House Hunting

House Hunting

Ah, that time honored tradition of looking for a new home. That is what my wife, Julie, and I are doing now. We purchased our current home back in 1999, and while it still works for us, the neighborhood does not. When we first moved in, it was a pretty nice place. There were a few kids that, as far as I could tell, had no one at home with any parenting skills to speak of, but other than that, it was decent.

Most of our neighbors owned their homes, which is important. When people own their own home, they take care of it. They respect their investment. When people rent, they don’t care much about the house they live in other than keeping it just good enough to get their deposit back when they move out within a year or two. Yeah, yeah, I know, some of you are renters and keep good care of your home. But there is always that little part of you that, when something breaks, you think “Glad I don’t own this house.”

So now, five years later, more and more people are becoming renters on our street. And it shows. While the overall look to the neighborhood has not (yet) declined, you can kinda see it coming in the way lawns go a little longer between mowing. There are more yards with weeds now, rather than the lawns that get a yearly dose of weed killer. The cars people drive look shabbier. Overall, things are on the downturn.

The house right next to ours has been a rental from the day we moved in. The first couple that lived there was nice enough, kept to themselves, and said hi when we saw them. The next couple was also nice, although the man of the house kept asking to borrow my tools, rakes, shovels, and so forth. He even asked to borrow my lawn mower once. But he was still a nice guy, and we were sorry to see them move.

The people moving in now? Single mother with a bunch of teenagers. They have not even moved in yet, but I can tell when they are over there as they make so much damn noise. They don’t talk to each other, they yell.

So we are looking for a new home. This time, we want something out in the country. Not sure if that means the same to you as it does here in West Michigan, so let me explain. The house we looked at today was atop a small hill. The nearest house is about an eighth of a mile away on the same side of the street. The house across the street is down a little way, not far, but because of all the trees, we can’t see it. It is rural, at least for Michigan. When we were there today waiting on the realtor, all I could hear were wildlife. There were rabbits in the yard when we pulled up. Behind the house is all forest. And the house sits a little ways from the road. All in all, a peaceful, quiet place to live. Just what we are looking for.

Of course, there are some drawbacks. No high-speed Internet access being a major one. But I will live. May have to look into a satellite high-speed connection.

The house is also about the same size as our current one, just laid out very differently. That is a problem, as we are about bursting at the seams in this house. But the new house would afford us the opportunity to actually expand, with an addition. Not cheap, but that is not an option in our current home.

We have two more houses we are looking at Friday. Both are out in the country as well. One has about the same amount of living space as our current home, but sits on five acres with a three outbuildings, including one huge barn. Nice! The other is a larger house, with two out buildings (no barn) and has a perfect square of ten acres. It was also built in 1854, so we just missed its 150-year birthday.

None of this matters, of course, if we cannot get the financing we need. (Any lenders reading this blog? Email me!) We are in a pickle in that we don’t know what we are going to do with our current house. Rent it or sell it? I understand the benefits of both. Selling it, and I will probably break even. Renting it, and I run the risk of crappy tenants and having to fix things all the time. (I am very handy, and about the only thing I could not fix myself would be the roof.)

The search continues!