Practice Buying A House

When we first started looking at houses we were going for bottom of the barrel places. We were looking for a diamond in the rough, a smoking deal, a dream house for a cheap price. THOSE DO NOT EXIST. Oh, and pictures tell a thousand lies. James would find these houses online, we would scroll through the images and call our agent to get us in there right away. Wrong. We started to drive by the house before we called her and had her show us the house. Wow. There is so much crap for sale. Often these houses had piles of trash sitting in from of them or piled in the yard. One time we drove all the way to Arlington to look at this super cute place. It was cute. However, it was right on a river so that meant our kids would eventually die there. It had a pig pen, full of trash. Mostly kid toys that had rotted from the damp Washington weather. It had a ginormous barn though and James wanted to check it out. So glad we did. It was packed with trash. It had holes everywhere. Someone took a lot of drugs there and punched holes in the walls. It looked like whoever lost the house moved into the barn. We thought they might actually still be living there. I stole a baseball, a super cute wood box and a Mensa cookbook. Other barrel houses were located right underneath transporters, or located right along the path of gigantic power lines. Others looked like meth heads were your neighbors or meth heads were former residents. Others were in the middle of nowhere. Some were right on the road. Some were so close to your neighbor you could chat while in the shower. All of them needed a new roof. As a matter of fact, if you look around, 90% of places anywhere here need a new roof. It got us thinking. We would drive to a destination and look at houses along the way. Houses that were not even for sale and we would ask ourselves if there was one we would want. You know what the answer was? No. It surprised me. I never had looked critically at a house before. Oh sure, they were cute, they had a nice color but would I live there? No. Every single one had a problem. They were too small, too shitty, to close to a busy road, they needed a new roof, they needed serious landscaping, they had no land, they were too old, they were too far away from civilization, the reasons go on and on. Plus, that was based off their outside appearance. Who knows the disasters they were on the inside. My cousin is right. I sound like a snob. But when you consider your children, the enormous debt you are about to accrue and your happiness you understand my fickleness. Try it. Drive through a typical neighborhood and picture yourself living there. You'll find yourself snubbing them too.