Well..it's not exactly on a range; but we have bought our first house!! We are SUPER excited about having our own house and getting out of the apartment. Don't get me wrong, the apartment is really nice with awesome views; but it's cramped with all of our stuff, we haven't been able to really unpack our boxes or go through things, and Bella doesn't have a yard to run in.
We started looking when we came back from Sheppard around the beginning of March. I had been looking online for about a year, but it was different once we started looking at them in person. Our realtor, Anne McKechnie, contacted me in late January after I signed up to her real estate search site. She's great, and we hit it off right away. Jonathan and I met with her after getting back and went over what we were looking for and price range, and then got prequalified for a loan.
Boy were we in for a shock at the way houses are built out here. They have a wierd shape to them with a formal living room & formal dining room right as you walk through the front door, then a little strip with a kitchen and eat-in area, then a family room. The guest rooms are tiny, laundry rooms are just a space for a washer & dryer, the master bathrooms don't have a bathtub (they say it's too hot for baths), and the yards are just rock & gravel!
Also, the front doors on a lot of houses out here are on the side of the house because it's cooler on the side than in the front, and the front doors have heavy metal screen doors. Now, where we come from, bars on the windows and heavy metal screen doors are only in bad neighborhoods, but out here it's totally the opposite and in the better neighborhoods. The bars on the windows are mainly in the historic disctric and are part of the hispanic heritage. The heavy screen doors are an upgrade and decorative with cactus, moon, wolves, etc. carved out in them.
So, other than all of that, the houses are really pretty with their tile roof, stucco walls, carved out niches inside. We had fun looking at tons of houses. There's a lot of great deals in the market as it's slowly but surely getting back to "normal". Even though Tucson was one of the worst hit cities in the market, it's faring better than others. So, becasue of that we saw several short sales and foreclosures...and there were some of those that the people left just trashy and disgusting. We went on to other houses and really liked one foreclosure in a super nice neighborhood, but the neighbors seemed a littly shady.
When Anne and I were looking one morning, she showed me what is to become our house. It was gorgeous!! I immediately knew when we walked in that I loved it. It was totally different than the other houses we had seen. The house was in a great little cozy neighborhood that backs up to the mountains and views of Sombrero Peak. It was a foreclosure and bought at auction in February by an investor who flips houses, is an attorney, and ownes several restaurants. So, he is busy and kinda hard to get in touch with.
Anywho...so, the house has new carpet, tan stucco walls, new light fixtures (thank goodness because most of the houses have yucky light fixtures), travertine countertops. It's gorgeous and basically brand new, even though it needs appliance. So, I called Jonathan and told him he had to see this house after work :) He came out, and walked in wanting to make an offer! So, then I knew if he liked it that much right away, then it was the house God wanted for us :D
We finally negotiated a good price and are going through the inspections now and hope to close and move in by the end of this month, first of next month. We picked out some appliances and will probably wait until this summer to get furniture.
So, without further ado...our new house: http://picasaweb.google.com/greeneblog/HomeHomeOnTheRange?authkey=Gv1sRgCIrEutKc8IGS9wE&feat=directlink
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