Househunting (part 1)

Well, The Expert and I started with a list of seven, but three were eliminated at the very beginning: under contract already or otherwise pulled from the market.

That leaves four, which we will cover in the order visited, followed by an Entertainment Weekly-style letter grade.

1. A cute little stone bungalow on a corner lot with a huge yard. Some newish amenities, lots of ceiling fans, and evidence of a fair amount of repainting over old paint. And whatever they'd painted the exterior stone with, it didn't stick worth a darn. C+

2. Modern, at least by Fifties standards, and about 30 percent larger than #1, and in a nicer neighborhood to boot. So why was it selling for only slightly more money? The Expert figured it out at once: basically, the entire block is sliding down the hill, a few centimeters at a time, and implementing the fixes would increase the price by half. There was also a general air of dinginess. D+

3. I should have known this 1941 frame house was wacky before I ever saw it; the MLS description contains the cryptic phrase "faux walls." Well, the walls looked genuine enough, but this was the first mock fireplace I'd ever seen that had been converted from a real fireplace. What's more, there was a single-car garage with two half-width doors, vertically hinged, which makes remote operation highly unlikely. Add to this an utterly gratuitous Florida room off the master bedroom, and porch steps the full width of the porch, and this place screams Insane Owner! at the top of its sixty-two-year-old lungs. Had it been about ten or twelve percent cheaper, I probably would have put in a bid. I may yet. A-

4. A noisy box in a quiet suburb, though the noise was due mostly to the people next door, who apparently were convinced that there was a special White Trash Edition of Architectural Digest coming out and they wanted to fix up their yard accordingly. Lots of clever space-utilization techniques to make the most of the smallish interior; The Expert, tipped off by a floor irregularity, spotted a couple of places where the foundation might be cracking or otherwise failing to behave itself. Otherwise, a solid B.

The search resumes once we get another fistful of prospects.

(Update, 10:15 pm: So that's a "faux wall.")

Posted at 9:53 PM to Surlywood