Mister Smith-Park and I are tired. Tired of waiting to dissolve the contract on the blonde brick house, tired of looking at replacement houses, tired of living on top of each other with all of our stuff in a storage unit in the next county. We are in danger of getting the first thing that doesn't look like a huge hassle, even if it's in a location where we don't particularly want to be, or don't want to stay more than a couple years. This whole process is exhausting.
We have learned to cut to the chase when house hunting. We head straight to places that will break a deal, specifically the back yard and the foundation. We saw several mediocre yards today, and one fantastic one. The previous owner must have cultivated irises, because there were labeled beds of them, with little hand-written signs identifying each variety. There was a big retaining wall separating the two levels of the yard, and it was in fantastic shape. This could have been the next Park, had it not been attached to a Brady Bunch-era tri-level that needed a lot of money to be brought into this century. It reminded me a lot of the house we had in Idaho in the seventies. We are still thinking about that yard, but the house is at the top of our budget already, not leaving a whole lot left for new flooring, an entire new kitchen, new French doors so Murray could fit through them, and de-popcorning the ceiling. If it was in our preferred city, then I might be tempted, but it's kind of hell and gone from anyone we know.
We found several basements that smelled like they had been used to grow pot. I'm fine with grown-ups being able to make their own decisions about what goes into their bodies, but that doesn't mean I want to live in a house that smells skunky from a home-grower. And then there were the structural problems. At least once we hadn't made it onto to the porch before I heard, "Anne, we're done here." Another couple times I got that within two minutes of entering the houses. Mangled, water damaged siding was everywhere, rotten soffits graced multiple homes, slabs were cracked, stairs pitched away from houses. We looked for unorthodox wiring schemes or evidence of code violations and found a few. One house had freshly overturned earth in the back yard, and we tried to imagine what was dug up. It connected to city sewer, so it wasn't a septic tank. It might have been a large tree with an invasive root system too close to the house. When we went into the creepy basement, we saw the results of whatever it was. There was a giant crack running the length of the back wall, and the entire thing bowed in like the earth was trying to come inside. Neither the realtor nor I really wanted to be in that basement once we saw that, but we are trying to be brave so we never again face the torrent of crap that rained down on us from the inspection last week. We are coming to the conclusion that all the good houses are already sold, and everything now is just the result of people trying to capitalize on a hot market. We just want a modestly sized ranch, not brand new, that won't fall in around our heads. Why is that so hard?
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