house hunting update! too tired to talk about bday today, but i can do that soon

on thursday, we drove about 30min north to the next biggest city (conroe tx). we are wanting to move more rural, because the city we are living in right now (spring tx) has become overpopulated, especially since covid.

our realtor is very nice, but seems to think the lesser populated suburbs are "rural." i grew up in a town that was 30min from the closest store and had 1,000 people so my idea of rural is way off from hers. anyway, we hit up the closest houses.

the first one was... bad.

it looks really nice from the outside but it 100% was not worth the 315k(!) asking price. yard was tiny, kitchen was tiny, layout was awkward, needed a ton of fixing up to do. it somehow managed to make 2,000sqft look tiny. nope, pass.

the second house i liked a lot.

this thing is HUGE. 3,100sqft, 5bd, 3ba. completely move in ready except one or two little things. it was at the top of our budget though (325k).

when we walked in, the alarm started going off high pitched, and our realtor didn't have the code- it wasn't given to her on the app. i tore out my hearing aids which helped a little, but then i went and explored the rest of the house.

you don't really realize how big over 3000sqft is until you're actually walking around. the thing was massive. i liked it a lot. the only downside is that the backyard was tiny and it was kind of close to a river. it wasn't technically in the flood plane, but you always have to be aware of that in houston.

for some reason, elias wasn't feeling it. i read the sellers disclosures and it said they were divorcing. and i was like "well, what is one guy going to do with 3000sqft house?" and the realtor was like "what are two guys going to do with it?" 🙄 lady don't test my ability to fill a house lmao.

so elias and i weren't seeing eye to eye on that one, but we put a pin in it for now.

third house we both agreed that we liked. 270k/1700sqft

it has some major curb appeal, and the design aesthetics fit me perfectly. i'm not one to particularly care how a house looks on the outside, but it's a nice bonus.

decent size, lots of natural light and windows, lots of built in cabinetry, nice walk in pantry. basically one story. whenever i walked in, i was seriously wowed and instantly crossed the other big house off the list in favor of this one. however...

there's not a very big kitchen and there's not much room to expand with new counters. it's serviceable, and i could probably find a way to work around it, but still.

the layout is super, super closed which is also a downside to me. it has an interesting feature where it has a staircase to a very small little den upstairs and that's the only thing upstairs. there is also a mystery sink up there?

another HUGE downside is that the laundry hookups are in the garage and don't have their own space. that would be fine if we were living up north, but whoever put those in the garage must have been smoking crack because we are in southern texas. we have been above 110 regularly this week. yeah, i'm not going to get heat stroke doing laundry. so we would have to install new laundry hookups somewhere in the actual house.

it was also a bit small for the asking price. yes, it's move in ready, but there a few upgrades i would need to do. 1700sqft is also close to our minimum (1500) and the actual house is probably 1500 because of the weird upstairs den. we are still potentially short listing this one.

fourth house looks like shit, but hear me out. (250k, 2000sqft)

already we liked this house because of the area. our realtor DEFINITELY did not because she is so much about curb appeal, and this one looks like dookie from the outside. the metal siding is actually a huge plus in texas, because it reflects the heat and can't be eaten up by bugs. it does need a fresh coat of paint and some front landscaping though. 

unfortunately our realtor was primed to be negative because she didn't like the way it looked on the outside. however, it has a super nice inside. it's really big, open, jack&jill bath between two bedrooms (which we would use as our office) and the master bedroom is really nice. huge laundry room (inside!) and i can't emphasize how much the layout was open, in a good way. it made the 2000sqft look like 2500 where the other house made the 1700 look like 1200. 

it also has a ton of land, nearly an acre. 

it's not perfect though. a fence would have to be built so we could let our dogs outside. it doesn't have a carport, which isn't a big deal to me, but i might want to add one in the future. the kitchen is fine but definitely i would like to remodel it. the realtor expressed concern that it wouldn't pass an inspection because there was a bump in the floor. i am not sure if that was her picking out the negative because she was primed for it or not, but it would definitely have to be addressed. 

all that being said, that one was shortlisted too. 

after we were done with the realtor, we drove an hour and a half north to a rural little one stoplight town that is more what i'm used to. it is a VERY nice little town with a hugely low crime rate. the biggest complaint some people have is "great for retirees but boring for everyone else" doesn't bother me, im a homebody lmao.

since we like that town so much, we decided to start looking at properties there, and wow! you can get so much bang for your buck. i think the other two houses we liked will end up being crossed off because of that. 

i never know what i'm looking for. maybe i should like, start watching house hunters or something? 

either way, we are going to look some more on friday. very excited!!!