Texas Lou

Ok, for those of you who don’t speak computer language operators (***nerd alert***), the title of this post translates to “House Hunting is not equal to House Shopping”.

My number 1 project and obsession that has taken over the wedding planning that not too long ago governed my time and thoughts is searching for a house.  Currently, Ben, our two cats, all of our weddings gifts, and I live in a tiny little one bedroom, one bathroom condo on the fourth floor that Ben bought 4 years ago.  Most of my furniture is temporarily living in a storage unit on the east side of Charlottesville and has been for over 2 years now.  Needless to say, we are passed the point of being out of room and have been for a while so we began our search for that elusive “perfect house” a couple of months before the wedding (I know we’re crazy).

For some reason, I envisioned finding our future house as an easy and fun task.  That most likely is due to the memories I have of house hunting with my parents as an adolescent.  I remember my parents would put us in the car on a Sunday afternoon, we would drive around looking for open houses, and when we found one, my sister, brother, and I would scramble through the open house or model home picking out our new rooms!  What’s not fun about that, right?  Well now that I’m an adult, I realize that finding a house that you will most likely be living in for the next ten years or more (especially with the housing market in its current condition) is alot more complicated than just picking your own room.  It certainly shouldn’t be considered shopping because shopping is supposed to be fun (unless your a teenage girl and 30 pounds overweight, but that’s a story for another day).

Ben and I have been hunting for this perfect house since May.  Every now and then, we think we may have found “the one” and get our hopes up, but then it turns out to be too expensive, too old, has too high of an HOA, has no closet space, has a tiny kitchen, is in a county with poorly rated schools, is too far away from our family, friends, and jobs, or just plain doesn’t look the same as it did in the pictures.  There are so many aspects to consider when buying a house and the decision is made even more stressful by the fact that a huge risk is being taken on our part to sign our lives away for a mortgage.  It also doesn’t help that Ben and I are both very picky and don’t like to make BIG decisions.  We have a really awesome realtor and sometimes I wonder if she goes back to her realtor friends after looking at houses with us and vents about how crazy we are because she’s shown us sooooo many houses and we’ve only found 1 that we were willing to make an offer on, but someone beat us to it.  I wouldn’t blame her if she thought we were the craziest and pickiest househunters in the world!

I keep reminding Ben that we just need to be patient and that somebody our house hunt will end with us finding that perfect place.  I know it will eventually happen, but in the meantime we are packed in like sardines at the condo and both obsessively checking the new real estate listings in the area every day.  I guess if I have to be cooped up in a tiny apartment, there’s no one else I’d rather be with than Ben.

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