Last year in April we started looking for a new place to live. It was a very fun adventure starting out: watching hours of House Hunters, forming an extensive wishlist, driving through cute neighborhoods I loved, browsing the real estate postings daily and seeing gorgeous houses posted online, dreaming of how they could be decorated to fit our personalities.
Eventually I got serious about it. I wasn't discouraged when I reminded myself that our budget was not unlimited. It was even easy to trim my wishlist down to an "essentials" list:
- Close to Orem/Provo area, but not too close to BYU campus
- In our price range, including HOA costs
- 3 Bedrooms, 2 Bathrooms
- Somewhere to park 2 cars (preferably but not necessarily a garage
- Very low maintenance, probably like a townhouse...
However, after looking at several locations, I came to realize what a
difficult process it can be, even just in the searching phase! Here are some examples of our search:
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| Picture from utahrealestate.com |
Pros: This PG townhouse complex is very close to the freeway, my best girl from childhood lived there, a 2-car garage, it would be brand new (including the chance for us to pick paint colors, upgrades, etc.).
Cons: Only middle units were available with no side-window lighting inside, the backyard is a nature-preserve sort of swamp area that I'm sure would be full of mosquitoes every summer, "brand-new" and upgrades are crazy expensive, PG does that compost-turn twice a month which makes the whole town stink for 3 days every time, the HOA fee was kind of high, and PG is not really close to where we were working in Orem and South Provo.
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| Picture from zillow.com |
Pros: Not brand-new but still fairly new and quite pretty in a fancy-type neighborhood, has its own yard, was an end-unit with natural light (each block like this has 3 units in it, and we looked at a side unit).
Cons: Still a little pricey, still in stinky and far-away PG, HOA too high for our tastes (especially if we have to take care of a yard still!), 1-car garage only.
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| Picture from maps.google.com |
Pros: Close to the Coopers' houses and other places we actually go, passable exterior condition.
Cons: TERRIBLE interior condition with unlicensed remodeling in the basement (I wish I could show you the scary "kitchenette" that was created in a tiny corner behind the stairs), no English-speaking neighbors in sight, high price and HOA, only one covered parking spot.
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| Picture from maps.google.com |
Pros: Also close to Coopers' houses and a couple other places we actually go, acceptable-sized fenced yard space, nice exterior look.
Cons: Poor interior condition, furnace in the 3rd "bedroom" closet (which actually disqualified it from counting as a bedroom), only one covered parking spot, 3 levels of a very small house (way too many steep stairs!).
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| Picture from maps.google.com |
Pros: Also close to Coopers' houses and other place we go, a really nice exterior look, close to the freeway, large 2-car garage.
Cons: Cramped neighborhood with the tiniest streets, lots of unusable/useless inside space especially in the upstairs level, one window-less "bedroom" (it had two doors instead, so someone thought it counted?), tiny kitchen and main floor livingroom, awkward basement, WAY too expensive for the weird floor plan and this view on all sides:
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| Picture from maps.google.com |
While we looked at several of these poor choices, we had actually submitted an offer on this GORGEOUS townhouse and were really hoping that it would work out!:
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| Picture from maps.google.com - pretend that image seam isn't really there. |
Pros: End-unit Orem townhouse giving us less neighbor-wall noise and more natural light, great interior and exterior condition, small fenced yard with a gate to the neighborhood pavilion and mailboxes and visitor parking spots, 2 parking spots (one covered, one mostly-covered) directly in front of the unit, very close to Walmart and the freeway, very usable space, large attic storage area, great-sized rooms for this kind of townhouse! And it was listed at an AWESOME price because it was in short-sale but the listed price had already been approved by the lien-holder I
really liked this place so much!
Cons: Slightly close to the railroad (but I could deal with that!). Oh, and the slight detail that the people who lived there didn't really want to move: the house was apparently in short-sale after a loan modification failed and the selling agent changed the reasons she gave for the sellers not responding quickly to our offer: they're supposedly getting divorced one day, and then later the excuse is that the wife was in a severe accident and can't stay conscious? I realized after our offer expired without acceptance or denial that it was pretty strange that nothing was packed in the whole house. If my beautiful house were for sale at an awesome deal in a busy buying market, I would at least pack up my attic storage quickly.
I really did cry a tiny bit when we weren't able to buy the first
place we offered on and the whole search quickly became exhausting after this, but after another month of searching, we found a
way better place that was twice as big. And it's ours now!
Here's a little glimpse from before it became ours:
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| Pictures from the real estate listing, either from zillow.com or utahrealestate.com, I can't remember which. |
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| The over-bar cabinets remind me of my grandparents' house, especially with the previous owner's retro furnishings still there. I thought it was really very endearing and charming. The carpet in the bathrooms also reminded me of my grandparents' house, but that had to be gone.... Fast. |
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| Basement family room. |
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| Unfinished storage area of the basement. |
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| Our little half-fenced patio and the shared lawn that we NEVER have to mow. |
So far I LOVE this place and I'm so happy with how things worked out in the end of our house hunt. We're slowly making it our own with tiny updates and decorations, but it is certainly our Home, Sweet Home!
