Yesterday, I went on a marathon ten-house viewing spree with our realtor. Two houses we vetoed upon setting foot inside. One house I almost got emotionally attached to within five minutes, but then we realized it was a short sale (the seller has one last chance to sell it and pay back the bank before it goes into foreclosure) with three offers, meaning that the seller was going to pick the highest offer. It had a water feature in the yard with THREE water falls, a chef's kitchen and FOUR skylights in the master bedroom. Sigh. But anyway...I could solidly guarantee that we weren't going to be the top bidder and so I walked away without looking back. We walked through a gorgeous restored Victorian that was most-certainly haunted. I felt like someone was walking right behind me the whole time we were there. Creepy only begins to describe it. One house didn't have a kitchen. Oh, it had a room with a sink, stove and fridge, but it was not a kitchen. There was even a note from the seller taped to the wall that "explained" that kitchens in houses of this period were purposely void of counters so that there would be room for large pieces of furniture. Um, what?? Then there were a series of places that were great EXCEPT. One was great EXCEPT one of the bedrooms was so small that I'm confident it was just a walk-in closet. One was great EXCEPT the lot had been divided and another house was going to go in about four feet from the edge of "my" house. And yet another was great EXCEPT I saw real live termites all around one of the windows in the basement.

Only one house stood out. I feel I should stop here and remind you (and maybe me) that I'm NOT getting attached to any houses on this venture. I'm a lean, mean house-buying machine with a cold, cold heart. That said, back to this house...  It's effing adorable: hardwoods throughout, huge living room with fireplace, library, formal dining room, kitchen with breakfast nook, closed-in sun porch, 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, finished basement, landscaped yard, garage...what else? Just a lot of serious, serious charm. There's another house that we really like from a previous outing, too, so I arranged to take Dude and the girls to both places this evening to see them back-to-back. 

You can tell where this is heading, right? Dude found a lot of problems with my little charmer. SO it may need a new windows (because the current ones are all painted shut and don't have screens) and potentially a new roof - what's the big deal? It's CUTE, people. And it has awesome details in the woodworking throughout. Then we went to the other place and I just didn't love it as much after spending time in the charmer, but Dude was relieved to see that it didn't really need any work whatsoever and advocated putting in an offer on that one. I just couldn't get excited about it (even though I had been three days earlier).

So now what? Well, our realtor is going to call both selling realtors and try to get a feel for how far down they are willing to come in price. If the charmer's seller is truly "highly motivated," then maybe they'll come down far enough for it to be worth it to us/Dude. Or maybe the other seller will come down so much that I start to see that house through beer goggles again. OR, maybe we'll need to keep looking. This IS the land of bungalow-plenty, after all. I will keep you posted.