OKLibrarian
Recycles dryer sheets
- Joined
- Mar 21, 2007
- Messages
- 211
(see http://early-retirement.org/forums/index.php?topic=13177.0 for part one of our real estate angsting...)
Well, we've decided that a house is the way to go for our first home. At our current savings rate, we should be ready to buy in about 2 months (got the down payment--need the cash cushion). One of my primary goals is to get closer to my work--I currently have about a 35-40 minute commute, depending on the day. We prefer quality of square feet to quantity (we both grew up in ~1400sf houses and were quite content), and we do not want to be in a suburban cookie cutter development. I don't mind taking care of upkeep on the house, but we don't want to spend all our free time fiddling with it either. We do want space for a vegetable garden, and would like (but don't need) a patio big enough for a hot tub. We're also major foodies/amateur chefs, and want a kitchen we can really play in as well as enough room to entertain a bit more. We currently have 2 leading contenders, one we've visited, one we plan to check out in a couple weekends after DH's deadline crunch at work has passed. We haven't found an agent (yet), but we've been looking around realtor.com and other local websites and have found 2 compelling houses. They are very different homes, and sort of encapsulate the two directions we feel ourselves being tugged in. Both are in our price range, which is well under what we've been told we can qualify for.
House #1: 1400-ish square feet, 3 bed/2 bath/1 car garage. Built in the 50s but remodeled about a year ago. it's on a half-acre lot in one of the Tulsa neighborhoods we like. It only cuts my commute by about 5 minutes. DH's would be essentially unchanged. The kitchen looks nice but is a tad smaller than we'd hoped, though big enough for our purposes. They've put in granite countertops, but it's pretty obvious they just painted over the original cabinets and switched out the hardware. the whole house has new paint, and the hardwood floors are in tolerably good shape, though a little discolored in spots. bedrooms are decent size for our purposes. The master bed/bath has been redone, but not well--there are some electrical outlets that look a bit iffy, they seem to have left in the original '50s-era medicine cabinet, and we would want to put a light in the shower enclosure. The garage is hard to judge as it was full of a lot of junk (as were the secondary bedrooms) , but it looks like it would fit one car and not much else. the lot's about a half-acre, the back yard is most of that, it faces south and gets a lot of good sunlight for the garden. there's a playset we'd have to get rid of, and a shed which is "not covered by the inspection"--not sure what that meant exactly, so I'm going on the assumption we'd have to knock it down and put in something new, assuming we wanted one. going by back of the envelope calculations we figured we'd want to put in about $10k worth of work into it (repaint the master bath, some new fixtures, electrical, MAYBE new kitchen cabinets down the road), and at the price it was at then, that ten grand would take us out of our price range. It's since been reduced in price toward the bottom of our price range, and is back in contention.
House #2: located just outside a town about halfway between Tulsa and my job. 1700sf, 3bed/3bath/2 car garage. Built in the late-1970s, it's very much a larger version of the type of ranch house DH and i grew up in, but with larger living spaces, an updated kitchen--and an addition with a indoor, inground swimming pool and jacuzzi. The rest of the house looks nice based on pictures (we plan to get an appointment to visit saturday after next)--we might get new countertops and slap up some crown molding in the living room, but that's about all we'd need to do. the living areas are all hardwood/tile--don't know what the bedrooms look like. It would make a great party house, is still close enough to the city to be convenient to friends, groceries, etc. Both of us would have about a 20-minute commute--halving my drive but doubling DH's. the lot's a little under 2 acres, plenty of room for a garden but still manageable. But this pool...it's very tempting, and very worrying. DH wants a pool, but we dismissed the notion as completely out of our price range, and I was uneasy about the liability issues to having a death trap in the backyard. The indoor angle reduces the liability risk, especially since we're childfree. The house is right at the top of our price range, though I suspect the pool and the location will limit their market somewhat and give us a bit more wiggle room on price. (then again, if/when we go to sell, are we going to have that same problem?) As I've been thinking about it, I'm growing to love the notion of swimming a lap or two in the morning and soaking in the hot tub with a glass of wine after work. But other than a few friends growing up, we haven't known many people who have swimming pools (and none of them indoor) and we really aren't sure what kind of money and time we're looking at to keep it up. I've heard anything from $50/month to $200 a month on the web, not counting whatever implications they'd have on our power and water bills.
In a nutshell, House A is the sort of house we thought we wanted and could afford when we started looking. it needs a touch more work than we hoped, but nothing drastic either. House B is a nicer house than we even thought possible and is in a better location for me. But are we ready to go from downtown apartment living to the rural (or at least exurban) life? Will driving 20 minutes on Saturday to get to Wild Oats or Target get old quickly? Are those shimmering blue oases going to turn into black holes that suck up all our time and money?
This, in a nutshell, is our quandary. suggestions from homeowners (especially anyone with a pool), questions, issues I'm missing are all welcome.
Well, we've decided that a house is the way to go for our first home. At our current savings rate, we should be ready to buy in about 2 months (got the down payment--need the cash cushion). One of my primary goals is to get closer to my work--I currently have about a 35-40 minute commute, depending on the day. We prefer quality of square feet to quantity (we both grew up in ~1400sf houses and were quite content), and we do not want to be in a suburban cookie cutter development. I don't mind taking care of upkeep on the house, but we don't want to spend all our free time fiddling with it either. We do want space for a vegetable garden, and would like (but don't need) a patio big enough for a hot tub. We're also major foodies/amateur chefs, and want a kitchen we can really play in as well as enough room to entertain a bit more. We currently have 2 leading contenders, one we've visited, one we plan to check out in a couple weekends after DH's deadline crunch at work has passed. We haven't found an agent (yet), but we've been looking around realtor.com and other local websites and have found 2 compelling houses. They are very different homes, and sort of encapsulate the two directions we feel ourselves being tugged in. Both are in our price range, which is well under what we've been told we can qualify for.
House #1: 1400-ish square feet, 3 bed/2 bath/1 car garage. Built in the 50s but remodeled about a year ago. it's on a half-acre lot in one of the Tulsa neighborhoods we like. It only cuts my commute by about 5 minutes. DH's would be essentially unchanged. The kitchen looks nice but is a tad smaller than we'd hoped, though big enough for our purposes. They've put in granite countertops, but it's pretty obvious they just painted over the original cabinets and switched out the hardware. the whole house has new paint, and the hardwood floors are in tolerably good shape, though a little discolored in spots. bedrooms are decent size for our purposes. The master bed/bath has been redone, but not well--there are some electrical outlets that look a bit iffy, they seem to have left in the original '50s-era medicine cabinet, and we would want to put a light in the shower enclosure. The garage is hard to judge as it was full of a lot of junk (as were the secondary bedrooms) , but it looks like it would fit one car and not much else. the lot's about a half-acre, the back yard is most of that, it faces south and gets a lot of good sunlight for the garden. there's a playset we'd have to get rid of, and a shed which is "not covered by the inspection"--not sure what that meant exactly, so I'm going on the assumption we'd have to knock it down and put in something new, assuming we wanted one. going by back of the envelope calculations we figured we'd want to put in about $10k worth of work into it (repaint the master bath, some new fixtures, electrical, MAYBE new kitchen cabinets down the road), and at the price it was at then, that ten grand would take us out of our price range. It's since been reduced in price toward the bottom of our price range, and is back in contention.
House #2: located just outside a town about halfway between Tulsa and my job. 1700sf, 3bed/3bath/2 car garage. Built in the late-1970s, it's very much a larger version of the type of ranch house DH and i grew up in, but with larger living spaces, an updated kitchen--and an addition with a indoor, inground swimming pool and jacuzzi. The rest of the house looks nice based on pictures (we plan to get an appointment to visit saturday after next)--we might get new countertops and slap up some crown molding in the living room, but that's about all we'd need to do. the living areas are all hardwood/tile--don't know what the bedrooms look like. It would make a great party house, is still close enough to the city to be convenient to friends, groceries, etc. Both of us would have about a 20-minute commute--halving my drive but doubling DH's. the lot's a little under 2 acres, plenty of room for a garden but still manageable. But this pool...it's very tempting, and very worrying. DH wants a pool, but we dismissed the notion as completely out of our price range, and I was uneasy about the liability issues to having a death trap in the backyard. The indoor angle reduces the liability risk, especially since we're childfree. The house is right at the top of our price range, though I suspect the pool and the location will limit their market somewhat and give us a bit more wiggle room on price. (then again, if/when we go to sell, are we going to have that same problem?) As I've been thinking about it, I'm growing to love the notion of swimming a lap or two in the morning and soaking in the hot tub with a glass of wine after work. But other than a few friends growing up, we haven't known many people who have swimming pools (and none of them indoor) and we really aren't sure what kind of money and time we're looking at to keep it up. I've heard anything from $50/month to $200 a month on the web, not counting whatever implications they'd have on our power and water bills.
In a nutshell, House A is the sort of house we thought we wanted and could afford when we started looking. it needs a touch more work than we hoped, but nothing drastic either. House B is a nicer house than we even thought possible and is in a better location for me. But are we ready to go from downtown apartment living to the rural (or at least exurban) life? Will driving 20 minutes on Saturday to get to Wild Oats or Target get old quickly? Are those shimmering blue oases going to turn into black holes that suck up all our time and money?
This, in a nutshell, is our quandary. suggestions from homeowners (especially anyone with a pool), questions, issues I'm missing are all welcome.
