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Monday, March 25, 2013

Houses we've seen

At this point we've seen five houses and met our real estate agent, Joy Amann, for the first time.  On Thursday after work, we started with two houses in Fort Thomas that Greg has affectionately named It's a Small World and the Matterhorn (we clearly just returned from Disney).   

It's a Small World: This house has been on the market for a couple months and we drive by it daily so even though I was pretty sure it was too small from the outside he really wanted to see it more out of curiosity.   It was reasonably updated but just not for us.  The stairs were pretty steep and if Greg stood up in the master bedroom the ceiling fan would have likely given him a hair cut.  Also, the backyard was not easy to access for letting the dog out.  So, all around not a good fit.

The Matterhorn:  This house looked great in the listing and was somehow at the low end of our price range.  We were pretty excited when we saw it come up on the portal.  Greg e-mailed Joy and asked how could this house be in Ft. Thomas, as updated as it was AND in our price range.  She e-mailed Greg back and said it looked like the back yard had a ravine so that was probably part of the issue and suggested we drive by before we saw it.  He had something to do that evening with the Reds so I figured I'd run by it.  He'd already had her set up the appt to see it but I was curious.  Well, when I drove by I figured out the issue right away, the driveway was the STEEPEST driveway I have ever seen in my life.  I tried to talk Greg out of going to see it but it was too late the appointment was already set up.  He also didn't quite believe the driveway could be that steep, until we drove up it!   When we toured it we liked it pretty well except for the crazy driveway.  There is no way in the Cincy/NKY area I could ever get behind dealing with a driveway that steep with the ice we tend to deal with a couple times every winter. 

So our first trip out was pretty much a bust.  We went ahead and had JA set us up to see three more houses over the weekend in the Edgewood area.  This appointment was fun because I was pretty sure Joy thought we were loons because N decided she was going to dress like a princess for that appointment, right down to the shoes.  We saw three houses this day.

The Expressway House:  This house pretty much met our qualifications but it didn't have a real family room and it was pretty close to 275.  Being close to a major through-fair is actually one of our qualifications, my grandfather told me once that any house you look at should be less than 5 minutes from the highway for ease of getting around.  The house, however, didn't have a family room and the basement was not really built in a way to add it easily.  So another no go.  Didn't love this one but didn't hate it either and it had a pretty good yard.

The Cat House:  We really like this house.  It has this fabulous title because it has been a rental for the past 20 years and when we walked in the current tenants had cats.  Wow, did they have cats.  However, the kitchen was pretty cute, the bedrooms were a nice size and it had a great family room and storage on the lower level.  The backyard was not as flat as we'd like but Greg and the girls ran around it for a few minutes and had a good time. We told Joy we wanted to come back and see the house once the tenants moved out to see how it looked vacant and see also if the smell was gone once the cats were moved out.  She said she would contact the listing agent and get us back in once they'd vacated.  

The Horrible Layout:  This house was not ours from the minute we walked in.  It was terribly outdated and very poorly laid out.  Not even worth describing.  

So from the first five houses we saw, 1 maybe and 4 no-ways.  More later as we see more houses. 

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