House Hunting

When Eric and I moved into corporate housing in White Plains I discovered a television show that quickly became my favorite - HouseHunters. It airs every night on HGTV at 7:30 EST, and I was completely hooked. In the anticipation of becoming a house hunter myself, I watched the show every night and loved to see what house people chose. Inevitably, they had to compromise on something. There was, in essence, no perfect house.

Still, Eric and I had been dreaming of our perfect house. Ideally it would be a one story (although Eric prefers 2 story homes) in an established neighborhood with a recreation area that included a swimming pool. Oh yeah, and we wanted a home with trees in the front and backyard. We found that the first week we were here. The home is 31 years old and we knew it was in need of repair. We fell in love with the neighborhood, and yes, there was even a recreation center. So, we made an offer and it was accepted. We started planning where we wanted furniture to go and what kind of furniture we wanted (since we have none right now). Then, the inspector came and shattered our dreams. Turns out, this house needs more than cosmetic updating. It needs a new roof, major landscaping adjustments to prevent flooding, a new patio (which means drilling out a few feet of concrete over a wide surface), and a few other major things that I can't even speak about because I don't understand them. All in all, it would have cost somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand to brings things up to standards, and that doesn't include any of the cosmetic needs it had. We decided that was just too much to spend.

The next week, we found another great place. This home was also a single story with trees and a beautifully landscaped backyard. The previous owners had even installed a very expensive solar energy system that was bound to help with electricity costs. It too had a recreation center, so we were sold. We made an offer, but someone else made an even better offer that same day. Bummer.

I continued to look at homes, but nothing was measuring up. I was beginning to feel like we were never going to find a home. We decided to start looking at new homes because we would then know that at least we wouldn't need to put any money into fixing it up. I found a great possibility, and got very excited. Eric came by to see it after work and didn't get excited. While it was over 2000 square feet and a one story, Eric though it lacked curb appeal and pointed out that this neighborhood didn't have a pool.

We had plans to go on a 'romantic dinner' that night while my dad and his fiancee watched Charlotte. I told him we could still go out to dinner, but that I wasn't feeling very romantic towards him at the moment.

Then, we decided to visit the neighborhood we were interested in last January. It's new development with 2 recreations centers, a playground, and a 9 acre park with hiking and bike trails, and picnic tables complete with barbeques. Turns out they had a few homes that were ready for a quick move in, and one of them had just about everything we wanted in a home. The only thing it doesn't have is mature trees, but they're going to plant two trees as part of the landscaping package (we'll see them grow over time, right?). Anyway (sorry this is such a long post) we decided to buy this home, and we're anticipating an October 20th closing date. It's a large 2 story (I was willing to compromise), 3 bedroom home with a gameroom. We can't wait to move in.

And, here's the kicker, we will have a very Texas sounding street - Buckskin Spur.

They'll be plenty of room if anyone wants to visit us.