After five months, the house hunt continues.

Venice

This is the kitchen of the house we bid on in December. Because short sales make random number generators look predictable, we are still waiting for the banks holding the current mortgages to tell us whether or not they will let us buy the place. As of about a month ago, things sounded positive, at least in a “the process is moving forward and we will get an answer” kind of way. Now any perceived progress seems to be ticking about as well as broken clockwork. I would still very much like to buy this lovely house, and I’m very fond of the idea of having a red-accented kitchen. (If you’ve seen my childhood room, you’ll find this unsurprising.) But, given that we want to move before June — and really, the sooner the better — I grow tired with waiting, especially when the banks may come back and simply say no. No house for you.

Heather

This is the kitchen of a house we first looked at in November. It’s a sweet house, a charming house, and we were thinking about placing a bid on it in December. Then someone else tried to buy it, but apparently didn’t, and then it was off the market for a month or two. Now it’s back, and with a lower price, and it looks very appealing.  But this is the room I have issues with.  It’s a very shiny kitchen, with its trendy granite countertop and coordinating tile back-splash.  (Granite, I’m not big on, but it’s already here, so there it is.)  But count those cabinets.  There’s a pantry you can’t see, but otherwise that’s it.  With the island, the lower cabinets are okay, but count the upper ones again.  One for plates.  One for bowls.  One for glasses.  Little high-up ones for things you don’t use much.  One for spices and baking things — oh, wait.  Where is my spice cabinet!??  There’s not a lot more kitchen space than we have in our apartment, and our cabinets here are already overflowing.  We like to cook, and we like to cook together, so a kitchen sized for the frozen food/take-out kind of family isn’t the best fit.  I need to figure out where we could add more storage space before I’d feel comfortable buying this house.

Krista

This is the kitchen of a house we saw this weekend.  Lots of counter space, lots of cabinet space, lots of sunshine.  The house has character and I like the layout.  But I balk a little at the price — not exorbitant, but basically the same as we offered for the short sale, but that one has four bedrooms and this one has three.

And then, of course, if the bank would just accept the damn offer already, the thing would just be settled.  The poor sellers wouldn’t get forclosed on, the bank gets more money than they’ll ever get at auction on a foreclosure, and we get to move already!  But the bank’s right hand seems not to know what the left hand is doing — one side stalls on accepting our bid (as if a higher one were going to come in?) while the other sets a date in May for the auction.  Ugh!

Categories: desert living
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