I Think We've Found Our Home

We looked at 8 houses today, and the last one may be it. It's the ugly house in the neighborhood, which is actually a good thing. I had seen this one in our listings since the beginning, but kept skipping over it because the pictures make it look really bad. However, it's not as bad as in person.

The outside of the house needs paint, badly. Also, whoever decorated the inside had really poor taste. The walls are bright blue throughout the house, except the upstairs bedrooms, one of which is bright pink with big Hello Kitty stickers all over the walls. The carpeting is blue as well, and very dirty. My dh thinks the a/c may be broken, so we would have to work that into the cost. I will not live in a house without a/c in the hot Arizona summers (do you blame me?). Also, the kitchen is small, and the linoleum and countertops need replaced.

There are good things about the house though, as long as we can see through the ugliness. It's a true four bedroom, split floor plan home. Two of the bedrooms, including the master, are downstairs, with the other two upstairs. There is a large living area downstairs and a good size family room upstairs. The garage is big enough for my hubby to play work in. It's also in a cul-de-sac on the corner, with plenty of kids in the neighborhood. In fact, when we pulled up, several of the kids were out front playing. The next door neighbor's car has one of those family stickers, and it boasts of 6 kids. There are two possibilities with that. They're either Catholic or Mormon. Either way it's a good thing. The best part, though, is the backyard is a very nice size, without any weird feature to take up the space. Even if I have my garden that I'm planning, it wouldn't mess up any play area for our kids.

There are so many possibilities with this house. We wouldn't move in without paint and new flooring. But after that, we are thinking we could extend the kitchen into the dining area and add more cupboard space. We would push the dining area into the family room, and have the whole area floored with ceramic tile. Downstairs we could add a french door, or something of that nature, to have another access to the yard. I get excited even thinking of how much fun we could have with this house, and how nice it could look when we're done.

Our agent thinks that we can low-ball the price AND work in extra money for painting and flooring. The house is a short sale, but it's been on the market for over a year. He's going to do some research on it for us this weekend, and hopefully we'll be able to start the process on Monday. In the meantime, our lease on our apartment expires the beginning of April, and afterwards we go into a month-to-month lease. We have to pay a higher rate for that, but we will only need to give a 30-day notice, as opposed to 90. I'm hoping it doesn't take that long, though. This will be a good lesson in patience for me, I think. ;-)