{"id":20,"date":"2002-04-11T07:26:00","date_gmt":"2002-04-11T13:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/?p=20"},"modified":"2002-04-11T07:26:00","modified_gmt":"2002-04-11T13:26:00","slug":"we-offically-kicked-off-our-house-hunt-yesterday-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/2002\/04\/11\/we-offically-kicked-off-our-house-hunt-yesterday-a","title":{"rendered":"We offically kicked off our house-hunt yesterday a…"},"content":{"rendered":"

We offically kicked off our house-hunt yesterday and together with our realtor, looked at a couple of houses in the township we want to live in. <\/p>\n


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The first house we looked at yesterday was actually the second one we looked at overall. It’s a huge 4BR\/2.5BTH house with a good-sized yard. First impression: Nice!<\/b> The house is tastefully decorated and the current owners obviously take good care of it. Aileen didn’t like the wallpaper in the dining room though, but I thought it was all right. The garage is huge, probably enough for 3 cars if the garage doors were on the side instead of the front. The kitchen also had a generous amount of space. The bedrooms were big and leaves a lot of room for growth. The bathroom in the master’s bedroom is probably the best area of this house. It has a nice garden tub and a shower stall. The great thing is it’s big enough for all three of us to take a bath at the same time!<\/p>\n

One of the nice touches in this house are the small things, for example, the arched doorways, and a small matching table in the kitchen near the kitchen island. <\/p>\n

The actual neighborhood seems pleasant. It looks like most of the homes on the street are owned by families. There were also several children playing on the street, which gives me the impression that this is a safe street for them to play in.<\/p>\n

The short drive to get to the house from Route 30 is about 5 minutes. The homes you see on the road getting there are obviously cheaper and older… I’m not sure how that affects property values. <\/p>\n

Pros: Very good size. Meets the criteria that we’re looking for (good-sized rooms, nice bathrooms, big kitchen, and kid-friendly neighborhood). <\/p>\n

Cons: Mostly cosmetic, some of the vinyl in the hallway going to the kitchen was starting to peel off. Some small areas in the fireplace and the door need to be repaired. The basement needs to be finished. The stairs going up to the second floor are a bit steep. Also not as much natural lighting as the house we looked at in the Ryan Homes development. The price is also on the high-end of the range we’re looking at. It’s a bit old (10 years). The stairway going up to the house seems a bit dangerous as well.<\/p>\n


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The second house we looked at was a 13-year old, split-entry(?) home. It’s a nice, cozy home. It looks like a vacation home in Baguio. It has cathedral ceilings, a moderate-size kitchen and a cozy family room downstairs. A huge yard can be found at the back. One nice surprise was the small den downstairs which can also double as an office or a guest room. While walking through the house though, I felt kind of cramped. The hallways were a bit too narrow and the rooms a bit too small for my taste. <\/p>\n

Pros: Very cozy, the pictures on the website don’t do it justice. The yard is huge, so Zoe can have lots of room to play around in.<\/p>\n

Cons: The rooms are too small for my taste. The walk-in closets are also small. The house also has an unkept lawn, which gives me the impression that the owners don’t take good care of it. The neighborhood seems like it’s an older neighborhood with children that are in the teen years. Also, a 13 year old house seems too old for me. That may be the age when some problems begin to start.<\/p>\n

So the search is on. I’m still partial to this first home we saw though (see picture below)-<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Sizewise, I found this house to be just right. Pricewise, it’s a good fit for us as well. It’s a 3 bed\/2.5 bath house with a 2 car garage in a Ryan Homes<\/a> development. The master’s bedroom is huge, and the other two bedrooms are a good size as well. It’s also in a good family-friendly neighborhood. The cons of this house is that the 2 bathrooms are BUTT-UGLY<\/b>. I really don’t know what the owners were thinking when they painted one bathroom shocking pink and the other dull blue. A deck at the back needs to be built and the driveway needs to be paved. These changes alone would probably cost somewhere in the $10,000 range, which would put us near the cost of the 4BR house above, with all the amenities that we want already included.<\/p>\n

Anyway, it’s still early in the game. Hopefully, we can decide on a house in a few months time. In the meantime, we’ll enjoy our “window-shopping”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We offically kicked off our house-hunt yesterday and together with our realtor, looked at a couple of houses in the township we want to live in. The first house we looked at yesterday was actually the second one we looked at overall. It’s a huge 4BR\/2.5BTH house with a good-sized yard. First impression: Nice! The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefranciscos.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}