House hunting

Let me preface this by saying I love our house. We've spent a lot of time and a little bit of money making it the way we want, and I'm not going to leave here for just anything.

But that's not to say I don't look around. You could call us "casual" browsers. Perhaps we have not pulled the trigger because we can't agree on a neighborhood--I love our current location while Chad wants to move somewhere closer to a "downtown" area near a Metro--or maybe it's because things are just so freaking expensive out here. Either way, we planned to be here for three years and we're going on six.

No matter how much I love this house and no matter how sad I'd be to leave, I really want three things:

1. Windows on all four sides -- lots & lots of windows
2. A good-sized yard
3. A fireplace

(A walk-out basement would be nice, too, and room for a garden, and a quiet street, but at this point I'm keeping the list short.)

So tonight on a walk with Lucy I saw a house that was older on a nice-sized lot. The place was hardly in a state of disrepair but was certainly not state-of-the-art. (We're both fine with buying a place that needs fixing up because it's a lot cheaper and we'd probably want to change things around anyway.)

I came home and looked online to get more info on this cute little place that could use a bit of work and probably hadn't been updated since the 70s. Five bedrooms, two baths, built in 1925 (love those old houses), fireplace, almost a half-acre...this place had everything. All for the bargain-basement price of $1,199,000. Seriously, who can afford this? (And who would spend $1.2 million on a house with dead grass in the front yard!)

So if anyone has a million dollars I can borrow for oh, about 30 years, I'd appreciate it. In lieu of that, I suppose, we're staying put. For now.