we may have found two very possible candidates for a house last night.
we went out looking with our realtor monday night, and came home a little discouraged…saw in most house some really great features and some really bizarre features that hindered any house from being close enough to what we want. upon coming home we did one final sweep of every listing in our price range and areas (hundreds!)…leaving us with another batch of possibilities.
so, we had another evening of hopping from house to house and found two (possibly three or four) houses we got so excited about that we want to go back and walk through again and seriously consider making an offer on.
both in the same subdivision, the houses are in south nashville/east brentwood area. close to the interstate, close to some friends, the location seems pretty good. the houses are not strong, historic structures of the sort, and you see copies of your house a few times on the street, but the streets are cute and quiet and there are plenty of mature trees and greenery to keep most yards private (both wil and i refuse to live in a clear cut barren subdivision).
with just analyzing our phase of life, timeline in nashville, etc, location and age of the house ended up not being as big a deal to us as we thought…especially since if we got really close to the key spots we love, we either couldn’t afford the house or it’d be at the top of our range and we’d not be able to do anything to it. these two houses are both much lower than our top price, and don’t need too much to be done. one, on a hill overlooking the hills towards nashville has every single cosmetic upgrade you could imagine (in our style of course), and a perfect layout for our daily lives…it only needs some fencing and finishing up on an already landscaped yard. the second, nestled lower in the neighborhood has some nice upgrades as well (we’d like to add a few more), some nice formal areas, and a very cute screened porch leading into the perfect back yard.
both are very reasonable to our price range, and the one we’d do more work on is cheaper…it’s so hard! i think we will try to see them again tonight, maybe a couple new ones just to keep our eyes open for something better. of course, both have an open house on sunday, and if we don’t act before then, we may lose either of them!
if you’re interested to see the listings…email or comment and i’ll send you the listing numbers and such to check them out.
i am astounded at the gravity of this decision. no, saying “let’s buy a house” is pretty easy…what’s astounding is that we actually can buy a house. that god would be so generous to us in this time of our life…at such a young age. ok, so we don’t have the house yet, but even being able to toy with the idea that we could potentially move in a couple months and have our very own place, is exciting.
we’ve started the process on figuring out the mortgage…we don’t have the magic number yet, but with a rough internet calculator estimate in mind, we’ve already started perusing the mls online. wil doesn’t have to work till 4 tomorrow, so we’ll probably start driving around to see what we see.
our hearts are set to land in east nashville (on the other side of the cumberland river from downtown and the rest of nashville). of course, the primo restored historic homes have primo price tags, but there are a lot of hidden jewels…small homes people have over time updated and renovated. and of course, a lot of sad, unrenovated homes here and there. besides the historic charm, it’s got a funky, urban trendy beat, growing every year. it’s definitely becoming a new hotspot for unique businesses as areas get facelifts.
god may choose to place us somewhere else (very possibly stay in franklin, or northeast brentwood area)…either way, we’re excited about the journey of being first time home buyers, and we’ll keep you posted as we go through the process!
June 4, 2007 at 10:40 pm
· Filed under fun, kris, gracie
well, we are finally home long enough to catch a breath. it feels nice. really nice. we went grocery shopping tonight and it was great to do something normal again.
unfortunately for gracie, after the long europe trip, she had to go straight to a kennel for our weekend in oregon. being her first time, we were a little nervous about how she’d do. upon picking her up, i was comforted to know that they send you home with report cards of how your dog was during the visit. i was not only happy to see that our little girl ate and played normally, but she received comments that she was sweet and very well behaved! three cheers for our star! funnily enough (and a bummer for her), the girl escorting her to me said she had a terrible time with the slick floors- she was slipping all over the place, which made her a bit scared to walk around on them. she said they even had to put extra beds in her kennel so she could manuever. who knew such a big dog could have such a silly problem? maybe we’ll need to buy her some booties for the next time.
with us flying home on the 27th (her 1st birthday) we didn’t really have an adequate celebration for her (yes, we honestly don’t have lives). tonight, while grocery shopping we went crazy with new toys for her. which, may seem like a waste of money, but take note that maybe by having some fun things to play with again, she’ll stop chewing our house. because frankly, i am kind of tired of finding out what i have to throw away next. but anyways, upon arriving at home we lined up all the toys for her to see and she got pretty excited and talkative…
