Back and Forth

If you lived inside my head, you would be dizzy with all of the choices I've made in the last 24 hours. None that have stuck, mind you, just lots and lots of anger, sadness, excitement, elation, interest and disinterest that have caused me to say yes, then no, then yes again to a million decisions about this whole house search.

As I pointed out by FAR the most houses in our price range are on the South or Southwest side of the city. I am so paralyzed by my fear of the higher crime in these two parts of town that it's hard for me to see past it and realize that there are so many good points to these areas.

This morning I decided to load the girls up and get in the car and go for a drive to explore some more areas. Unfortunately my handy dandy map (see my last post) wouldn't load on my G1 (my phone) so I only stuck close to one little area that I knew of three houses in. They are all on the Northeast side of West Seattle in a sweet little area very close to where Matt and I were married. Interestingly, as I was complaining about the school choices in West Seattle to my friend at school, she pointed out that there is a great one called Pathfinder that is a K-8 alternative school. When I looked the school up I was pleased with what I found out about it. THEN I looked up the address and it was less than a mile from where these three houses are that we are interested in. Hmmmm. Maybe things are looking up? Of course, that doesn't solve the issue with getting Eloise back and forth to school on the north side of Queen Anne (which, by contrast, is six miles away and across a freeway that the city will be tearing down one of these millenia). BUT, it's still good. Still progress. I am hoping we can see these homes when Matt gets back from Orlando!

So I'm feeling better. After being next to tears last night over the lack of desirable options, things are looking up. At least a little bit.

Because Home-Buying Has Made Me OCD

I made this, which is a map of every listing in Seattle that meets our criteria for a house. I did leave out a few houses that we checked on already.



View Untitled in a larger map

You have to zoom way, way in to see the individual markers or click on the link below the map to see it bigger.

We live on the NW side of the city. As you can see, there are no markers there. Almost 100% of the homes are in fairly undesirable (to us) neighborhoods. I just spent far too much time reading about the crime on the West Seattle blog, and um, yeah. I know there is crime everywhere, but this was truly a case of the more you know, the worse it is.

Day Nine: Oh Blech

Went to look at the first house today. The pictures online were WAY deceiving. Our realtor thought there was some sketchy stuff going on in the house and wasn't terribly impressed. I soooo wanted to like it. The yard was the best part, but even that was "eh". There was a gigantic pond in the yard, about 6 ft by 3 ft by 3 ft deep. No way in hell I would let me kids play around that! We won't be buying it, though it was a nice first house to see, I suppose.

Last night I asked our realtor to investigate six different homes in West Seattle and by this morning only one was still on the market. Whew! Things move fast! There are three others, though, that I hope to see. Our realtor is right to gently steer us away from that neighborhood since it is so removed from the city that it can be a pain to get in and out of at rush hour, but it's worth it to see the houses, I think.

Onward and upward!

Day Eight: Scoping Out a Potential New 'Hood

Today the girls and I took a little trek back up to Lake City (which is one of the most Northeastern neighborhoods in Seattle) to drive around a bit, see where the farmer's market is held and visit the playground. We met a super nice little girl and her nanny. When I asked the nanny if she liked the neighborhood she said "I love it, except for the car prowlers that have broken in to my 21 year old Honda three times." Ouch. To be fair, we've had our car vandalized in our neighborhood, so nowhere is safe from that sort of stuff, but it made more aware.

I wanted to show you something fun about Seattle real estate. I will be totally honest and tell you that our budget for buying our first house is $320,000. This is lower than the average home's selling price in this county. Right before the mortgage crisis, this amount of money would have barely bought you a shack next to a crack dealer, but now we have more options.

Here is a home in a less-desirable (though not UNdesirable) neighborhood just north of where our apartment is:

Hopefully you can tell that this house barely looks like it is able to stand on it's own. Now when you drive by it there is a large piece of plywood blocking the front door. Want to guess on the price? It's $250,000. No shit. I wish there were pics of the inside!

Here is the house we like:

Fabulous, no? Seriously, this house looks like a palace compared to some of the houses we saw. My mom thinks is terribly over-priced but she also has never looked at real estate in Seattle.

I am excited to go have a look at it tomorrow!

Day Seven (again): Sniffing out the New 'Hood

Tonight I decided to take a few of our favorite properties that we had found on the MLS and look them up on the registered sex offenders web site. I used the one on the Seattle.gov site HERE. The frustrating thing, I discovered, was that I don't know what to make of the information I have gathered. It turns out, for instance, that where we live now has nine registered sex offenders within a one mile radius. Our favorite house we saw today has 19. I don't know what that means, though. As a mother I think even ONE is too many, but what about 19? 19 that we could potentially walk past on a daily basis while out on our walks, on the way to the park, on our way to the library. But does that make this location more dangerous?

If you have any insight in to this, I'd love to hear it.

Oh, and on a side note, I forgot to add that yesterday our realtor told us that the average first time home buyer was 37 years old. I was really surprised, but that means we're ahead of the average! It sure hasn't felt like it, but it's a fun fact, nonetheless!

Day Seven: Lowering Expectations

Last night our realtor emailed us about 250 listings that matched our criteria. I didn't LOVE any of them. I do, however, have a list of about 10-12 that I liked and want to see. It's so frustrating to be absolutely in love with the neighborhood that we rent in but just can't afford to buy in. There is one lone house about four blocks away from our apartment that I want to see, but it's been on the market for over a year, which is a red flag. An affordable home in this 'hood is unheard of, let alone one that's been sitting around for that long. I am interested to see what is wrong with it (or maybe the house was just waiting for us to come along and buy it? ha ha).

Even though Matt has to get ready for a business trip, I am dragging the whole family out to do some window shopping on the houses that I put on my short list. Some are in the North/Northeast part of Seattle and a few are in the Southwest part. There are many, many great houses in the South end of the city, but that just isn't where we want to live. Well, I should say, where I don't want to live. It's fine with Matt, but I am not excited about the schools or the higher crime rates in most of the neighborhoods in the South end. I just wouldn't feel as safe. Which is interesting, before I had children I would have balked at anyone who said Seattle had "bad neighborhoods" but now that I'm a mom? I even find the mini-mart three blocks from our apartment too sketchy. Ah, the perspective!

Anyways, will report back later!

Day Six: Planning Session

Today we finally met with our realtor. I had met him last year at the home buying seminar and I really liked him, but Matt had never met him before. I had a feeling Matt would really like him and I was so glad that he did.

Our meeting was supposed to last 45 minutes but we were there for an hour and 40. We certainly could have stayed longer! I feel like I could talk about houses and home buying constantly. The whole process really fascinates me.

Tonight we mostly went over the process of buying the house, learned about exactly what our realtor would do for us and signed our contract. Loving that WA state still requires the seller to pay our realtor's fees instead of us, the buyer. Tee Hee. Seems like that part is totally backwards, but hey, it saves us money!

We should be getting a list of properties very soon that are on the MLS that fit our criteria of price, location, number of bedrooms and number of bathrooms. It will then be our job to go through the list and find five or six that we want to see in person. I can't wait!