House hunting! And so it continues...

I'll start off with updating you on our house hunting expedition (I can't think of a better word to describe this adventure). So I last left off by discussing the condo hunt I went on with the realtor and not liking ANYTHING. 2 days later we went and looked at 7 houses Derrick and I had picked out. I brought along the trusty Flip Video to video any houses that I liked to show Derrick.

The first house we went into I liked. It was in a cute neighborhood, nice brick front, nice deck on the back, but the lay out was not what we wanted. Since we ... I mean Derrick.... hang out mostly in the kitchen and living room we want them to have a nice flow to them - specifically be open to one another so we can still carry on conversations while cooking (Derrick) and drinking wine or taste testing (me -- ahh I'm so lucky). I video taped it though because this was my VERY FIRST house I ever went into and thought AWESOME - this is so fun!

We then went into another house in a cute neighborhood, huge, brick front, and nice upgrades throughout! And it had the flow that I was looking for. Flipped that one too. We then went across to the street to exact same house only this one was foreclosed -- yuck. The previous owners pulled out almost everything that was probably nice and it was replaced with junk. They also were asking the same price as the one across the street so I "xed" that one.

We then went to another one that I had gotten my hopes up for and although I liked the downstairs, the upstairs wasn't that great. The master was very small and we had a hard time figuring out which bedroom was which.

Then was the ultimate experience -- we walk up to a house and it had a junky rusted shopping cart outside of it (swear the neighborhood was nice) and when we opened the door the SMELL was overwhelming. There was dog poop on the floor, the refrigerator hadn't been cleaned out but the power was off and the refrigerator doors were WIDE open just letting out the rotten food smell. The walls were black from soot from the fire place. It was horrible! I thought someone had been murdered in there because of how bad the smell was! X!

Then we ventured over to a new neighborhood that was really nice. The house we looked at was HUGE and I could not believe it. We were just in shock! And it was so nice also!! I definitely flipped that one and said Derrick would definitely have to visit that one.

We had one more on the list, which turned out to be a dud. So 2 out of 7 wasn't bad:) I had decided that Derrick would go back and see the second house and the 6th house.

When Derrick got back to Austin he contacted the realtor and they said the 2nd house, with the same house across the street only foreclosed, had been sold. So all that was left for him to see was the HUGE house across the way. He went, saw it, and said he liked it. He had found many problems with it though that of course I didn't see. After discussing the issues with our realtor, the realtor contacted the sellers realtor to get a feel for them. Once we found out more information about the house (the builder and reputation, problems with it) and the sellers (not willing to come down at all before negotiating even started and no flooring allowance) we scratched it.

Back to stage 1 for me! 10 houses next time!!