Houses

Ryan, Tammy and I went out last Saturday to look at houses with a realtor. Sadly, I think the one I posted before has been sold. :( But that's okay. It might take time to find the right one. We looked at about 5 houses. Probably only 1 or 2 of them were ones to think about.

This is one of them:

We like it and the price is right within our range but it's only a 2 bedroom and we prefer a 3 bedroom. It also just seemed sooo teeny all together. We would be downgrading in size for sure. We liked the size of the back yard - not too small, not too big. But, it just doesn't make sense for us to move somewhere much smaller for more $ even if it means we own it.

There isn't a ton of selection out there for our price range so I'm having trouble finding good stuff in Chico. It seems like everything I find online either is already in escrow or already has an offer on it OR it's a "short sale" which we're trying to avoid for various reasons.

Here is another one in Chico that I'm interested in seeing. It's a little bit out of our price range, though, so we'd have to just watch it for a while and see if it goes down. We'd also have to offer less than the asking price even if it goes down a little bit. It's about 20 thousand higher than the top end of our price range. But, you never know! :) (It's been on the market for almost a month. No price change so far).

We decided to look online at houses in Paradise, just to see the prices and selection. As far as we can tell from pictures, there are some houses in Paradise that are similar to or better than the houses we've looked at in Chico, and they are a good 20 - 50 thousand dollars cheaper! We prefer not to live in Paradise - we LOVE Chico, we work in Chico, and Chico is much more convenient than Paradise, but with house prices that cheap we at LEAST have to look. It wouldn't kill me to be closer to the two cutest boys in the whole wide world (James and Joey) :) We have to keep in mind that despite the price difference, we might be making up for that in lost TIME with our work "commute" every day AND another 200-ish in gas money each month, too. So we just have to see. We have an appointment on Sunday to look at a couple of houses in Paradise. If there are any that we like and we decide that we can put up with the inconveniences of living in Paradise, my guess is that we'll make an offer lower than the asking price and just see what happens. Then if we don't get it then I guess it wasn't meant to be! Right?

Here are two of the three that we'll be seeing on Sunday...

This one is a little bit higher in price than the other two we're going to see, but still well within our price range. It says it's a 2 bedroom but but that there's a den that could serve as a 3rd bedroom. I guess we'll have to see it. Me likey that kitchen. Again, downsides and upsides to all of the ones we find:

This one is totally within our price range. 3 bed 2 bath. Perfect little back yard:

Tammy will hate us if we do move to Paradise! She will call us "The Others" like on Lost. We much prefer Chico for a number of reasons but, we can't just ignore the good prices. So we'll see. Right now we're just praying for direction and for the right house for us at the right time and the right price! We're excited, but it's time consuming and it also consumes my BRAIN! I go to bed thinking about houses and prices. I sit on the computer for hours looking for houses. It's crazy! But we're excited. :)