The House Hunt is On

My wife and I decided awhile ago that our townhouse was no longer for us. Well, she bought into what I had been saying since the record breaking day where I knocked the same wall decoration off the same wall ten times via the exercise of moving from the hallway into the office/guest room. After about two months of this rinse-repeat process I had a really sore shoulder and our wall decoration became noticeably thinner.

Now, I'm not insinuating that we want to buy a home because I knock things off walls. This is simply an example of the problem. We have no work-space, where the Hell are we going to put our future little ones and I am most certainly not a dog-walker. One more night of me standing out in the rain/cold/heat/wind/humidity/mosquitoes staring angrily at my dogs as they smell one piece of grass so relentlessly, so deeply I think they might be trying to actually ingest it through their nostrils and I might break down into an outdoor rant about how much I hate walking my picky freakin' dogs. I want a yard so badly that when I look at my back porch I imagine adding chores like lawn mowing, gardening and building a fence with a smile. Something my parents would tell you I was not so quick to smile about in my youth.

So the time has come and we are on the house hunt. Conveniently I'm a Realtor, meaning I don't have to hire anyone, find anyone, vet anyone, or any other thing you do when person hunting for a house hunter.

The first step in house hunting as a couple, as those of you with some experience in this may know, is deciding what both of you actually like. In some relationships that would have been more difficult. Luckily for my wife she loves Jonathan from the Property Brothers and his sense of style and I was a clean slate with no opinions on anything involving what the inside of a house should look like. (Basically, we like mostly the same things.) So we put our 5 Must Haves together and discussed them.

Ours rounded out to something like this:

1) Must have yard.

2) Must have storage space.

3) Minimum of 3 bedrooms.

4) Must be in a reasonable price range. The modern economy has everyone in a bind, and typically I wouldn't recommend worrying too much about price, but rather worrying about your monthly bill. However, keeping track of interest rates and discount points is never a bad thing.

5) Must have good bones. I'm not afraid of work. I also happen to have a father-in-law who is very gung-ho about his daughter and would love to help us put the home we want together. The point here being, a lot of the times we have to look past the paint, the kitchen, and the general decorative arrangement and scheme of the house and see what we like about it. Room placement, room size, location (location, location) etc.


We can always adjust our "Must Haves" as the situation changes, but it's not a bad thing to put together. In fact, we've been trying to apply the idea to other things in our lives, such as Must Haves for our diet, exercise and general rules of our relationship. For example: she must be perfect in all things and I must be catered to relentlessly. Or did I get that backwards?

If you have any great "Must Haves" you think I should care about more, leave a comment, or even if you want to share your ideas. (Or good homes you know for sale in the area!)

Next we talk about the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) and why it's weird to browse with your spouse. (Mind you, if you're not a Realtor you'd probably be using Trulia, Zillow or Realtor.com, but the general idea is the same.)