Saturday, April 17, 2010

Another open house

Lots of new house listings are showing up, finally! We went to an open house today to see a bungalow that has been on the market for a couple of weeks. We wanted to know why it hadn't sold and we wanted to see the floorplan.

We really liked the main floor; everything was fairly spacious and well-laid out. It was bright and easy to move around in as well. The basement was another story, however. They'd clearly done some of the drywall finishing themselves and hadn't done a good job. It looked like they hadn't mudded the joins properly and they hadn't done enough sanding, either. Plus the small windows were really difficult to access. And the carpet was awful.

Another thing we didn't like was that the house had a concrete deck because we'd rather have something that drained properly.

All of that could have been dealt with, maybe, if the house hadn't been way overpriced for the neighbourhood. The house was built about 12 years ago and the surrounding houses were built 40 or 50 years ago and have deteriorated. If the house had been in a better location we'd have seriously considered it because we liked the main floor so much.

Tomorrow we might go to an open house for something that's above our price range that has been on the market for a while. The master bedroom is a bit smaller than we'd like but it might be that the rest of the house makes up for that. We'll see. I think this house might be a tad overpriced for the neighbourhood but I don't know if the neighbourhood price is within our budget.

At least houses are coming onto the market... there's hope yet that the right house will come along. In the meantime, we'll keep looking at houses that catch our eye, even if they're not quite right on paper.

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