House Hunting Sucks

House hunting stinks. What's worse is house hunting when you have a finite time in which to find a suitable home. After a day of stressful traveling... You know how this goes... lay over in Atlanta which forces you to run from one end of the airport to the other so you can get your connection on time - then landing in Tampa only to find that a previous storm that caused planes to delay and/or circle were now taking up all of the gates. To conserve fuel the pilot requested that vents be open and window shades closed while the plane was turned off to conserve fuel. This is akin to hoping that your a/c keeps your car cool for a half hour in the blazing hot summer sun. I was feeling a bit trapped to begin with, shutting the windows only made this worse. And while I usually don't get motion sick, when I'm "warm" while in motion I get quite queasy. Enter the stop and start circular taxiing that felt as if it was being done just for fun. Meanwhile mom was waiting for me as she drove around the airport multiple times - we had planned to look at two houses on the way home from the airport (being that they're on the way and all) and we had folks waiting for us.

The first house was on a lake, which is pretty darn cool, but it was an older home and they were asking way too much for it. The second was in what I would consider a boating community. I don't have, nor do I ever intend on having a boat, but it was still a neat area. The only problem with this home is that the property manager lives right across the street. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not planning on having any big orgies or anything, but I just don't like the idea that I'm being "watched" you know? So two no goes right off the bat.

Today was a wonderful set of events. First mom decided to accidentally take two of her heart pills. We called her doc and they said that she should be okay but that we need to monitor her heart rate to make sure it doesn't go too low. (Meanwhile we're supposed to be meeting a real estate agent to take us to some houses in New Port Richey - Mom calls and says we're "running late because she accidentally took too may pills". We're pretty sure this gave a wonderful first impression!) After ensuring that it was okay for mom to be out and about (and taking her portable blood pressure cuff with us) we head on over.

Now, my initial impression that the housing market being horrible, and the high cost of homes down here in Florida would allow me a lot more rentals to choose from (Folks who can't afford their homes getting into cheaper homes and renting out the ones they can't afford kind of thing - or folks forced to rent out their homes because no one can get a damned loan to buy their homes). Unfortunately the only ones making any money off this horrible market are the jerks that already have too much money than any one person should and are buying up all the homes dirt cheap and banking in a few years, when/if the market improves, they'll be making a huge profit.

Out of the, oh, say 20 houses on my list, there were only 5 that had not already rented. Again, folks are having a hard time getting loans so there are a lot more renters out there. To say that I was frustrated would be an understatement. Add to this the fact that 4 out of the 5 houses were quite Stepford, and at least two of them I felt as if I could stick my hand out the bathroom window and have my neighbor pass me some toilet paper. Another had neighbors in an almost cul-du-sac back yard as if we'd all want to hang out and bar-b-que together. The third was a bit better but that the back yard was right on a main road. Trees attempted to obscure the view but did little to block the sound. Both front and back yards were almost non-existent.

So, wouldn't it figure that the first house I looked at today wound up being the one I like the most. (But that didn't stop us from driving through every neighborhood from New Port Richey to Clearwater to look around). After a tiring day I have chosen my next residence... I'll give a description:

A nice large yard - with a huge patch of trees as neighbors to the rear, a beautiful large grapefruit tree in the center of the backyard and a weird looking wooden jungle gym thing in the right/center that is just BEGGING me to break my but on. The back is all fenced in with chain link fence which i usually don't like but I realized that what I usually don't like about chain link is it's sort of cold industrial feeling and this then tends to be a focal point in a yard. But because of the large number of trees taking most of the focus, the fence is actually pretty nifty. The front yard has two very large oak trees and a medium sized pineapple palm all of which sheds quite a bit of shade on the home (which should greatly assist in the a/c bills). The neighbors are a decent distance away on either side. The place has all new carpet which is cool, but the kitchen has those dark wood cabinets with the lines in them - kind of reminding of paneling with those large black door pulls on them. You know, quiet 70s, so I'm feeling very retro at this point. The kitchen does have wood laminate flooring which is actually very pretty. And what I found really cool? There is a hand mixer hanging on the wall - like some sort of "charging hand mixer thing". Now it's a rare occasion that I USE a hand mixer, but it's still neat! (Again very retro). There are no walk in closets so it's a good thing I got rid of a bunch of clothing, but all of the closets have neat built in shelving. There are three bedrooms (one going to be my office of course) and two bathrooms - both of which have patterns in the tile (one a star and another something I can't quite describe, both very cool looking). The house was built in 1981 so you can get an understanding of what we're dealing with here.

So the morale of the story? I could have chosen a "beautiful" house inside with no yard and became entrenched in the goings on of everyone in the 'hood, or I could get the retro 80's house with the kick butt yard. I chose the yard. And I think my search is done... :)