das Haus verlassen, #11

In this whole home sale/purchase stuff I was running under a basic assumption:

Selling your house is a pain in the rear-end but buying a house is fun.

Note that, for the record, I was mistaken.  Well, at least as it applies to have the second part of the above referenced basic assumption.

Yes, selling my house has been a pain.  A royal pain.  A stressful, royal pain.  A time-consuming pain.  Get the point?

Well now that I have more or less sold my house (well, it's under contract to sell, and everything is running smoothly), I'm working, with Ms Rivers, on the second part of the equation.

Mind you, we have done our homework.  In fact, we've been doing our homework for about two years now:

1. We know what we want in a house.
2. We have a very reasonable budget.
3. We are pre-approved for a mortgage.
4. We know the general area in which we want to buy a house.
5. We have been keeping an eye on the market for years now.

Yet, despite all of this, the early search results are not going well.  Now for the record, I admittedly have two speeds in life:  fully-engaged-at-hyperspeed (when I am interested & task focused) and not really moving at all (when I am bored, disinterested, etc.).  The fact that I'm unhappy over not already having a purchase decision is a function of the fully engaged me.  Patience?  I can be exceptionally patient, well as long as that's part of a larger plan.  In this case though, my main purpose is far more short-term in that I simply don't want to end up moving twice.  The "once"move would be from the current residence to a new residence.  The "twice" part would be from this place to an interim place and then to a new residence.

Now I know that I will not end up living under a bridge with Sparky the Courthouse bum.  Hell, I need a place for my cat.  But it's so very disconcerting to have this feeling of not having a home.  As it stand, my current residence is devoid of most of what I own, which doesn't exactly create a homey feeling.  Not that this place ever felt much like home anyway; it's always constituted something more of a temporary resting place.  And I am tired of temporary resting places, thank you very much. Springsteen put it best...

"Well my soul checked out missing as I sat listening 
To the hours and minutes tickin’ away 
Yeah just sittin’ around waitin’ for my life to begin 
While it was all just slippin’ away 
I’m tired of waitin’ for tomorrow to come 
Or that train to come roarin’ ’round the bend 
(Bruce Springsteen | Better Days)

Back to the new home search.  Part of what's making the search difficult revolves around basic compromises.  Neither of us have grand expectations in a home, and both of us realize that we can't allow perfection to be the enemy of good.  Yet so far while we've seen three homes that really didn't cut it at very basic levels (one too small and two far too big) and two that would be really nice "if only just...".  Too many compromises.

House number 1 in the "if only just..." department was almost perfect in that it was modern, very well constructed and had a killer garage.  It has a Florida room!  The only problem?  It was basically half-way up Walton's Mountain.  I like a quiet road, but this would have been a morbid road, which created a disconcerting feeling.  At first I loved the house and thought I could deal with the mountain; after sleeping on it?  Not so much.

House number 2 in the "if only just..." department was almost perfect in that it was exceptionally clean, had enough space (well, sort of), had a garage and lots of land.  We really liked the owner as well.  It did have two fatal flaws though in that it had a "cutting edge of 1965 postage stamped sized" kitchen combined with a few of some kind of industrial works.  I'll add that the view behind the industrial works was really, really neat.  If only.

So now it's back to the drawing board.  Three more houses to look at later today, none of which are knock-your-socks-off good, especially from the exterior, but all have some interior stuff going for them.  Here's to hoping for the best.