The housing search from you know where

House 1:
First serious contender: 1970's ranch in a nice Plano neighborhood. It was the perfect size for us and a steal! Downside? Nothing had been updated since it was built. Nothing.

It still had the original yellowy-orange shag carpet that looked like it had been skinned off of a Muppet (Zach was very impressed, he kept petting it and saying, "Kitty!"; doesn't Brad have fantastic legs?!?):

Awesome wall paper (I wish I had taken a photo of the "fuzzy" wallpaper to show you):

I had envisioned us redoing all the cosmetic work ourselves and making it ours. I had visions of grandeur: a nice play room for the kids, a luxurious master bath and a kitchen that would have looked similar to this-

So, we had our Realtor draw up a contract for us and arranged a second walk-through. As we looked closer at the ceiling of a secondary bedroom, Brad noticed what appeared to be dirt. During our initial viewing, we chalked it up to neglect. As he pushed on the dirt, the wall began to crumble. One entire side of the house had massive termite damage. Three bedrooms, their closets and two bathrooms would have to been gutted all the way down to the studs in order to make the house livable. Yeah, no thanks.

House 2:
This house was a great house in an amazing Plano neighborhood. It was a bank foreclosure and needed a cosmetic makeover: paint, fixtures, flooring and the like. We told our agent we'd like to put an offer in on it and then we waited. And waited. And waited.... The listing agent didn't return his calls because they had already accepted an offer and executed it before we even walked through it.

At this point, we decided to look a little further out in the country and found Wylie.

House 3:
This house was built in the 1980's and sat on over 2 acres. A four bedroom house on acreage that close to Dallas in our price range? Where do we sign?!?

Brad grew up in a house that had a ravine in the backyard and said he'd like the same. Guess what was about a quarter of a mile from the house? A creek.

The back yard was AMAZING. Room for a pool, a barn, a workshop, an ATV track- whatever we wanted!

The inside? Not so amazing. Well, except for the laundry room- it was huge! Not as big as the one we had in Illinois, but still it could have doubled as a laundry/scrapbooking room. (Just think of all the laundry I could have accomplished!) It was very apparent that a not-so-skilled do-it-yourself-er was trying to flip this house. (Note to all potential flippers: Don't do it unless you are going to spend the money to do it right the first time. Or unless you are a master craftsman, professional tile layer or electrician without singed eyebrows. Just don't do it! Buyers can tell.)

Brad noticed that the bathroom floor looked a little... crooked.

We needed to leave for the day but had already discussed walking through it again before we signed an offer on it. The next week, we headed back out there giddy with anticipation of submitting an offer on “the one.”

As we walked up the driveway, we noticed a rather large snake skin. Ugh. I know this was the country but right on the driveway? :shudder:

This was the critical walk-through. We had seen how great the lot was. We had visions of how we could rework the house into what we wanted. But this is where you're looking for the warts. And we found them.

Brad went to inspect the foundation with our Realtor, so I sat with the kids on the floor. As I looked into the kitchen cabinets, I noticed that the floor was slanted. I hoped that it was just the trim that was crooked. It wasn't. The entire foundation of the house was messed up and there was no way we were going to buy a house for that much money and have slanted floors.

(And as of today, the house is still active on the MLS.)

House 4:
House four was two doors down from house number three (with the same lot size, built the same year). And there was also something else on the driveway that freaked me out: several .44 casings. Ai yi yi!

I know this was the country, but... Casings from a .35 would have been less surprising but the .44s really worried me.

The kitchen had been totally remodeled and was beautiful. However the owners had converted the dining room into a bedroom and the total square footage was too small for us.

House 5:
Oh house five. House five was wonderful: fantastic lot, awesome kitchen and family room, two walk-in closets in the master suite, all the kids rooms were in the same hallway, great potential for a workshop for Brad. We weren't crazy about the neighborhood, but the house more than made up for it.

It was overpriced by about $10K (per our Realtor) when we made our offer. We offered $17K less than asking just to see where that got us. They countered back for $2K less than the asking price. We decided to walk because while we were waiting on their response we saw house number six. (That last sentence is an important part later in this story.)

House 6:
It was on Lincoln Avenue (Brad is from the land of Lincoln), and was very pretty. This house was a two story, 3000+ square foot home with a nice big backyard, complete with pool! We originally hadn't considered homes with pools because they took up the majority of the yards, but we could have easily fit four more pools into this back yard.

We liked the house and made a full-price offer. Then we got a notice that there was another full-price offer on it's way in to the listing agent. We sat down and reworked our offer to OVER asking price. The owner turned it down because the other buyer could close in two weeks and we were looking at five weeks.

Just writing this out is tiring. Can you imagine living it?

House 7:
House number seven is a two year old foreclosure that was priced $50K less than it would cost to build new. It has a smallish backyard but that is really the only drawback to the house. The kitchen and family room are fantastic and so is the master bathroom. There is plenty of room to play and a bedroom for each kid-nirvana! The neighborhood is everything we had hoped for: community pool, walking trails, a fishing pond with a fountain, and close to a neighboring lake.

We saw this house two days before all of the offers were to be presented at the bank. Our Realtor learned that there were two offers at asking price, but none over. We made an offer that was substantially over asking with no contingencies.

We were told to wait. And so we did. (Our offer was presented the first week of November.)

Occasional updates would come from the bank: “You're the only ones being considered for this house. Just a bit longer.” This went on for over two months. Our lease on the townhome was up at the end of January and we just couldn't wait any longer, and asked that our offer for the house be removed.

Brad and I talked it over, and decided to put in another, competitive offer in on house number five. At this point (mid-January) the asking price was the same as what they countered back originally. Our offer was $3K less than asking. $3K! The owner again said no dice- they were holding out for a full price offer. Oh but wait! We could rent it, the woman offered. :insert a huge eye-roll here: They let go a no-contingency offer only three thousand dollars less than their asking price in this slow market on a house that is sitting empty. (Note: Our first house was a wonderful house but we over-paid for it and yes, we could have come up another three grand, but we didn't want to be in the same situation as we were before.)

So... there we were: no house and our lease running out in a little over three weeks.

Then, our Realtor called Brad. The bank heard why we were withdrawing our offer on house number seven, and offered us a lease-to-buy option until they can finish up the required foreclosure paperwork. We will iron out the details next week but it looks as if it's a go!

:huge sigh of relief:

Photos will be forth coming!