Playing Goldilocks
Dec 18th, 2007 by Laura
We’ve lived in our house for going on 7 years. The first five of them were spent moving from one updating project to the next. We’ve gutted and remodeled the bathroom, painted every room, given the kitchen a facelift, refinished the hardwoods, added hardscaped patio and paths, built a shed and fence, replaced windows and re-roofed. And now it’s time to move on.
But while I’m ready to do all the work again (within reason), what I’d forgotten about was the pain of searching for a new home when you’ve got a specific vision. Finding a house if all you want is a nice city lot, 3 bedrooms and 2 baths is easy. Especially in this buyer’s market.
Finding 5 fairly level acres with no “native growth protection area” restrictions on building, with a decent house, a shop and the potential for pasture and barn when you have a somewhat limited budget? Almost impossible.
It really is like playing Goldilocks. Every time we find a house we like there’s an issue with the location or the land. When we find land we like, the house needs more work than we’re willing to do for the asking price. And anytime we think we’ve found an okay combination we talk to the county and find out that there are issues that prevent us from doing what we want to do.
Too old, too hilly, too wet, too far out, too dilapidated, too close to the neighbors, too dark, too small, too…
Hopefully we’ll continue to find more that look good on paper (or the internet as it were) and one will turn out to be the right one. And hopefully sooner than later or our agent just might fire us.
Hi Laura…don’t worry; you will find something. It may not be perfect, but after two years you won’t remember that.
It took me quite a bit of juggling to find our farm. I was in Minneapolis at the time, so my searching was on the internet. I just cast a really broad net, area-wise, and also checked varied acreage (from 3 to 60). Our house needed a lot of work, and I thought it was on the small side, and, had I known about this clay soil beforehand it might have changed my mind but…we love it.
I have learned that the things that were meant to be take time. You’ll find it.
You’ll find something! We found our place after two years of looking on our own, and didn’t call an agent until we had found it (we were in no rush). Agents are a dime a dozen, so don’t feel pressured into buying something because of them.
Looking for a place in the winter is the best time, I think. If there are water issues with the land, you’ll know it. If the house is dark, it’ll be obvious. Every place looks great in July!
Thanks all. We’ve actually been looking on and off for about 3 years. But each time we’ve hesitated to buy because the market was so hot. Now we’re in a position to buy something that we couldn’t have afforded a couple of years ago because prices are coming down. But the hurry is to try to sell our house before the prices come down even further. It’s a strange balancing act.
As for our agent, he’s the one that helped us buy our current house. And we looked at close to 100 before choosing. So he knows how we operate and that once we find “the one” it will all happen. We’re just starting to feel a little bad for dragging him out to look at places that we decide don’t work. Here is Seattle it’s hard to see places without an agent - not impossible, just a general pain in the ass.