House Hunting

We just got back from a lovely week in New Hampshire. It was a whirlwind of looking at houses. It was very much a learning experience for our first time in the housing market. The foreclosure scene is really something. The first day we went looking for houses, we saw four of them and they were either already foreclosed upon or in the short sale category. Some of them were so trashed, I couldn't believe it! Luckily, we did see some reasonable prospects. In total, we looked at nine houses while we were away and we have some options. We are considering three different places right now, although all of them have some kinks that need to be worked out before we make an offer.

Our first choice is in the small town of Lyndeborough, NH:
It was built in 1909. It has a lot of wonderful features and looks really great on the inside. It is 3 bedrooms, although the 3rd is a bit small. It has a small front yard and a nice fenced in backyard. We were seriously going to put an offer in on this one, but we got an inspection report from last year that indicates some potential problems with the foundation. We are trying to figure out how bad this might be, and if the seller might be willing to fix anything before we buy. Hopefully we will have more info this week to decide if we want to move ahead.

The second choice on our list is in the town of Weare, NH:
This is a really cool house in that it was built in 1760. Wow, that was before we even declared independence! It has some beautiful post and beam work inside and the seller has done a lot of work to bring it up to date. As you can see it is a bit close to the road, but it has a nice backyard that could be fenced in. The town of Weare seems really nice as well. If the foundation issues on the first house become a major problem, I think we will really pursue this one.

Lastly, we are considering a house in Dunbarton, NH:
This one is in a funky community near a pond and comes with beach rights. It is quite nice, but exceptionally small. It is a two bedroom, but the "master" is so tiny that only a bed can fit nicely and there would be no room for dressers, etc. It still has some nice features, including a beautiful glassed in porch, a two story double garage and a nice lawn. The down side is that it is a short sale, so we would be dealing with the bank to try to buy it and it has a failed leach field which the bank would have to fix and we don't know if they would even consider that. I have heard that the banks drag their feet when presented with offers as well, so I don't know if it is even worth our while.

I tell you, this house buying business is complicated, but we remain excited and optimistic. We are still on the lookout for whatever might pop up in the mean time too.

Other than house hunting, we had a great time in New Hampshire visiting the family. We had a great time celebrating mother's day with everyone. Jonathon and Kate came down from Maine and Jon and Carrie and Libby and Liam were there. Kate is about 30 weeks along in her pregnancy so it was fun to talk about the upcoming babies. We played a cutthroat game of croquet and had a fantastic BBQ.

Sean had to work during the week, so every morning I would get up and take Lily walking with Carrie and Liam and Libby. I worked on my quilt some and Carrie, Libby and I got crafty one day making jewelry out of birch bark. It was really great! In the evenings, we had relaxing dinners with Jan and Peter. The dogs, Happy and Lily had a grand time walking in the woods and swimming in the pond. Lily even began to get the hang of jumping off the dock.

We wrapped up the week by going to the famous Warren's lobster house in Maine so I got the full New England experience.

I will keep you all posted as things progress in the house buying adventure!