House Hunting

We have never owned a house. That's one of the by-products of living overseas for 13 years in a state of flux. The most expensive thing we have ever purchased was our car in Singapore. That actually felt much more daunting than this, maybe because buying a car in Singapore meant swallowing the fact that we were paying probably twice what the car was worth, while most of the houses in Orlando are selling for about half of their previous price. It is, indeed, a good time to be a buyer in Orlando.

Yesterday, we saw 11 houses. A few of them were easy to write off the list. One of them, as we drove through the neighborhood to get there, I realized I didn't even need to view (we did anyway. It had a nice kitchen). Of the 11, four of them have potential, but none of them are a no-brainer.

One of the last houses, nicely situated 7 minutes from Erik's new job in a beautiful, "Was this built by Disney? Do they colorize stuff down here or is it actually this green?" kind of neighborhood, seemed ideal. Bank-owned, which normally could mean, "Be prepared to witness something akin to a prison riot scene," it was beautiful, huge, well-kept. There were only 2 downsides-no "nature view" for my outdoor needing husband, and no downstairs full bath.

I know, I know, we're spoiled right? There's a bedroom downstairs, but no full bathroom. So what this says to the many guests we anticipate is, "Sorry, friends, no shower for you, unless you don't mind walking through our house to the upstairs bathroom you get to share with our kids who will soon be teenagers and I've heard teenagers spend a lot of time in there."

But such seems to be the case with each of these houses. There's just one thing about them (wrong location, no yard, odd layout, etc) that keeps us from jumping on them.

It's possible that the bathroom could be converted into a full bath, if we take out the closet and put in a rather small shower stall. But we're sitting here wondering, "Should we just go for it? Or do we wait for something better to come along?"