dancerjodi (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dancerjodi) wrote2004-03-17 02:56 pm
dancerjodi) wrote2004-03-17 02:56 pm
Here housey, housey!
To give you an idea of how Brian and I got to where we were last night:
Here's what we're looking at tomorrow. This is a few blocks over from my parent's house, awesome location, seems to be an updated place, and is almost the size of the house we are in now. But, its a condo: condo
Here's one I asked to look at but haven't heard back from our realtor on yet. Less space than the condo. A ranch (I don't like ranches but begger's can't be choosers, you know?). Its also in North Waltham (i.e. not where we're looking to move to): North Waltham Ranch
Here's the one in North Waltham we looked at *last* Thurday. House was decent but weird (lots of rooms, but they were small and had odd 1/2 closets). Yard and back porch were nice though. There was no off-street parking - basically there was an extra wide sidewalk at the bottom of the hill in front of this stone wall that's under the yard and cars park on it - I'm not sure if our 2 vehicles would even fit there (and with the house being empty another neighbor itching for somewhere to park was parked there). And as mentioned, not a location we want: Lakeview House
Here's the tiny one we looked at Sunday (already mentioned here, but in case anyone cared and was interested). Our canopy bed wouldn't fit in the master bedroom due to the angle of the roof. The upstairs bathroom was tiny, and it generally looks like an "old lady house" (there are 3 pix here, see arrows under the house pic, one of the outside, one of the large kitchen, and one of the living room - note the puke green rug, paneling and plastic covering on the furniture - they had a console TV too!). I liked the huge kitchen, huge living room and little porch. It would need a lot of work though: Charles Street House
So basically, the condos are in more supply, in many cases are bigger than the houses, are in better condition and are cheaper. Hrm. I'd really, REALLY love to live on that street.
Here's what we're looking at tomorrow. This is a few blocks over from my parent's house, awesome location, seems to be an updated place, and is almost the size of the house we are in now. But, its a condo: condo
Here's one I asked to look at but haven't heard back from our realtor on yet. Less space than the condo. A ranch (I don't like ranches but begger's can't be choosers, you know?). Its also in North Waltham (i.e. not where we're looking to move to): North Waltham Ranch
Here's the one in North Waltham we looked at *last* Thurday. House was decent but weird (lots of rooms, but they were small and had odd 1/2 closets). Yard and back porch were nice though. There was no off-street parking - basically there was an extra wide sidewalk at the bottom of the hill in front of this stone wall that's under the yard and cars park on it - I'm not sure if our 2 vehicles would even fit there (and with the house being empty another neighbor itching for somewhere to park was parked there). And as mentioned, not a location we want: Lakeview House
Here's the tiny one we looked at Sunday (already mentioned here, but in case anyone cared and was interested). Our canopy bed wouldn't fit in the master bedroom due to the angle of the roof. The upstairs bathroom was tiny, and it generally looks like an "old lady house" (there are 3 pix here, see arrows under the house pic, one of the outside, one of the large kitchen, and one of the living room - note the puke green rug, paneling and plastic covering on the furniture - they had a console TV too!). I liked the huge kitchen, huge living room and little porch. It would need a lot of work though: Charles Street House
So basically, the condos are in more supply, in many cases are bigger than the houses, are in better condition and are cheaper. Hrm. I'd really, REALLY love to live on that street.
no subject
Nope
The lots aren't much bigger than the houses - the only expansion would be up (in the case of ranch we want to go look at). The one on Charles Street isn't the kind of house that we could go up in easily (being a colonial) and there isn't an attic - only a crawl space. Even adding dormers to it would only make the existing rooms larger. In that house finishing a couple of rooms into the basement would be do-able but they'd still be tiny.
All the cool stuff is in South Waltham, so moving away so that there were neat things to walk to would kind of be defeated if we lived near 128/North Waltham. And that's the main reason we want to leave Framingham anyway.
The condo idea is looking more and more of a better idea . . .
no subject
Just make sure you check all the silly little rules from the condo association first. Got caught on that in the condo we rented in Swampscott - you couldn't sneeze without permission from the condo association, which was of course run by a bunch of old white guys.
It's generally better when the condo association is the owners of 2 or 3 condos in one building than 30 or so in a large set of condos, though.
no subject
(have you guys considered doing the 2-family thing?)
Waiting
What we're wondering now is if what we want will even come on the market in our price range. If we wanted to buy a house that was $400k we'd have more options (though the bank thinks we could do that, we don't really agree with them :) ). This happened to us 2 years ago - the same exact thing. We looked at a total of 4 houses in Waltham in 2 months during the busy spring/summer selling season (that's all that was in our price range then). There were only two we were excited about. One ended up having serious structural/sewage issues. The other we put a bid on for $10k over the asking price and we lost the bid since we were only putting 20% down. That house btw didn't even have electricity in some of the rooms it was so outdated.
We're not jumping at the first thing, but are starting to wonder if what we want just isn't out there.
"(have you guys considered doing the 2-family thing?)"
I've thought about it. It would be a better financial investment definitely. To be comfortable with it I'd want to be able to pay the mortgage on our own and not have to rely on the rental income for it (and we're nowhere near that position now). My dad owns some real estate in NH and some of the things he's had to deal with - right now we don't have the time or resources to handle.
Now if we bought one condo and someone we knew bought the other side - *that* would be cool (it would be like Shaghaus all over again)!
Re: Waiting
Re: Waiting
my guess is that because of the skyrocketing values, if someone can't make mortgage they just sell and take the $$$ profit
Re: Waiting
I'm not sure where to get all this info - I know that they list some on isoldmyhouse.com and I found a few other sites that list the info too (town, address and price). I've checked these from time to time (as well as the private regular sales on isoldmyhosue.com). To get more detailed information on houses from any of these sites one has to pay some kind of membership fee. I've heard before too of services where you pay so much a month and get updated on any foreclosures.
Its funny - we went through this process before but doing it while also having a property to sell is a whole different animal in some ways. I'm really learning a lot. At the basic level though, we know we're not happy in Framingham and we just need to take the risk and sell. After that, we need to hope something good comes up and if not - well, we'll figure something else out. Its always an adventure!
i know...not waltham. ;p
Re: Waiting
no subject