsplash. Still, pretty nice one overall.
House 2
This is one that we really liked the layout of, awesome school district, totally move in ready (though I’d love to replace the carpet in the living room with hardwood floors prior to moving in). 3 bedrooms, huge bonus room, nice yard that needs to be fenced in. So cookie cutter, though. Do we care? We’re not sure. This one is still a possibility.
We really hope we find something soon as the condo we’re staying at has some issues. It’s a perfectly lovely place, but…
- It’s on the third floor and there is no elevator. Schlepping kids and groceries and stuff up and down SUCKS. Not to mention taking out garbage as it is located on the other side of the complex.
- We’ve already had the guy who lives on the second floor complain about the noise. Granted, it is loud, but you try getting a 5 year old and almost 2 year old to stop running around. Impossible. Stressful. SUCKS.
So, wish us luck!
