House Shopping Continued…

House shopping is an activity best suited for the childless. Or at least the babyless.
Its very difficult to do with one little monster who wants to explore/break everything in each stranger’s house we visit, while the other monster wants to eat right now, and she doesn’t care if the real estate agent is in the middle of his spiel.
We get a two hour window between dinner and Ben’s bed time to look at houses. We can stay out later than 8pm if we have to, but we’ll pay for it when Mr. Crankypants wakes up in the morning, so its not really a good idea.
Houses in the town we’re looking in seem to be drastically over-priced. We’re prepared to spend up to $235,000, but there’s property taxes to consider as well. So shopping at the top end of our budget, we’ve been disappointed by everything we’ve seen. All the houses in our price range would require some sort of compromise: small kitchen with no room for a dishwasher, unfinished basement that would make for a very cold home office, sketchy neighbourhood with unpleasant looking neighbours, 40 year-old decor in every single room of the house that would costs thousands to replace…
Its been discouraging to say the least. Earlier this week we got pretty excited about a townhouse (that alone is a compromise) but when we saw it, it was a bit of a downer. Its not bad… its just not what we’re hoping for. Oh ya, and we had to fire our first agent, because she didn’t seem interested in showing us any houses…
The thing is, we’re not going to be happy settling for something that doesn’t quite fit our needs. This is a minimum 5-year commitment. Its not like an apartment, where if you decide you don’t like it, you can move out in a year. A house is ours, and we need something that our whole family can live in comfortably — that doesn’t cost $280,000!!
We realise our requirements are high, but we’re also realising that this particular town might not be right for us either. We could get twice the house for our money in a smaller town… So we’ve got one more chunk of houses to look at, on Saturday — this time with babysitters arranged — and if nothing fits the bill, we’re going to expand our search to some neighbouring towns.
There’s also vehicles, vehicle insurance, banking and health care tasks pending. Its not going to be a very relaxing summer…

One thought on “House Shopping Continued…

  1. Drive the kids to the spot. One of you gets out to look while the other goes for a drive with Crankypants and Feedme and comes back in five. If it is worth seeing, you switch places. The agent won’t be thrilled, but there are lots of agents out there. Incidentally Nick Dykstra may know a Christian agent in the K-W area that might be a bit more attuned to your needs. Contact him at (519) 471.8888. Good luck.

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