A Harrowing House Hunting Experience

Last Saturday we went house hunting, meeting our agent at four different locations in our quest to find just the right home to buy. This house hunting excursion turned out to be quite the exciting time.

We went to the first house and the first thing I saw when we walked in was a huge - and I mean HUGE - black spider on the very cluttered kitchen counter. It was at least 3" across and stood up from the counter. I stopped dead in my tracks, pointed to the spider and said to my husband, "I can't go in there." He went up to the spider, determined that it was plastic and assured me he would not tease me with it, so I felt safe.

Whew.

The kitchen was not the only thing cluttered in that house. The entire house was a complete mess. There were groceries, guitars, lots of clothing and a set of drums in the living room. The coffee table could not be seen for the clutter covering it. Each bedroom and bathroom was the same way. It was very hard to look at the house with that much clutter all around. It took us a while to assess whether or not the house would work for us.

The second house was the most adventurous of all the houses we saw. Whoever lives there was home. Whether it was the owner or tenants, I'm not sure, but a woman holding two very large onions greeted us at the door. She proceeded to "show" us through the house, balancing those big onions in her hands as she used those hands to point to different rooms, etc. At one point she dropped one onion, but it was too crowded for me to help her pick it up, so she had to bend over in front of my son and me to pick up her wayward onion.

Each bedroom was very cluttered, dirty and clearly unkempt. And the bananas. One bedroom was literally half full of nearly overripe bananas. They were everywhere, lying in their bunches, right in the bedroom. And the smell.....oh, my.

When we got to the kitchen, I tripped on what I thought was a rug and nearly fell down. It was not a rug, but rather a huge bump in the middle of the kitchen floor. It was about 3" high and had cracked through the linoleum. More than an eyesore, it showed something was terribly wrong with that floor. Also, there was a very large woman holding a 10" knife. She was cooking something in the kitchen, as well as outside, and proceeded to "show" us different features of the kitchen and attached sun room with the knife as a pointing stick. More than once, I thought she was going to accidentally slice into me with that knife. When a very large person wields a knife as a pointing stick to a small person, it's usually the small person who ends up getting hurt.

I was relieved when we left.

Whew.

House #3 had no knife-wielding cooks or things bumping up the kitchen floor, but had an odor that made us all hold our noses while we were inside, including our agent. There was no power on in the house, so we couldn't see all the space, especially the basement. The filled refrigerator and chest freezer made us all very eager to leave. Yes, filled...with no power on in the house.

Whew.

When we got in the car to go to house #4, I told my husband that I was shocked that agents allow their clients to have homes in those conditions and hope to sell. Our agent was embarrassed, not because these were his listings, they weren't, but because he would never want to show houses in these conditions and other agents had allowed him to walk into it. I felt discouraged because housing around here is pricey and I was appalled with the thought that this might be the best we get for this kind of money.

Ugh.

Then we went to house #4 and immediately fell in love with it. It's in pristine condition, has very large rooms, 7 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a huge back yard and a good, central location to where we need to be.

We put in our offer.
So did someone else.
It's bank-owned, so the bank invited us all to put in our "best" offer by noon today.
We did that, along with a letter I wrote explaining why this house would be so great for us. I pulled at the heart strings of Fannie Mae.
Now we wait.

Whew.

~Tricia