Happy House Hunting

Things have gone very rapidly - much more rapidly than we thought they would or intended them to go. One moment we were interviewing realtors, the next we were making an offer on a house. After a little negotiating that offer was accepted, we are almost done with the inspection period and everything looks good to close January 11th.


The house isn't what we were expecting. We had visions of a darling old Portland home with "character." Pretty windows, nice molding, cozy wood burning fireplace, you know what I mean. Turns out those kinds of homes in our price range are usually dumps with not much potential, are generally in "difficult" neighborhoods, almost all have code issues, and inevitably would be a pile of money and truckload of work to maintain (let alone improve). And most weren't really that "darling" anyway.

What we ended up with here is a little bit boring. It is a brand new construction home like those found in housing developments where every third house is exactly the same, but maybe with different paint or is the reverse of its neighbor. But, it is actually really nice. Fantastic construction (several walk throughs and a very thorough inspector confirm this), cherry hardwood floors, three bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, gas heat, gas stove, nice kitchen, garage, FANTASTIC location, etc. Even the backyard is okay. It is pretty small, but compared to most of the other homes we looked at...

My first impression of the joint was, "This is very nice, but too nice for us" and the price was a bit over our range. But after seeing 19-ish homes that cost almost as much and mostly filled my heart with sorrow, "too nice" started to look pretty good. And with new construction that means we don't need as much in reserve to fix things. We were also able to negotiate down into our range, which isn't as easy in Portland as one might think based on national home sale trends right now. Portland prices are still rising and homes, particularly in our price range, are moving.

But here we are. Somehow we've stumbled into a beautiful, comfortable house in a fantastic location and all for a really great price. Now all we need is furniture. And a ladder. And a garden hose. And a refrigerator. And a garage door opener. And curtains/shades. And shelving. And the other 101 things one needs when one owns a home!