I think I have been wrong all of these years. There must be a God. So anyone who reads my blog knows I have been trying to buy a house for the last 2 years. I have looked at hundreds of houses and unfortunately most of the houses for sale in this market are foreclosures or short sales and the people living there just don't give a shit. Any house which is nice gets snatched up. Anyone who cares about their house and isn't in a tough spot isn't selling in this market.
House after house is nice enough but on a super busy street, has an impossible HOA, or has too small a yard or too many 2 and 3 story houses surrounding the yard making it lack privacy. Or people out here are just worthless and can't be bothered to spend a few minutes a week caring for their landscaping. The number of dead 20+ year old trees in the foreclosure yards is SO sad. Kitchens, baths, roofs can all be replaced. You can't replace a 20 year old tree. It actually surprises me that neighbors don't come over and water the yards of foreclosures on their blocks. It seems they too have a vested interest in keeping their neighborhood looking nice instead of blighted and full of tree skeletons. Shit I don't even live in neighborhoods and I turn the water on when I see dieing landscapes just because trees are living things which don't deserve to suffer. When I moved into the rental we are in now the trees were almost dead. Over the last year I water weekly and put down the right kind of fertilizer and miraculously the trees in the yard are lush and beautiful. Actually the whole nearly dead yard which was here when I moved in is all lush a beautiful. The neighbors have all come to thank me for making the house one of the most beautiful on the block instead of the most blighted. Go figure 15 minutes a week of giving a shit.
What I want is a somewhat unique 2000+ sqft house on a 10,000+ sqft lot. I want a pool and spa and a nice area for entertaining outside. I want a pond or room for one, lots of mature landscape, fruit trees, and space between me and the neighbors. I want a 3+ car garage a fireplace and a good block fence. Solid surface counter tops, high ceilings, a single story, water softener, huge closets, lots of room in the master bath, a big laundry room and I want to be able to watch the big TV and talk to my family from the kitchen. So a great room design. Lot's of natural light. And it has to be in a good neighborhood and close to good shopping. A nice entry way with double doors is also a huge plus. (Not too much to ask for right?)
In the 2 years I have been looking I have found 4 houses which have met enough of these criteria that I put an offer on them. The first house we had to pass on because while in our inspection period it rained and the roof leaked. Then the A/C and the pool also needed attention. We didn't want to deal with it and they wouldn't come down enough anyway.
Then we found the next house. Nice house didn't have a pool but we could have added one for the price they were asking. Again, during inspection it rained in biblical proportions. The roof in the garage collapsed and the HUGE tree in the back yard blew over and smashed the whole back corner of the house. We had to walk away from that one.
Then we found the awesome porn house. But it was half buried on the mountain side it was on and it rained during our inspection and the buried part of the house flooded and the gorgeous wood beam roof got water stained. It was going to be too expensive to fix and they would not come down enough on the price and I didn't really want a whole excavation and remodel to deal with.
So over the weekend we found a house which meets ALL of my criteria. The house has a gorgeous yard, a great layout, is nearly 3K feet and it has a 580sqft swimming pool and spa which was just pebble teched last year. My first apartment wasn't even 580 sqft. The other houses were close but none had everything I wanted but they were nice enough to compromise on. We put an offer in, got a counter offer and are in negotiations.
Last night, in that neighborhood (one of my husbands coworkers lives on that street) there was golf ball sized hail (we never have hail larger than a bb or a pea here in AZ) and side wind. My husband's coworker had 3 windows broken and part of his roof blown off. All of his beautiful cactus and other landscape were pulverized. His kids car was dented up, flower pots broken and apparently it was complete devastation in that block. Trees everyplace are blown over. So we are meeting our realtor in a few hours to assess the damage to this house. WTF!!!
I swear if this house got destroyed by this storm I will have to reassess my stance on home ownership and god.
House after house is nice enough but on a super busy street, has an impossible HOA, or has too small a yard or too many 2 and 3 story houses surrounding the yard making it lack privacy. Or people out here are just worthless and can't be bothered to spend a few minutes a week caring for their landscaping. The number of dead 20+ year old trees in the foreclosure yards is SO sad. Kitchens, baths, roofs can all be replaced. You can't replace a 20 year old tree. It actually surprises me that neighbors don't come over and water the yards of foreclosures on their blocks. It seems they too have a vested interest in keeping their neighborhood looking nice instead of blighted and full of tree skeletons. Shit I don't even live in neighborhoods and I turn the water on when I see dieing landscapes just because trees are living things which don't deserve to suffer. When I moved into the rental we are in now the trees were almost dead. Over the last year I water weekly and put down the right kind of fertilizer and miraculously the trees in the yard are lush and beautiful. Actually the whole nearly dead yard which was here when I moved in is all lush a beautiful. The neighbors have all come to thank me for making the house one of the most beautiful on the block instead of the most blighted. Go figure 15 minutes a week of giving a shit.
What I want is a somewhat unique 2000+ sqft house on a 10,000+ sqft lot. I want a pool and spa and a nice area for entertaining outside. I want a pond or room for one, lots of mature landscape, fruit trees, and space between me and the neighbors. I want a 3+ car garage a fireplace and a good block fence. Solid surface counter tops, high ceilings, a single story, water softener, huge closets, lots of room in the master bath, a big laundry room and I want to be able to watch the big TV and talk to my family from the kitchen. So a great room design. Lot's of natural light. And it has to be in a good neighborhood and close to good shopping. A nice entry way with double doors is also a huge plus. (Not too much to ask for right?)
In the 2 years I have been looking I have found 4 houses which have met enough of these criteria that I put an offer on them. The first house we had to pass on because while in our inspection period it rained and the roof leaked. Then the A/C and the pool also needed attention. We didn't want to deal with it and they wouldn't come down enough anyway.
Then we found the next house. Nice house didn't have a pool but we could have added one for the price they were asking. Again, during inspection it rained in biblical proportions. The roof in the garage collapsed and the HUGE tree in the back yard blew over and smashed the whole back corner of the house. We had to walk away from that one.
Then we found the awesome porn house. But it was half buried on the mountain side it was on and it rained during our inspection and the buried part of the house flooded and the gorgeous wood beam roof got water stained. It was going to be too expensive to fix and they would not come down enough on the price and I didn't really want a whole excavation and remodel to deal with.
So over the weekend we found a house which meets ALL of my criteria. The house has a gorgeous yard, a great layout, is nearly 3K feet and it has a 580sqft swimming pool and spa which was just pebble teched last year. My first apartment wasn't even 580 sqft. The other houses were close but none had everything I wanted but they were nice enough to compromise on. We put an offer in, got a counter offer and are in negotiations.
Last night, in that neighborhood (one of my husbands coworkers lives on that street) there was golf ball sized hail (we never have hail larger than a bb or a pea here in AZ) and side wind. My husband's coworker had 3 windows broken and part of his roof blown off. All of his beautiful cactus and other landscape were pulverized. His kids car was dented up, flower pots broken and apparently it was complete devastation in that block. Trees everyplace are blown over. So we are meeting our realtor in a few hours to assess the damage to this house. WTF!!!
I swear if this house got destroyed by this storm I will have to reassess my stance on home ownership and god.
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good luck