Just thought I'd see who else is looking for a house out there right now.

DH and I bought our townhouse in the summer of 2000. We were not really thinking about kids at that time (wouldn't even be married for another year still!) so there are some things about the house and the way we have it set up that I would not have chosen if I knew we'd have a baby while we were still here. For starters, the side of the house that Emily's room is on faces a busy street, so there's lots of traffic noise right below her window (plus we are around the corner from a firehouse, and we're on a corner which is a school bus stop, so there are fire engines and (very noisy) schoolbusses going by all the time). Also, her room is right next to the laundry room, so I end up not wanting to do laundry at night for fear that I'll wake her.

Anyway, we're looking for a detached home, about 2000-2300 square feet, with 4 bedrooms and a decent yard (which is subjective here in Jersey), about 40 minutes south of where we currently live. We're looking in 2 specific townships. There's not a ton out there right now since it's the middle of winter, but I don't mind since we haven't listed our current home for sale yet - although I expect our house to sell very quickly based on the turnaround time for other homes in our development.

I won't have a chance to get out to see anything with our agent until Friday the 23rd, but there are 4 houses that I like right now and I'm looking forward to seeing them!

So... who else?

We're house hunting as well as land hunting. My dad has built a few houses and if we find the right piece of land, we'll build instead. We want about 2000sq/ft 4 bedrooms and a nice sized yard as well...preferably 2 stories.

We're casually house-hunting, too. We bought our current house when I was pg with Katie. We had just moved up here from CA, and we were living with my ILs... and I really just wanted to move OUT! :lol: Our house is fine... it's pretty nice, actually. But there are some features I don't like, so we (meaning me) are looking for something a little different. We'd like to find another 4 bedroom/2 or 3 bath house, about the same size as our current house (1800-2000 sq.ft.), but we'd like a regular 2 story or a rambler instead of a California split. And we'd like a formal dining room AND a kitchen nook. I think my ideal would be a 2 story, with three upstairs bedrooms, a master bedroom with 5 piece bath, upstairs laundry, and a downstairs with kitchen, nook, dining, living and family rooms, and a 4th bedroom/office, and small guest bath. Oh, and DH would like all of that, but on the lake, please. :lol:

Okay... here's the house I want....
http://www.windermere.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Listing.ListingDetail&ListingID=3761972

And here's the one DH wants...
http://www.windermere.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Listing.ListingDetail&ListingID=2986676

As you can see, we're a ways from reaching any kind of agreement... :rolleyes:

Anne, I love the house you want - and I am so jealous of those taxes! We'd pay at least $5,500/yr in taxes for that exact same house around here. Sigh... And I can definitely see where your taste differs from Phil's! :lol:

I guess I should share some of the houses that I'm looking at right now! I'll be seeing all of them on Friday.

This one's pretty, and obviously brand-new, but looks kinda small from the picture and I don't have any pictures of the interior:

http://images1.e-net.com/mls/import/trend/property/Full/4281032_1000.jpg

I love the neighborhood that this one's in, the trailer next to it is the builder's sales office, not the next door neighbor! :lol: I also like the kitchen! The house has a marble gas fireplace which I love, we have a gas fireplace now and I would never go back to wood-burning, too much work for my lazy self!

http://imageserver.trendmls.com/430/4301613.jpg

http://imageserver.trendmls.com/430/4301613C.jpg

This one is in that same neighborhood:

http://imageserver.trendmls.com/427/4276635.jpg


This one I just love, but it's already under contract:

http://homepics.realtor.com/image3/http/trend/Listings/Large/003/4291160.JPG

No pictures of the inside, but it has cathedral ceilings and built-in bookcases, a big deck, and a fenced-in backyard (which I want!), hardwood floors in the living and dining rooms (so I assume the family room is carpeted), a full basement, and a kitchen island with a grill top. Sounds pretty great! Hopefully the contract will fall through! ;)

We're house hunting - well, we will be as soon as we finish getting pre-approved for a mortgage. We currently live in an apartment and need more space for our kids.

Right now our "wants" are three bedrooms with a decent yard for the kids to play in and a kitchen that I feel comfortable in. :lol: I told my husband that I didn't care if our kitchen was bigger than our bedroom just as long as it had a lot of cabinet/storage space and plenty of counter space for when I cook. Everything else we'll decide on while we look.

Dawn

http://homepics.realtor.com/image3/http/trend/Listings/Large/003/4291160.JPG

I love this one, Jill!!! I hope that contract falls through, too!! :lol:
I had a long *talk* (argument) with Phil last night about the houses. It really boils down to location, because he likes the actual house that I like better, too. But the one he likes is on the lake, with lakefront property, a boat house, and a dock. And he loves to waterski. So you can see where that makes it REALLY attractive to him. Whereas, the one I like is about three houses away from this GREAT little park that I could take Katie to play in, and about 5 houses away from our friends Jeff and Tanya's house. And she's due with her first baby in July, so it would be SO fun to live near them!! We could have a great time hanging out with the babies, since she'll be a part-time SAHM next year. Oh, and there's the little detail of the fact that the house I like costs $100K less than the one Phil likes. (That's what lakefront will do...). There are SO many things we could do with an extra $100K.... like actually take a vacation now and then! But it's always been Phil's dream to have a house on the lake.... so we're probably going to fight about this for a while longer! :lol:

http://homepics.realtor.com/image3/http/trend/Listings/Large/003/4291160.JPG

This is the kind of house I would pick if I had my choice of any house. I just LOVE it.

Wow Jill, I love that last house!!

We're currently house hunting...we are waiting to hear on a house that a friend of our's dad owns...he has another couple looking at it, but they haven't decided what they want to do yet...

We are going to look at one tonight too :) Its about 10 minutes from Kearney in a very small community...It looks like a really neat house, I just hope the inside is as nice too :)

http://homepics.realtor.com/image3/http/trend/Listings/Large/003/4291160.JPG

This is the kind of house I would pick if I had my choice of any house. I just LOVE it.
I know, that's exactly how I feel - it's my dream house! :) I keep telling myself that the house we live in now was originally under contract and fell through, and that's how we got it - it could happen again, right? :blush1:

Well, we're going to look at the house I like tonight! :biggrin: Here's hoping DH likes it as much as I do!

:crossfing for you Anne! :)

We currently own a 1/1.5 condo with 1292 square feet. It is large for a one bedroom. But we are soooo ready for our own room! :nod: So, it's on the market and it's been almost 90 days now. We have had TONS of interest since the new year, so I think we're really close to getting an offer on it. Yay! :) It really is a nice condo.

Once we sell it, we'll be looking at a 3/2 or 4/2 ranch style. Since our condo has stairs, I am looking forward to something that's one level with no stairs at all. I want a nice yard with a patio and a grassy area for Ian to play on. I want a living room and a family room. A dining room and a breakfast nook. I hope we can afford all the things we want. Houses are expensive here. Very expensive. We can spend $575K and that is maybe going to be enough for something that needs a little TLC.

Here's one house. 4/2.5 1972 Sqft. for $599K, so a bit out of our range.

http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b4df38b3127cce86884ebd0de20000001510
This one is OK, not as nice. 4/3 1812 Sqft for $559K.
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b4df38b3127cce86884ebe8cd10000001510
These are the only two I found today. In this area the inventory is really really low, so it's a seller's market for sure right now.

Leslie, do you have a good buyer's agent in San Jose? My uncle is a real estate agent there, and he's awesome! I know what that market is like, though... it's insane. I grew up in Davis, and it's almost as bad as the Bay Area now. :rolleyes: It's unbelievable!

Chris ~ How did it go? :)

I loved the house!!! It's exactly the same as our friends' house, except the kitchen and bathrooms have really nice tile floors, and the entry, living room and laundry room have hardwoods. And the carpet is a nice, light beige, whereas our friends' carpet is blue. (Our house currently has blue carpet, and I hate it!). Anyway, I think Phil liked the house a lot, but he really, really, really wants to live on the lake. :rolleyes: So, I'm going to make an appointment to see his house tomorrow. *sigh*

It went really well :D We love the house..its a 4 bedroom with 1 extra room....living room, family/game room, 1 bathroom, kitchen/dining...its 1 1/2 stories with a full basement underneath, a total of about 2500 square feet....It has a 2 car garage and is on a huge lot..the sellers are moving out of state, so all appliances, the swingset, pool, air hockey table and something else I'm forgetting all stay.

In the past year it has had all new windows, vinyl siding, gutters and a new roof..so its in wonderful shape..the basement needs some work though, its really dark and drab down there, but nothing we couldn't handle :)

We're going to talk to the bank on Thursday, then going to look at it again that evening :)

Leslie, do you have a good buyer's agent in San Jose?
I think so. Our selling agent is going to also help us buy a house. The bonus of using him to buy is that once we close, he's going to give us 1% of the new house price back. So we are hoping he works out, because that's $5K that we can use for new furniture and maybe some paint/upgrading. :aok:

Yeah, that's the way to do it, Leslie! :)

Chris, that sounds great! :biggrin:

We just bought another rent house and while searching for another rent house to buy we found a home that we like for "ourselves" and currently have an offer that was accepted on it. Although it's nothing big and fancy, it sits on 2 acres out in the country, it's just one level and only 2200 sq ft, has 4 beds and 2 baths. But I think it will be great for our family of 4, especially since we work out of our home and need that additional area for our offices. :) I'm also happy for the price that we got it for. :nod:

I do not like house hunting at all and I was very glad when we stumbled across this home for ourselves when searching for yet another rent house to buy. Now all we have to do is close on it and get it cleaned up and moved in.

Here's one house. 4/2.5 1972 Sqft. for $599K, so a bit out of our range.


This one is OK, not as nice. 4/3 1812 Sqft for $559K.

wow! the cost of living is quite different out West than it is here in the East. :eek: You could get a house with atleast 2-3 times the square feet out here for that asking price! Amazing at how the location affects the price.

Anne- I love the house you picked out! I can see the differences in priorities there! Good luck in find a compromise!

We are putting in an offer tomorrow on the house we've been looking at..I'm so excited, but at the same time, EXTREMELY nervous and scared :lol: We're really going low from their asking price, but we're hoping they'll counter with something good :)

Good luck with your offer today!

I'm soooo jealous of you guys! When we were in the market for a house (May/June 2002), things were selling in one day so we didn't even have much time to think! My agent would email me listings in the morning and we'd see them that night and we'd have to put in a contract that day or it was sold (unless it was total trash). It was a horribly stressful time. We lost one house because there were 4 contracts on it the first day. Another had 5 contracts and wasn't accepting any more. The house we ended up buying was on the market for 8 days when we put in our contract and that was a long time. I hadn't looked at it initially because it wasn't a style I wanted and it was 2 doors down from my sister's inlaws.

Luckily, though, this helped alot with selling our first house. It sold in one day, too. 7 contracts in one day.

Just be grateful you have time to think and to see houses more than once before deciding.

Thanks Leslie :)

Well we went in, and made our offer...our agent told us she'd call tonight if she heard from them tonight, otherwise, they have until noon tomorrow to make a decision..we're expecting them to counter, so we'll see what they counter at, then make our decision :D

They countered our offer :) We countered back, and they accepted it :yippee:

They countered our offer :) We countered back, and they accepted it :yippee:
Yay! Congratulations!

Thanks Brooke!!

Talk about nerve wracking :lol: We put in our offer and our agent left with it at 5:30 to go to the owners..she called us around 6:20 with their counter...we called her back 10 minutes later with ours..then she called us back 15 minutes later with the acceptance of our counter :lol: Every time that phone ring, I jumped and my heart started racing :lol:

Yay! Congratulations!!! :biggrin: How exciting!

Our condo is now in escrow, so we are free to put in offers on a new house. Yippee! So we are now officially househunters. :) The inventory here is still low, but it gets a lot better each week. We're going to go out and look with our agent on Wednesday. I can't wait. :)

We are putting an offer in on a house today. :crossfing
It's listed at $529,000 and is expecting multiple offers - sickening huh? :complain:
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b4dc28b3127cceb863ce6a90850000001510
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b4dc28b3127cceb863ce6911b60000001510
But we love it and hope they accept our offer!

Good Luck Leslie!!

Good luck, Leslie!! :crossfing

Good luck today! :crossfing: The price of real estate in the Bay Area is totally sickening. :bighug: I hope it all works out!!!

Thanks! Yep, it's awful!! It makes me ill to see what houses go for in the rest of the country. Why do I stay here? :rolleyes:

Well, we offered $548K ($19K over asking price) and apparently we were not the highest offer. I can't believe how bad this market is for buyers! Oh well. Back to the drawing board.

Oh, and I think they got 7 offers. Listed on Friday, 7 offers by Monday. Done deal. Must be nice to be a seller in this market!

Sheesh! I can only dream our house will go that fast! I'm sorry you guys didn't get it. But for that offer, you could have our house and at least one more, possibly two more, around here. :lol: Are you sure you don't want to move?

That is sickening :lol: You could get a mansion for that price here and that house would be $150K tops :lol:

Well, we offered $548K ($19K over asking price) and apparently we were not the highest offer. I can't believe how bad this market is for buyers! Oh well. Back to the drawing board.

I can't believe you offered 19k over and still weren't the highest offer! :owow: The market out here is pretty insane but I don't think it's as bad as your area, yet.

I can't even imagine 548K for a house....now I know why we live in Nebraska :lol:

Of course you have to keep in mind that we make more in salary out here as well. But it still doesn't make up for the percentage of our income we spend on a house.

Good luck! :)

Good luck, Lissy!

Congratulations, Lissy! :woo: That's so exciting!

Congratulations Lissy! :)

We found another house on Thursday that just went on the market on Wednesday. We saw it and put our offer in on Friday night. They accepted and we close March 10th. Finally a house with a yard!! And more than one bedroom! Woo Hoo! No more sharing with Ian!

Congratulations, Leslie! I can't wait to see pictures! :biggrin: P.S. ~ you close on my sister's birthday, which has to be good luck! :biggrin: