We feel like real life House Hunters. Not only do we watch it all of the time on HGTV for fun, but also for research! Who would’ve thought that would be what we were doing almost one year into our move to Las Vegas! Since finding out about little Kiala coming this Thanksgiving season, Gary and I have decided to take the big step of finding our first home out West!
If you don’t know much about my story, some of it related to some financial struggles I had back in my late 20’s. It lead me to buying a home I wasn’t ready to buy, which then lead me to have it foreclosed on, which lead me to a bankruptcy. Let’s just say that when it comes to large purchases, now that I have my crap together and finances are good, I want to take it one baby step at a time!
Our goal is to find a house that’s at least 3 bedroom, 2-3 bathrooms, 2 car garage (way too hot not to have the cars inside), a large living space with an open kitchen and possible seperate dining room. We also want a yard big enough for Tayler to have some space, but know that here in this market that yards are few and far between. Of course, we want some space to workout whether it’s in a loft area or in a living area on hard flooring for space. We are okay doing some renovations as long as we can get in earlier than our lease in our rental being up. However, we don’t want to do a complete remodel because of cost and us not being the most handy of a couple.
Our friend happens to be our realtor, the same one who helped us find our rental in Vegas and who also happens to be 10 weeks more pregnant than I am! Let’s just say it’s been fun to home shop with Gary being around TWO pregger mamas!
We started ‘looking’ with our own listing of homes around the beginning of May. Our rental lease isn’t up until October, so it was mostly to start research of areas and to get an idea of which floor plans we did and didn’t like. It’s interesting to do showings and see houses up close to! There was the one house with exceptional professional photos, but was a mess and had a dog in a crate while we were there for the showing. There was also the house who had a dog and hadn’t picked up after their own pet in their backyard probably since they moved in …. YIKES!
This house was one on our radar from the start – we went to more than one showing of it but were undecided.
Until we started to pray on it, we didn’t really entertain the idea of placing an offer on this house. It needs some ‘love’ with some new paint, baseboards, upstairs flooring (its carpet) and could use some personalization … BUT it’s in a great area for schools, outdoor living with trails and such, and has an awesome community feel to the area it’s in.
So, we decided to place an offer on this house — after seeing over 10 more that weren’t what we expected, in areas that weren’t where we wanted to be, and outside of our budget… thank goodness it wasn’t like the real show House Hunters, where we only had 3 houses to choose from!
Inspection Done!
After our inspection, we got some bad news .. it would cost over $20,000.00 to fix the AC that the owner hadn’t had maintained since he moved into the new house! Soooo….we withdrew our offer and are back to searching …
We really are real life house hunters!
We are truly blessed at how live in Vegas and Henderson has panned out for us. We had an awesome adventure getting here, acclimating here, have a baby girl on the way, and will be able to welcome her in a new home! We know that our new home will come to us and are now pending on a second home option!
This house needs NO renovation, compared to the first one we’d offered on, and we just got a better vibe from this seller and how she upgraded and took care of the house!
Any happy thoughts and prayers are welcome as our closing date is set for end of July!
