House Hunting: Large Foreclosure: a house log
Everyone else who is house hunting these days is likely seeing a lot of foreclosures for sale like we are. We will admit we were torn about whether or not we hoped to consider them. It is one thing to buy a home from a willing seller, but to take a home that someone else did not want to lose seems so sad. Especially given all of the recent issues coming to light about houses being foreclosed on when they should not have been. But we chose to tour this one, even though it was a little outside of our comfort zone, simply to see what it looked like inside (since the outside was fairly charming indeed).
THE STATS:
- Age: 1960
- Home size: 2,659 square feet
- Lot size: 0.4 acres of land
- Bedrooms: 4
- Bathroom: 2.5
THE PROS:
- Extremely inexpensive
- In need of TONS of work (which is a plus for us)
- Slate roof and vivid hardwood floors throughout
- Pleasant private backyard
- Strong neighborhood (near family and excellent schools)
THE CONS:
- Smells heavily of smoke inside
- Sagging drywall in nearly every room (re-doing drywall is not as lively as most Hands-on projects)
- It is large (and we prefer a more modest footprint that is easier to clean)
- Cannot be purchased with a contingency (meaning we’d have to sell our house before putting in an offer)
- Foreclosures can be a good deal, but they make us sad (and may even be a liability given the murmurings of “foreclosure fraud”).
So even though the pros seemed to balance out the cons (in numbers, at least) we simply could not get past how virtually uninhabitable it would be while we tried to fix the drywall and rid it of the heavy smoke smell. It is certainly not something we’d want to move Clara into before that (and since we’d have to sell our house before even making an offer, we would most likely have to figure out interim housing which seems complicated and unnecessary if we can persue other homes that will accept a contingency instead). But we are glad we toured it simply to know what is inside and rule it out as an option for us. After all, every house that we enter without getting that “this is it” feeling means we get to cross it off the list, which hopefully brings us closer to The One.
Psst- Assist! Over on BabyCenter we are calling all moving experts for pointers and tricks to assist keep our upcoming move organized and efficient- especially since we will have an under-a-year-old baby along for the ride. Any varsity movers with advice for keeping things as uncomplicated as possible! Share them right here.
