On the 18th of February, I went browsing through a realtor's online portal and found this house. This lovely, lovely house. I sent a request for more information via the site and then also called and then called again, because I NEED A HOUSE. The realtor (MY realtor) sent the request over to the person handling the listing and heard... nothing. And so she called and called and called and emailed and the woman responded to her string of questions by email, and answered one question. And so it's been.
It took until February 24 to arrange for a viewing, and my realtor emailed me that day to cancel because she hadn't gotten confirmation back and then emailed again in the afternoon to cancel her cancellation 'cause she'd finally heard back. I walked through the house on the 24th, turned to my realtor and said "this is it. make it so."
It is now the 10th of March and I still do not have a lease. I have a signed form saying that they are going to do a lease, which my realtor assures me means that the house is mine. I will feel SO much better about this when I have a lease. GIMME THE HOUSE.
On one hand, if the realtor for the house had been at all tech-savy, I would probably not have found the house. And I do mean at all - I'm on Zillow, trulia, hotpads, rent.com, yahoo homes, realtor.com, craig's list, various online newspapers, several realtor's portals and several other locations - and this house showed up NOWHERE. If you google the address, it shows up for sale on one site that I've never heard of. When I drove by it, the 'for sale' sign in the front yard was hand-lettered. So in this market, where rentals are gone in a day, this house has been available since NOVEMBER. In November, I was in the midst of my "we shall audit all the things" whirl of travel so odds are very good that the house would have been long gone before I was available to see it. So, I should be patient because this is going to work for me. Patient. I shall be patient. GIMME THE HOUSE!
Evidently, the owners have never rented before and they're freaking out over drawing up a lease so they have their attorney drawing it up. And there's a new request for information about every day. Last week, they requested names, ages, pictures and assorted other information about my cats. So I sent them this. I see no way this could possibly go wrong...
(Yes, I did send real pictures of my cats later. No one but my super cool realtor saw this one. Relax...)
My perfect house is older, updated with character, 4 bedrooms (upstairs), 2 bathrooms, 2 car garage (I prefer detached, with garage behind house), basement, eat-in kitchen with dining room, space somewhere for a baby pottery studio of my own, fireplace, nice front porch, and room for my books. I want 4 bedrooms because I'd really like to have a dedicated guest room.
THIS house is older (1924), updated with character (yay, built-ins!), 2 bedrooms upstairs (one of which was 2 rooms until they took down the connecting wall) and one bedroom downstairs, 2 bathrooms, 2 car detached garage behind house, basement, dining room (with bonus woodstove!), a separate room in the basement where I can put a baby pottery studio of my own, fireplace, fantastic front porch, and room for my books. There's also what the owners call an "artist's loft" at the top of the stairs, so I need to wander the house and ponder a bit, but the downstairs bedroom may become a dedicated guest room and my craft room can go in the artist's loft, with overflow in my bedroom. the kitchen is not big enough to be eat in, but there's a family room off the dining room (which has hard floors. why does anyone ever put carpet in a dining room? my darling child can spread a single green bean around a 5 foot radius, for pete's sake. carpet = bad.) and a living room that is the front of the house, so there's probably space for my lovely tables.
There's also a fantastic patio in the back and a very small amount of grass to deal with. (Have I mentioned my hatred of grass? I hate grass. Biggest waste of resources ever. What is wrong with meadow? Grrrr.)
AND it's only about 5 miles each way to work! Huzzah!
So it only took 5 months, but I think I have a house! Soon, hopefully, I'll have a comfy little rut, in my house, with my stuff to call my own. YAY!
Just as soon as they GIMME THE HOUSE!! (Patient. I will be patient. If it kills me. And them.)
