The Hunt Begins!

Well, I've finally heard from my realtor and with any luck tomorrow will be my first day of house-hunting! Yippeee!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm really, really trying not to get too excited - I still live in a rather pricey area and I've only been approved for a relatively low home loan. So, there aren't really that many houses in my price range available right now, but my realtor assures me that as the effects of the stimulus package and its magic home-buying incentives kick in, more and more owners will be putting their houses up for sale. So, tomorrow is more of a reconnaissance mission than an actual shopping trip. I'll get to see several places that are below my maximum price, several that are above it and several that are significantly above it but might be very negotiable because they've been on the market for so long. It should give me an idea of what to expect. I get the impression that my realtor, Suzy, is concerned that as a first-time homebuyer I may be expecting way too much for my money. She's probably run in to that before. So, I'm anticipating that she's going to try to shock me with some real eye-sores in my price range tomorrow. However, I don't think I'm expecting too much - in fact, my mother (who might be the world's most conservative money-spender) keeps telling me that I need to think bigger about what I want. So unless Suzy shows me a house that's missing its roof and has a toilet installed in the middle of the kitchen, I don't think I'll be all that shocked. We'll see!

I have the sneaking suspicion that this blog is very quickly going to go from random stories about my daily life to all real estate, all the time. So, in an effort to embrace my new obsession, I've decided to start posting photos of the houses that I'm focused on. Today's selection seen above is a cute 1940's bungalow that is of a style very common in my current neighborhood (in fact, its in my current neighborhood). Its one of the houses that I'm supposed to see tomorrow, and its in the category of "over my budget, but possibly negotiable". It actually needs very little work, and recently had a few renovations done to it, but for some reason its been sitting on the market for going on 7 months now, so I feel there must be something wrong with it!