House Hunting

When Chris and I decided to sell the house back in November, we contacted our realtor and made a plan.  After staging, our realtor wanted us to look at a few homes before we put our house on the market just to be sure that we felt confident that we could find what we were looking for in our price range.

So Chris and I came up with a flexible list of priorities:

1. 4 bedrooms and at least 2.5 baths (otherwise there was no point in moving, really)
2. Location
3. Two-car garage
4. No more than 10 minutes to our gym
5. Private back yard (I can't stand neighborhoods where you can see into everyone's backyards)
6. No more than a 20 minute commute to work for both of us
7. A yard where we could have chickens (obviously, not a make or break deal, but a huge plus)
8. A house with character (ie no new construction)

With a list like that, I'm surprised our realtor didn't want to kill us.

In early January, we started house hunting, looking at 9 houses the first day.  While we didn't find the house of our dreams that day, we felt confident that we could find the house of our dreams within our price range and that was really the whole point of that expedition, so we were on our way!  We put our house on the market and got down to the business of house hunting for serious, especially since our house didn't take long to sell (panic!).

Fast forward several weeks, two snow storms, and 25 more houses (no joke), our realtor sent us the link to a house that looked like it would fit the bill so we took a look.  As soon as we walked in, we felt at home.  Very quickly the 2 car garage was no longer a priority; the house had everything else we wanted.  We made an offer; they countered and we eventually made a deal.

We've been here about a month and a half now and while we're still settling in, we couldn't be happier.  This is just the place we were looking for and I can't wait to get to making it our home.