House Hunting Week 2: The Home Feeling

Note:  This was written on Saturday evening, so there may have been new developments since then, but maybe not...

We've brought our "viewed house" count up to 22 houses by now (probably more by the time this posts).  I think we've both learned a lot by now, and we're ready to make an offer if the right house comes along.  Having seen this many houses in all sorts of neighbourhoods and within our price range, we've got a pretty clear idea of what works for us and what we can generally expect to see.

Along this road it's possible that we let a couple of good houses slip away, but I'm sure more good ones will come along.  They're most likely not going to be houses that have been sitting on the market for any length of time so probably the plan of action will be me getting a call from our realtor as soon as the house is listed, going to see it, and then making an offer - hopefully conditional on Brahm getting to see it when he gets home from work.

In House Hunting Week 1 I did a lot of looking on my own while Brahm was at work, but I'm glad we got to see a bunch more houses together this week because I'm getting a better idea of the things that might be deal breakers for him but not for me so I'll have to keep those in mind.

I'm feeling like this will be okay though because we've seen a couple houses (together) that we both really liked but didn't buy (one was possibly already sold when we looked at it, the other turned out to not have enough natural light), but there was a distinct feeling we got in those houses.  We wanted to hang out in them.  One of those houses had an amazing kitchen where we just sat around the island for a while, imagining cooking in it.  The other I wanted to sit on the deck and hang out in the yard, and Brahm wanted to hang his guitars on the basement wall.  They felt like they could be our house, rather than someone else's house that we were just looking at. 

Because these were only the second and third houses we looked at and had various downsides to them, it's good that we didn't buy either of them because at that point we still were working out the kinks and getting an idea of what we wanted and needed in a house.  But now having seen 22 houses, and knowing that the "home" feeling does exist (and WAS real when we felt it about those houses, being total property virgins) we know the combination to look for is having all of the criteria we want and not wanting to leave!