Moving on out.....

Last week we found a little house that would suit us pretty much perfectly, put in an offer, got it accepted and now we are officially in escrow.

These last couple of weeks have been manic. I have spent my days looking at houses on the internet, viewing the ones I didn’t immediately discount, putting in offers only to be outbid…blah blah blah. I am glad the madness is about to end….hopefully…I know it isn’t over till the fat lady sings and won’t stop stressing until those keys are in my hands.

The market here is insane right now. It appears there are loads for sale but many of them are short sales which we have no interest in. One house round the corner from us went up for sale on a Friday afternoon and by Monday morning had 75 offers…insanity. And of course now the buyers are getting into bidding wars and pushing the prices up. The sellers aren’t offering to help with closing costs or even doing repairs….if you aren’t interested that that’s fine they’ll just go to the next offer. In some cases people are just driving by and putting an offer in on the strength of the neighborhood and exterior of the house. Told ya it was crazy.

One of the biggest problems we encountered is that we just aren’t a big fan of the typical Californian house. I have no desire for arched windows, floor to ceiling windows, cathedral ceilings or granite countertops.

But, the chances of me finding a little cottage in all of these McMansions was slim.

Our realtor was probably tearing his hair out as he said we were the total opposite from his ‘normal’ client. Most say the homes aren’t big enough….we kept saying they were too big. He laughed that I had more interest in birds nests or hummingbirds in the garden than I did in the kitchen.

But hey, that is us….sure our priorities might be different than a lot of people but, when you are paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars, I wanted to be sure it was the house for us.

The one we are buying appealed to me immediately from the few internet pictures I saw.

It is a lovely little house, described by the selling agent as a Cape Cod, although I am not entirely sure that is what I’d call it. I am tempted to believe that, as it was so different from the norm here, it was just a bit of realtor BS to help sell it.

Still, I don’t care what the style is or isn’t, I love it.

Mainly because it has brick….a lot of brick which is so uncommon down here. The garden definitely reminds me of an English home with all its raised brick flower beds.

It is still bigger than what we were looking for but as it is only 1 story it doesn’t feel huge and it doesn’t have cathedral ceilings.

It does have 4 bedrooms so that means Mick and I will get a workroom each…yay…a room of my own to do whatever I want in.

It also has lots of rooms. There is the living room, a family room, a dining room and a bonus room…what the heck is a bonus room anyhow. We certainly don’t’ have enough furniture to fill it that’s for sure.

And it needs work. The yard hasn’t been watered in forever so most of that will have to be pulled up. Inside it is mainly cosmetic but they seem to have started a number of jobs and not finished them so some floor tiling to be finished there as well. The kitchen cabinets were painted and not in a style I would like so that will have to be done again.

So that is about it for the moment. I am madly packing away…bleh. I started the workroom yesterday and boy what a job that is. I wanted to list a few plants I made on etsy but I don’t think I’ll have time to now. Maybe I’ll get chance for a blog post soon and I’ll show them on there.

The home inspector is going in tomorrow so fingers crossed there isn’t anything major wrong with the place.

I’ll be back as soon as I can…in the meantime keep your fingers crossed it all goes though fine.