Russ and I went to visit his parents at their home, for several of reasons.
1. We were in the neighborhood and wanted to say hi.
2. His mom had just gotten out of the hospital, and we wanted to bring her a gift.
3. We wanted to let them know how our house-hunting was going.
We spent a few hours this Sunday afternoon going to “Open Houses” and it was very exciting. We found a couple of neighborhoods we hadn’t known about before that would be EXCELLENT places to live. We also marked off a neighborhood or two from our list, as someplace where we would not at all care to live. So, it’s been educational.
Before visiting the in-laws, we were in a brand new and completely empty house in Englewood Gardens, south of the city, in a very up-and-coming area of town. The neighborhood was good, and the house was beautiful! I was shocked to see SHAG carpeting in a brand new house. The 60’s are alive and well in modern housing development!!! Also, this house was the perfect size for us (1300 sq. ft.), with an open floorplan on the kitchen and living area, three bedrooms down a long hallway, and an interior guest bathroom where you could easily hang out in case of a tornado. The cat box would probably fit well in the separate laundry room (ie—laundry room, not laundry closet.) Oh, and did I mention a fenced yard, 2-car garage and price tag of only $139,900?
We left our name and phone number with one of the realtors, so we expect to be getting calls from them. Supposedly we are in the “just looking” stage at this point, but that’s an assumption we’re making based on what we THINK we know about how real estate works. It may be that we are actually further along than we think, closer to buying than we now hope. Time will tell. In the meantime, it’s a blast going around to look at all these different neighborhoods and houses. When we finally do make a decision, no one will be able to accuse us of being uninformed.
