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Love at first sight -- after I've already seen everything in town. :-)
When we moved here 26 year ago, I was living about 500 miles away, and could only come into town every other weekend to look at houses. My husband was already working here, I was back selling our former home, and I had a one-year old. Augh. Our agent was amazing -- he would have homes lined up all weekend long, and even arranged a babysitter for our son. We looked for about four long weekends -- probably saw about 60 or 70 houses, not to mention the ones my husband casually drove by as he was trying to get a feel for neighborhoods, commutes, etc. But then, we pulled up in front of one house that had just come on the market. I took one look at it and said, "Omigod. This is it." Can't explain it, except that it fulfilled every dream I had of my perfect house. Walking through the house, it was more and more perfect. 26 years later, it's still my perfect house.
We closed four weeks later. :-)
After 20-some years in real estate development, mortgages and real estate sales, I still believe there is that spark when you see the house that speaks to you. You can buy logically. You can buy emotionally. The most satisfying, IMHO, is when an emotional buy is also the logical one.
When we built our home in South Florida, it was a nice coming together of knowing what area we wanted to live in, a developer starting a new neighborhood in that area, and walking in and seeing a great floor plan that fit our budget, with room for extras (pool, etc.). We made a decision in about half-an-hour. Took us longer to pick the lot than the floor plan -- did we want lakefront or save some money and get a non-lakefront . . .
Husband and I pretty much had a list of things we preferred for our new home. My husband has zero interest in looking at the MLS, so he left all of that up to me since I knew what he wanted. I've been casually viewing listings on the MLS for several months without ever viewing any of them because we didn't feel compelled to pull the trigger. However, this listing came across the MLS that sort of roused me to take action and go for it. It's an acreage property within the city limits that doesn't come on the mls often. It pretty much aesthetically doesn't meet many of our requirements as it is dated (rocking the 80s) and lacks several things we thought were must haves. We've already been through ten years of updating our current home and husband in particular prefers move in ready with grand staircase, separate study area, high ceilings, etc. However, this home compensates for these deficiencies structurally - the home is custom built and looks architecturally different from the other subdivision homes in the area built by familiar builders (i.e. Drees, Highland, etc.) The natural light is to die for. So, what piqued our desire is the raw potential that this home has and the price is within our affordability. In fact, the more modern subdivision homes in the surrounding neighborhoods are more expensive on smaller lots.
So, I mentioned love at first sight because this will be the first home that we will physically see, but we (moreso me, whereas husband is "wait and see") fell in love with its potential factor way before actually seeing it. If all of the cards align, the house passes inspections, we like what we see, and husband is willing to deal with 80s for a few years (not really eager to renovate and don't want to roll a reno budget into the mortgage) we'll probably act on it.
Husband and I pretty much had a list of things we preferred for our new home. My husband has zero interest in looking at the MLS, so he left all of that up to me since I knew what he wanted. I've been casually viewing listings on the MLS for several months without ever viewing any of them because we didn't feel compelled to pull the trigger. However, this listing came across the MLS that sort of roused me to take action and go for it. It's an acreage property within the city limits that doesn't come on the mls often. It pretty much aesthetically doesn't meet many of our requirements as it is dated (rocking the 80s) and lacks several things we thought were must haves.
This is what happened to us. We fell in love with the outside and lot size as the house itself barely meets our needs and is dated. But between the land and price, we were hooked. After living here for a few months, I really don't mind what's lacking inside as we will work on it little by little. But the outside and total privacy we have makes up for it amply.
Good luck and hope you have many great years in it if you do get it.
Love at first sight
and
falling in love with the first house you see
are two completely different events.
absolutely agree.
I fell in love with my house the first time I saw the listing. Unfortunately, this house would have added an hour to my commute each way. I obsessed over it (pulled up the listing every single day and stared at all of the pictures) for a month. After that, I decided I would try and stop obsessing. I dedicided to do a "drive-by", figuring that I would find something majorly wrong and forget about it. Nope, still obsessed. They I saw the interior and loved it even more.
I "tested" the commute, thinking that it would be so bad, I would never want to move all the way out there. Nope, commute (although much longer), was actually a better commute. After that I gave up and gave in.
For the last five years, I smile every day as I pull into my driveway and look at my house. Love at first sight!
This is what happened to us. We fell in love with the outside and lot size as the house itself barely meets our needs and is dated. But between the land and price, we were hooked. After living here for a few months, I really don't mind what's lacking inside as we will work on it little by little. But the outside and total privacy we have makes up for it amply.
Good luck and hope you have many great years in it if you do get it.
Thanks for the well wishes! I'm frankly nervous and hope the Seller continues to work with us! It's funny how that works, right? After dealing with all of the updating of our last house we vowed we didn't want to deal with that again. But then this house came our way and well we can deal with the lack of eye candy. My husband really didn't like the 80s finishes and I had to talk him through it and like Property Brothers, describe the potential. I REALLY look forward to making this gem really shine over the years!
Mr. Rational:
Your remark about personal relationships made me smile. I fell in love with my husband hard after our initial meeting as well and we've been married 11.5 years now with two kids
Once again, I've fallen for the first home that I've seen. Though I must say that I've been looking at homes online for several months. This one (a fixer) actually moved me to action.
How many of you are the same way? or do you have to see a bevy of homes to find "the one"?
The first five acres I ever bought is still the one I was meant to have,
and the first I seriously looked at with the intent to buy. It must be
some cosmic thing gong on.
Houses: I almost always look at corner lots. There's something about houses on corners that seem to have owners that care.
You can go online all you want. It's like internet dating! The moment you physically experience the person you know. You can talk on the net all you want but it's not real, remember?
For myself and many people I know-all of us looked at many houses ( and nothing really wrong with any of them.). We all agreed that when it is the right house for you - you know within 10 seconds of entering the home that this is the one! (Sometimes you know when you are walking up to the house and have not even gotten through the door.)
If you are debating about going with house A or house B - keep looking you still have not found your house.
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It must be some cosmic thing going on
