Hunting for a new home has been way more of a challenge than I thought it would be. Finding something in our budget has been the most challenging part of all. We want to move back to the area where we lived in our last home, but boy, have prices increased. As I have said before, more than doubled since we moved 12 years ago. The second hard part is the age of a lot of the homes. They are mostly around 25 to 35 years old. Some have been updated (not necessarily to my taste) and some haven’t. There are all kinds of things to consider – windows- AC units – roofs. Lots of upgrades to be done and already at the top of our budget.
We finally started looking at an area a little newer and about 5 miles north of our targeted area. We found a home within our budget and one that I think I could work with. My main concern was LOCATION – LOCATION – LOCATION. You know what they say. You can change a lot about a house, but you can’t change the location. So that was my biggest concern. I was trying to find a home I could afford in an UPSCALE area and this one is.
This is the home we made an offer on. Good bones, built in 2002 – 1982sf. 3 bdrm & loft – 2.5 bathrooms and a good price, plus a really GREAT location. This home is one of the smaller homes in the area.
Living – Dining room as seen from the front door. You can see the sliding door through the opening to the family room and then out to the backyard.
another view of living/dining that also shows the loft on the second floor on the right. You can see the door to a powder room and also the opening to the family room and kitchen at the bottom of the stairs.
view from the stairs back to the front door.
family room looking into kitchen
kitchen – breakfast area
view from the breakfast area back to the kitchen & family room – door next to fridge is a large walk in pantry then the door to laundry room and garage.
master bedroom – walk in closet for her – 7 ft. sliding door closet for him
master bath – you can’t get more builder basic than this
loft
view from loft to living/dining downstairs
blank slate back yard. We will put a pool in as one of our first projects. With the desert heat, that is my #1 desire. I need something to cool off in.
The main appeal of this house is the fact that it is affordable, in a great location with much more expensive homes and a blank slate. Really and truly builder basic so I don’t have to work around a lot of upgrades that I really don’t like. This is not what I would call my dream home, but one I think I can turn into a very comfortable place for us. It will be nice to be closer to family and to be able to enjoy all those spur of the moment get-togethers. This home puts us about 5 miles north or south from family, so it’s a great location.
Now we go on to listing our home and going through the inspection process of this home. So we will see, still not a done deal, but at least the process is started.
