Who picked out your house/apartment/condo/townhouse/loveshack

[SerendipityCrafts]

I posted this in my journal but I am curious - when it came right down to it, who chose the place that you live in?

We went to a few more open houses on the weekend ...

House #1 - weird layout, too many small rooms and not right for us - PUSHY saleslady - grrrrr!

House #3 - Cute as a button but it turns out that it has no basement. It's meant more for a widow or widower.

House #2 - I love it. Central location, many many updates, and I am ready to commit but DH wants to see more. He still has the "living in the country" bug but I have figured out that with the price of gas today, it's going to cost us $400 a month to commute. IMHO it's better to put that $400 onto a house in a central location.

Anyone have any good tips on how to sway a hubby? I am afraid that this house will be bought from under us.

Quiet established street; a walk down to the lake
http://media.remax-quebec.com/img/350X232/0998/m1453590-fac22-01.jpg

Small but efficient kitchen -
http://media.remax-quebec.com/img/350X232/0998/m1453590-cui07-01.jpg

Super big master bedroom -
http://media.remax-quebec.com/img/350X232/0998/m1453590-ccp05-01.jpg

This is just one corner of the massive basement (perfect for SerendipityCrafts production) with second bathroom and 3rd bedroom
http://media.remax-quebec.com/img/350X232/0998/m1453590-sdj09-01.jpg

[neebelung]

We chose it together. We're renting it for now, but we ran across it in a roundabout way. We were in a townhouse with my (former) roommate; she was selling it/moving, so we were looking for a new place together. There was an identical townhouse 3 doors down for rent, so FH called them about it. Sounded perfect, and we intended to go look at it. Couple days later when we called them again, he said it had already been rented. But he told FH that he had two other homes (single family homes) in the area available -- one was in a GORGEOUS neighborhood that was way out of our price range; the other was just a couple miles away in a pretty, older, heavily wooded neighborhood that we'd never even been through.

So FH got the address and description... that night on our way out to meet friends for dinner, we drove by -- as soon as we pulled into the driveway, we both fell in love with it. It's a cute little yellow and brick single story on a HUUUUUUGE lot with a big, long curving driveway and huge, old trees (and a screened, in-ground pool in the back). There were a few lights on inside (it was dark out) so I peeked in through the little window on the front door, and instantly knew this was "our" house.

A week later we signed the lease on it, and we've been in it for 2.5 years.

As for how to sway your hubby? :shrug: I dunno.... it seems to me it's just got to "feel" right to both of you.

[firespirit]

Right now we are living in his house. I have no idea how we are going to figure out buying a house together. I think for the most part we have similar tastes, I guess we'll see. So I really don't have any advice to offer. The pics you showed are great though!

[karkar]

Right now we each live on our own; I just moved in with my best friend and he lives in an apartment. I commited to living with my best friend to help her out before we got engaged and couldnt back out.

We are actually going to start looking for a house here pretty soon. Were going to be buying a new construction home and we have hopes of it being done by the time we get married.

[mitch]

We used to live in the middle of nowhere. If you had no car you was fooked for anything. The Village was so behind with the times they only got four channels on the TV and the Internet was a thing of the future. No Street lights, One pub, One shop and Three Hundred Ducks on the Village pond.
Was a house of our dreams. But after 10 months we had enough and decided we needed to get back to town.

FH was at work Full Time and me being only Part Time, i had the time to spend looking for something else. I viewed it, signed the papers, paid the Deposit and he never saw the House until the Day we moved in.

We ended up living about 100 Yards away from our very first Flat (Apartment) together. And if you stand in our back Garden you can see the Flat. Talk about going round the houses LOL.

We have evrything on our Doorstep. Newspaper Shop, Grocers, Fish and Chip Shop, Bakers, Chinese Takeaway, Chemist. Plus there's a park the other side of our fence with some great swings in. I go and play sometimes when people aren't looking LOL.

I did send a photo of it from my phone to my e-mail. But it hasn't some through yet. When the Gremlins finally release it i'll post it.

Our home is like me,

Small and perfectly formed :winktongue:

[Kfancii]

Okay...these pictures are about 2 years old and it was before our house was finished, but it will give you an idea of what it is like:

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w196/Kfancii/Picture054.jpg

Standing in the living room looking into the kitchen:

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w196/Kfancii/Picture051.jpg

Guest Bathroom - peacock talevera sink and tiles

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w196/Kfancii/Picture057.jpg

Master Bath (one vanity- there are 2 and a make up table done in tile in this bath)

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w196/Kfancii/Picture055.jpg

Mack fell in love with this house the minute we walked into it- I knew that I would love it too if we ever got married - and now that my things are being moved into it, it is much more warm and homey. I will have to take pictures now with real furniture and landscaping done.

[karkar]

Okay...these pictures are about 2 years old and it was before our house was finished, but it will give you an idea of what it is like:

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w196/Kfancii/Picture054.jpg

Standing in the living room looking into the kitchen:

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w196/Kfancii/Picture051.jpg

Guest Bathroom - peacock talevera sink and tiles

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w196/Kfancii/Picture057.jpg

Master Bath (one vanity- there are 2 and a make up table done in tile in this bath)

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w196/Kfancii/Picture055.jpg

Mack fell in love with this house the minute we walked into it- I knew that I would love it too if we ever got married - and now that my things are being moved into it, it is much more warm and homey. I will have to take pictures now with real furniture and landscaping done.

Oh your house is beautiful!

[SerendipityCrafts]

LOL that's just it ... we do have the same tastes but I am willing to stay in town so that he doesn't have to commute. Our dream is still to retire to a house on a lake somewhere. I am just biding my time until that day comes.

I find it mildly amusing that I am being practical! Normally we are both led around by our hearts. :)

BTW - the lake that I am speaking of near the house is polluted. Yeah technically, the levels are safe enough so that you can swim in it but, ewwwwwww I don't know anyone that does.

It's real name is Lake St. Louis but everyone who has grown up here affectionately call it Lake St. Pewey.

Ohhhhhhhhh Kelly!!!!!!!!!!! Look at that beauty! That house would be at least 4-5K here. Put it on the lake and you could expect to pay a million.

Do you have any neighbours at all? LOL that was another complaint that DH had about the house that we looked at. He said, I can spit out the window and hit the back fence. I told him that it was big enough for a hot tub and that's good enough for me :)

[uptowngirl]

CUTE house!

FH and I picked out our house together - well, it actually picked itself out!! We knew the exact neighborhood we wanted (called "Uptown" - hence my business name) and gave our Realtor a 20 block radius to look in. Unfortunately, with all the restored vintage bungalows being bought up there wasn't much that was in our budget. When our house came on the market we had been looking for forever and since it was in our neighborhood and in our price range we snapped it up! We had an offer on it the same day it was listed!

It was a bit of a diamond in the rough - it had been a rental for years, and not very well maintained, but we are avid fixer uppers ( I should probably start a thread about the fact that we are currently remodeling our kitchen - a month before the wedding!!) and it was perfect for us.

Here it was the week we bought it - three years ago this month!
http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd79/sarahmoto/around%20the%20house/P7180008.jpg

And this was taken this June:
http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd79/sarahmoto/around%20the%20house/P5060005.jpg


I guess we didn't really even have time to consider whether or not this was the perfect house for us - but even with all the work I think we are both glad we went for it...

[Kfancii]

Ohhhhhhhhh Kelly!!!!!!!!!!! Look at that beauty! That house would be at least 4-5K here. Put it on the lake and you could expect to pay a million.

Do you have any neighbours at all? LOL that was another complaint that DH had about the house that we looked at. He said, I can spit out the window and hit the back fence. I told him that it was big enough for a hot tub and that's good enough for me :)

The house is on a little over an acre and we have open lots on each side of us right now (there are 33 lots in the subdivision but less than 10 are currently sold). Once I sell my house, I am going to try to get a loan for the lot next door to us so that we would have 2 acres and I would still have some type of asset in my name only, but we would really just hold it for an investment I think and not build on it. The problem is, they want $30,000 for just the lot! We would love to have the lots on each side, but $60K seems steep to me when I could go spend $75K and get 10 acres away from all the other houses. The problem is, we don't want to start over with the house or any of the outbuildings we are planning.

Tell Hugh that the extra land is nice until you have to mow it! :D

[SerendipityCrafts]

Unfortunately, with all the restored vintage bungalows being bought up there wasn't much that was in our budget.

That is exactly what we are running up against.

Your house is too cute! It's just oooozing charm. K .... do you want to come to Montreal, help us move and do some reno? LOL

[SerendipityCrafts]

Tell Hugh that the extra land is nice until you have to mow it! :D

You must have a ride-on don't you?

[Kfancii]

You must have a ride-on don't you?

Actually - my DH didn't want a ride on, so he bought a big 4 wheeler with a pull behind tractor mower blade, a wench, and a dump bucket. He has to be the boy with the best toys!!

(Clear some room in your PM box too!)

[Scrwballsgrl]

I totally sympathize with anyone buying or renting or looking for a place to live right now:grinhappy: FH and I found a place, we thought was perfect. 3/2 brick with single gar, in the neighborhood next to my parents property, needs a little cosmetic work done (but hey I can sling paint:grinhappy:) well they listed it at $90k so we met with the realtor and made an offer she says the sellers flat out refused it, no counter offer, nothing. So we started to go throuhg another agent and realized well even if they accepted our offer it would still be a pretty pricey mthly payment with all the other living expenses,ya know?

So we found this cute, kinda small house in a good neighborhood that also needed a little TLC ,or really for us to make it our own. Anyway,we looked at it about a mth ago and determined it was too small. Well now, (a mth later) we decided "you gotta crawl b4 you can walk" so we thought we might put an offer in on it. but when we finally (it took calling for two days to get in touch with the realtor) she said they had received an excepted offer but she remembered us(apparently they haven't had many people look at it for her to remember us) and would call us if anything happened to make the house available agian:(

I was soo sad, and Fh took it pretty hard (he gets frustrated easily) but I told him well if its meant to be we'll get a call otherwise lets just keep looking

We've got ten mths but we'd like to find somehting and have this part of the wedding process taken care of before the first of the year...so we won't be stressing about it later

[SerendipityCrafts]

(Clear some room in your PM box too!)

I just did :) OW has a handy little notification to remind you to clear out your inbox. LOL I just wish the inbox was bigger!

[mitch]

well they listed it at $90k so we met with the realtor and made an offer she says the sellers flat out refused it, no counter offer, nothing.

OMG $90K converts to approx £46K Sterling.

The house we are renting was bought by our Landlord Three Months before we moved in and he paid £180K for it.

Approx $360K :bbeek:

And our house is a very small Two Bedroom, One Bathroom, end of Terrace.

[SerendipityCrafts]

I was soo sad, and Fh took it pretty hard (he gets frustrated easily) but I told him well if its meant to be we'll get a call otherwise lets just keep looking

That's the way you have to look at it. Don't fall in love with it or the dream until someone tells you it's yours.

DH wants to see a few more houses and look "off island" as well, before he commits. I understand his point of view but I am pretty sure the house above is going to go quickly. We have looked at at least 100 houses online and ruled out a lot of them right away - too old, oil heating, no garage, no basement etc. We have been to 5 open houses and viewed two listings with our agent. It's pretty sad but the house above is the nicest house we have seen in the area, so far.

[uptowngirl]

OMG $90K converts to approx £46K Sterling.

The house we are renting was bought by our Landlord Three Months before we moved in and he paid £180K for it.

Approx $360K :bbeek:

And our house is a very small Two Bedroom, One Bathroom, end of Terrace.


Yeah - that is more like the prices in our area! Our LITTLE (2 bed, 1 bath - about 760 square feet) was listed for $165k three years ago!

[SerendipityCrafts]

The house we are renting was bought by our Landlord Three Months before we moved in and he paid £180K for it.

Approx $360K :bbeek:

Yep, that is what the house prices are like in Montreal too :)

[saltyveruca]

DH picked out our first apartment, because my lease was up and his was not.

I scouted out the home we live in now, and am currently on the hunt for the one we're going to buy.

[mitch]

Yeah - that is more like the prices in our area! Our LITTLE (2 bed, 1 bath - about 760 square feet) was listed for $165k three years ago!

But would you be prepared to pay approx $360K for my house.

The Flag was for St Georges Day. FH is very proud to be English. The Flag measures 6ft x 12ft so that should give you an idea of the house size.

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w229/mitchymoomoo/stgeorgesday.jpg

[mitch]

Our last house was bigger than our present Garden. Seen here before we ripped it apart. And that house was worth £1 Million. :bbeek:

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w229/mitchymoomoo/DSC03663.jpg

[acidcookie]

Umm, he already bought his townhouse before I even lived here. I'm about to move there because we're certainly not moving into my studio! And selling his house doesn't make sense now since we'll only live here 2 more years or so.

[smiller]

We live in a 1 bedroom apartment. This was the first place for each of us, since we both moved out of our parent's home to move in together. We picked out the apartment together.

Need at least 800,000 to get a house in any decent area in L.A. so for now the apartment is just great :D

[Dani]

Here is our house, we had it built. Doug has done so much work inside with the window trim, added glass cabinets, crown molding and the list goes on...

http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/dani073/DSC00011.jpg


The back yard had NOTHING in it when we first moved in, we had the patio installed 5 years ago..we had bought our patio set prior to the patio installation, we were such dorks, we would sit out there until it was time to mow and then move the table!

http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/dani073/Michigan-10-06005.jpg

I love the size of our master bedroom...btw, the closet door is closed for a reason! MESSY!

http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/dani073/DSC00145.jpg

Our kitchen...before

http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/dani073/Trim001.jpg

[Dani]

and here is the after with the glass cabinets

http://i285.photobucket.com/albums/ll61/dani073/DSC00753.jpg

[SerendipityCrafts]

But would you be prepared to pay approx $360K for my house.

Depends ... what does the inside look like? How close are you to London? What kind of city/school taxes do you pay there? Is your house semi-detached (ie just two attached together) or is it a row house/town house (more than two attached)?

So far, I am leaning towards moving to Texas!

I think it's interesting what the cost of something is around the world LOL

[tootsie]

I love the inside of that house, very nice and clean! Hope you can convince your hubby to buy it. Just tell him all the good things about the house and that you'll save a lot of money in gas. Good luck!

When I moved in with Chris into our first apartment (the one we are in now until July 26th), I hated it. He chose this apartment because it is close to school and a very good price for the location. I have cleaned it and have tried to make it homey, but it is still a dump. It's very small, 750 square feet, one bedroom, one bath, tiny living room, big kitchen, good storage space but the hall closet smells. Our new apartment is so much better. Chris found it online. We looked at a few others, but they were not as nice and were really expensive. The apartment we're moving into is 1,248 square feet, has two bedrooms, two baths, washer and dryer room, nice-sized kitchen, coat closet, two big walk-in closets in the bedrooms, fireplace, and sunroom (love it, we can put our Christmas tree there). We're on the top floor, no more stomping above our heads, now we'll be doing the stomping, lol! I can't wait until Thanksgiving! Chris' parents are coming to see us. As soon as we get settled, we plan on painting and decorating our apartment. We'll have our very first dining table and dining room, wuhoooooooo! We are going to buy a comfier couch; the one we have now is okay but not as comfy as we'd like. Ohhhhhh we're so excited!!!!

[WebLady]

The apartment we lived in before the house we looked at together. However, DH picked out the house all by himself; I never saw it until after he bought it.

He asked me if I wanted to see it before he went through with it, but I was working alot then and really didn't care, I mean I trusted him and figured it wouldn't matter if I saw it or not. I am glad I didn't; cause it was dirty and needed a good bit of work and I wouldn't have been able to see past that :p

I was upset when I first saw it ... I was like "This is the house you bought?!" But it worked out; there are still some parts that need to be remodeled, and I certainly don't want to stay here forever, but it is a good house and he got it for a really good price.

I don't think I have any pictures of the outside other than from Christmas.

[RosieAngel]

FH came with a condo - LOL. It's a 2 bed/2 bath with a crappy little hole in the wall kitchen and an ocean view.

Oh, and since we're 10 minutes from San Francisco, it's valued at a little over $500K. YEESH.

FH says that people don't pay for the property or the land here, but the sky...

[Nekochanpurr]

We rent a one bedroom apartment.. We didn't really choose it as much as we needed and and took it.. Since we had NO credit with apartments so it was impossible to rent. Mom just went through bankruptcy, so for her, too. When we found one that would take us at all.. We took it.

I can't wait till i can pick something out someday,though!

[hughesfarmgirl]

We live in the farmhouse that Jason and his brothers grew up in. His parents built a house up on the hill behind our house about 20 years ago and used this as a rental. About 8 years ago Jason moved in here. I moved in with him and we have turned it into a home. It was definately a bachelor pad with minimal furniture, bud light signs, no color, and ONLY Bud Light in the fridge. We've repainted it all (execpt the bathroom and kitchen are still works in progress) and made it country cozy.
Once we get married and can afford to, we plan on building a pole barn that has once section that is a house, a section that is a shop, a section that is a horse barn, and a section that is a riding arena. We designed the layout together!
:cloppy:

[MrsDM]

The house is on a little over an acre and we have open lots on each side of us right now (there are 33 lots in the subdivision but less than 10 are currently sold). Once I sell my house, I am going to try to get a loan for the lot next door to us so that we would have 2 acres and I would still have some type of asset in my name only, but we would really just hold it for an investment I think and not build on it. The problem is, they want $30,000 for just the lot! We would love to have the lots on each side, but $60K seems steep to me when I could go spend $75K and get 10 acres away from all the other houses. The problem is, we don't want to start over with the house or any of the outbuildings we are planning.

Tell Hugh that the extra land is nice until you have to mow it! :D

OMG - where I live, an acre of land goes for about $100,000!!! You are soo lucky!

Anyways, I saw that the condo we live in was for sale. I researched it and set up the appointment with the realtor. So, in a way I kind of picked it, but it was FH's decision if he wanted to buy it as when we moved in together, he just went on the loan.

[Kfancii]

OMG - where I live, an acre of land goes for about $100,000!!! You are soo lucky!

Anyways, I saw that the condo we live in was for sale. I researched it and set up the appointment with the realtor. So, in a way I kind of picked it, but it was FH's decision if he wanted to buy it as when we moved in together, he just went on the loan.

I guess we are lucky because the average cost for land in the country (no utilities or anything) ranges anywhere from $3000 to $8000 an acre- at least out by where we live, so that $30K for the lot seems like too much, but it does have city water and electric available. If we chose to build on it we would have to put in the septic.

Now, what I didn't say about where we are is that DH and I both drive a minimum of 80 miles round trip per day to get to our jobs. So- while the land and our home might be much more affordable than where you live, our fuel/automobile costs are terrible now that gas is so expensive. Of course DH and I knew that going into buying in our little podunk town outside of nowhere, and I doubt we would decide to live in the city unless we absolutely had to.

[Century Guy]

My wife heard about our first apartment (twinplex) from a coworker. We checked it out together and agreed it'd be a great first place to live.

[Whitewater]

We picked out the duplex we lived in together. We both went and looked at it, etc, and we were both on the lease. It was our first place for living together, so we had some very specific requirements so that we didn't get on each other's nerves.

When we wanted to buy a house, together we came up with a list of MUST HAVE (the stuff that you *have* to have, and that is a dealbreaker if it's not there), PERKS (nice but not necessary) and WON'T TOUCH (stuff that we won't even look at). When we did that together, we also picked one or two neighborhoods and discussed price, time/distance to work, and other factors.

By the time we figured out what we wanted, what we could afford and all that, Fiance was working two jobs and literally had no time to look at houses. So we would email listings back and forth, and then I would create lists of houses that we actually wanted to see live and in person. I'd preview them with the realtor and then if I thought Fiance should see it, our agent would set up a second viewing.

Out of about 600 houses online, I narrowed that down to 100, we previewed about 50, and had a second look of about 20, eventually buying the very last one we looked at! I had no idea how many houses we would have to look at. My brother went and actually looked at over 100. Friends of mine saw about 25. My Deputy MoH and her husband only saw 6.

Our house, according to the current tax records, is currently worth a little over $200K. But because of the huge housing market crash around here, our house stood vacant and foreclosed for at least two years, possibly longer. When we bought it, we paid $107K, and financed $104 of that (roughly $3000 was our downpayment) at just barely over 6%. We got a HUGE deal.

I found our house online but we both went and looked at it, and we both agreed that we wanted to put in an offer.

The way we managed to agree on a house was to create separate lists of what we each wanted and what we each needed, and then we merged our lists to see how much was the same. We talked and talked and talked and eventually compromised about the stuff that was different. Some stuff was easy -- we both wanted to live outside the city limits, but we knew we couldn't afford it, so we were forced to look for something a little more urban. We both needed a garage (winter here can be brutal) and a fenced yard for the dog. Stuff like that. He compromised on interior decor when I pointed out that interior decor can be changed.

Even though it was easy because we both pretty much wanted the same things, it still took us about two months to forge one list and to both be going in the same direction. The only advice I can give is to figure out your priorities, make your two lists into one, and then not compromise, once you've got your one list. The right house WILL come along.

It took us six months and 4 tries (offers being rejected, etc) before we found our perfect starter home. Don't give up!


Whitewater

[SerendipityCrafts]

OH CRUD! I have a headache for being so confused.

We went to see a few more houses tonight. First we saw a dud with a great address (LOL prestigious street) but it had an absolutely gorgeous back yard.

Then we went back to the same house as above, that I still like. Then we went onto house number three, located on a mature street. This is where I get confused.

The backyard is awesome - the house it backs onto an untouched woodland park. Bonus - it's also got a 21 foot above ground pool with a wraparound deck (which really doesn't sway me either way).

Good points -


CHARM CHARM AND MORE CHARM!!!! OOZING CHARM!
The bedrooms are quite large and spacious
There is a MONSTER deep soaker tub & shower in a MONSTER sized bathroom
fireplace
semi circular driveway
private back yard without Wilson.
Photos don't do it justice
Very motivated vendor / selling price to reflect this
much bigger than it looks


Bad points -


Moving baby mice down the basement, warming themselves on an electrical box (the listing agent was absolutely horrified and promised to get exterminators in ASAP!!!!!) rotfl rotfl rotfl
Finished basement isn't so finished ... would need to gut and redo
no garage
$1000 higher taxes
heating system - a melange of oil, hot water & baseboard (electric only is the least expensive here)


http://www.elistcanada.com/PhotosImmo//photos/Fiche/2008-06/MT1455982.jpg

I can't lift the pics to post but here is a link to the photos (http://vendre.visitenet.com/VisiteVirtuelleJs.asp?L=En&Look=1899&eList=348205)

I don't know ... I just don't know ....