Our House Search

We weren't saying a whole lot to anyone about our possible move to San Antonio yet, because it's not official. But enough people are hearing things through the grapevine that I figured I'd better put it all out there, straight from the horse's mouth (or at least from the horse's wife's mouth lol). Eric is interviewing for a job here on Friday. He is pretty sure he is going to get it. He's been talking to the people who are doing the hiring, and they are the ones who told him about the job - he's basically been hand picked for it. BUT, he still has to interview and do salary negotiations etc. before we can call it official. If he happens to not get THIS job, there are 2 or 3 other contractors that are interested in him. So the chances of us moving here sometime in the next few months is VERY good. It's bittersweet for me. While it will be great for him to make this move in his career, making more money, and we could move to a bigger house... I'm still not happy about moving away from our families. He's convinced he can talk most of them into moving out here sometime too lol. We've been looking at houses a little this week to see what there is in our price range and for the size we want. Basically, we know what part of town we want to live in and we know what we're looking for in a house. We would really prefer 4 bedrooms, but something with 2 extra spaces (a formal dining, office, loft etc.) could work. And it definitely has to be bigger than our current house (which won't be hard). We do want a decent sized yard, and if it's on a culdesac, that would be such a bonus. So I thought I'd share pics of a couple of the ones we've looked at. I'm going crazy not being able to post pics from my camera! lol

This is the one that I fell in love with when I saw it online. I just LOVE the look of this house. It's exactly the style I like as far as the exterior goes. And I really liked most of the paint colors inside the house too. As most of you know, Eric is a paint scrooge (pretty much a decorating scrooge altogether). So since I know he isn't going to want to paint when we move, I was excited to see colors I actually liked already there.I just LOVED this kitchen. I love all the white, the windows on the cabinets, and the island. I LOVE the office with the french doors. I know Eric would really love an office. A place to put all our bookshelves, and a place where he could go to quietly study or do work at home. The formal dining would be the kid's play area. And then it has 4 bedrooms. That would mean the girls could still share (because they love sharing a room and would be lost without each other lol), Graham could get his own room, and then we could have a bona fide guestroom.
All of that sound PERFECT, right? Well, there are 2 major hangups. The first is the price. It's listed for more than Eric really wanted to spend. There are a lot of houses in our price range, so it just doesn't make sense to spend much more if we don't have to. The other is that it has rear entry parking. So there is an alley that runs behind the street of houses where the garage is. At first I thought that sounded great. The kids could ride their bikes back there without me having to worry too much (of course they'd still be supervised) and I think the lack of garage is what makes the front of the house look so appealing to me. Well, once we went to the house and checked it out, that back alleyway is NOT a positive. We went in the daylight and it was kind of eery. I definitely wouldn't feel comfortable driving down it alone at night. And then just the position of the house was not great. It's on the first street into the neighborhood. You can see it from the main road. Which means I'd be SUPER paranoid about the kids playing out there at all because of all the traffic. IF the house was a lot cheaper, then those things might be ok... but not for that much more than we want to spend.

Ok so here is the 2nd house I'm going to post about. This is actually a co-worker of Eric's. He just got a job out in California, so they are moving. A big plus to this house is that they are willing to rent it to us until our current house sells, then we could buy it. We really need our house to sell first so that we can use our equity as a down payment. We do have Eric's VA loan however, but we really don't want to use it because while you don't have to have a down payment, the interest rates are MUCH higher. We went and looked at it last night. While there isn't really anything I dislike about it, there wasn't anything about it that I just LOVED either. But I don't think we'll be able to find anything that is 100% perfect. One nice plus is that they have a very nice swingset and playhouse in the backyard that they are leaving with the house. Also, it is literally right across the street from the community clubhouse and pool. And there is a nice sized roped off parking lot that would be perfect for the kids to ride their bikes in. The biggest downfall was that it is only 3 bedrooms, but it does have a formal dining (which we'd make into a playarea), and a loft (which we'd use as a computer/sewing/guest room. I'd really like to have a closed off bedroom for guests, but this would work. The other thing is it's price. It's right at the upper end of what Eric wanted to spend. But the fact that we could rent it (instead of having to rent an apt til our house sells, and moving twice, and storing all our stuff in the meantime) may be enough to make up for that. I really didn't want to settle for a house, so we are still going to be looking at more before we make a decision, of course.