The house...

So remember the house last week that I said just wasn't the right time? Well after I blogged that, Geoff and I really couldn't get it out of our mind. There was just something about it. Not so much the house itself, but the land it was on (half an acre). If you want to see it, go to www.rmls.com and look up number 7113286. Since we couldn't stop thinking about it, we called up my (I guess our now) realtor and asked her to show us the property. I was expecting THE VERY WORST so it wasn't as bad as I thought. It was worse than Geoff thought though. It smelled like cigarette smoke before the front door was even open, and there was stuff EVERYWHERE. Every single surface was covered, including the entire kitchen. There was even a half empty bottle of vodka sitting on the kitchen counter - now if that doesn't attract potential homebuyers, I don't know what does! ;-) Luckily, I'm pretty good at looking through someone else's furniture/junk/paint colors/flooring/etc. to the potential of a house. This house definitely would have needed a lot of work - new EVERYTHING, or else tear it down and build new, but it had potential. My preference would have been start with the house that was there and renovate it, where as Geoff wanted to just build new. We do have the trailer, so we could have lived on the property while building new. The land was GREAT - there was a nice patio (good condition, nicely sized) that would be perfect for a hot tub (which is like my super-nice-to-have item that I really want someday). There was plenty of land for a shop for Geoff, and maybe an organic garden for me if I could manage to keep it alive. The price was also great - in addition to being a decent asking price, our realtor had the feeling (both on her own and from talking to the listing agent) that the owner would likely take an offer for 70 - 80% of the asking price. It was in a perfect location in terms of proximity - in the "country" but about 8 minutes from work, right on the freeway to get anywhere, an hour from the coast, 10 - 15 minutes from the grocery stores, less than 5 minutes to Costco (I know a Costco near the country, ha). BUT not a perfect location in terms of LITERALLY being right on the freeway - it backed up to the on ramp of the freeway that connects Portland and 26 (have I written all of this before?). We talked about building a sound wall and planting stuff there, and honestly the noise is less than our current house which is pretty close to a stop light so you get a lot of stopping and starting, plus big trucks, rather than just constant noise. But you're still right on a highway, plus that road is only 2 lanes there but 3 in other parts, so if they were ever going to do an expansion they would take our land! We checked with the county who said there were no current plans, but who knows what would happen in 10, 15, 20 years. There's just a lot of risk associated with buying that close to the highway (even if we could get over the sound and stuff), and who knows what would happen to resale value. I'm sad, and now I really want a house that we can REALLY renovate (with the price of that house, we would have had quite a bit of money available to do the necessary renovations). But that's okay - again, it just wasn't QUITE right. Something else will come along eventually. And that is my sad blog post about the house that still just isn't meant to be. :( Tear.