House Hunting Late January.

We have looked at a few houses this month, this past weekend, Jan 25/26th, we had scheduled 3 viewings.

1 in uxbridge, the house is a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house with almost 2 acres of land. It's listed for a little more than $200K. It had a lot of promise, we wanted to see the inside. We got to the house a little earlier than our realtor just to see the yard, you know it's nice thinking about almost 2 acres to play in and build things. It's mainly wooded. I liked the yard, I could see having a nice patio or putting on a farmer's porch. I was excited to see the inside, Tamra showed up, and we found that the people who are renting the house locked the screen door that was between us and the lock box. We didn't get to see the inside of the house. Which was a bummer. We called the listing agent, and he was unhappy about the fact we couldn't see the house, and enlightened us that it was not the first time the renters have hindered the viewing of the house.


Second of the day was a nice little house, in Grafton MA, near rt 140 and 122 it was tiny, but it had potential, the definition of a bachelor pad. it was 1 bedroom, but it was sneaky and pretty much lead people to believe it was a family home. It took all of 5 minutes to go thru the house, twice. The house was rough, but at $125K it wasn't worth the hassle it would have been to transform it into OUR house.


The third was also in Grafton Ma, it was basically like a sweet grandma was moved into a nursing home. It was a ranch 3 bedroom ranch, 50s thru and thru. The house was on about a 1/3 of an acre, it was adorable. Adorable and would work. There wasn't really a designated area for a dining room. the basement was a nice solid poured foundation. I could see it being a nice starting point, the projects would not be a lot of work, just a lot of time, the removal of wallpaper and painting the rooms would be the most timely. We enjoyed the quiet street, and there were bistros, restaurants and bars in the area, and a lot of major routes that were minutes away. This was a great house, shockingly it was only $178K and it had been lowered numerous times since being listed a little under 150 days ago.

There are 2 more houses we are hoping to see soon, there is one, in Grafton,MA the biggest issue with this one is the fact it's a short sale and the people occupying the home refuse to let people view it, it's been on the market for over 320 days. The other big issue is that the Commuter Rail train tracks are all of 30 feet away from the back door. But the yard is fenced and the train wouldn't need to blow it's whistle which is nice. It's also a short trip from Tufts Vet hospital, and the commuter rail stop is about 3/4 of a mile away. I can walk that in 15 minutes. I could work ANYWHERE.

We'd like to see a house that isn't a huge fixer upper, and we'd also like one that isn't riddled with a gross amount of issues. We like thinking about a house that we can fix a bit to make our own, but we don't want one that makes it near impossible to do anything besides update the house. I have told John I don't mind a house that I can be dropped off at in the morning and I can work on the house, whether it could be painting or sanding or puttying.

Well that's about it for this week. We are getting frustrated with all these idiots who waste our time on scheduled viewings and then they cancel before or we get there and nearly have to break in to see the place.

Mind you it was a whopping 18 degrees yesterday, and it was COLD in some of these houses. How the pipes were in tact actually made me curious.

Anyone have any tips on how to make this experience more enjoyable?