August 17, 2009
I'd originally planned to look for houses after I got back from my vacation in mid-June. Take a month and a half, find a house I liked and got a bid accepted for, then let the wheels turn for a month.
See, this is where the fact that I cuss too much is a problem. The "goddamnit" that applies so well to this whole process is lessened by the fact that I use it all the time.
Things haven't gone quite as well as I'd hoped.
For starters, what I can afford is all but scraping the bottom of the barrel around here. Which is depressing, because you can buy half a city block in Pittsburgh for what a townhouse costs here.
Secondly, people do some weird shit to their houses. Installing full bathrooms in the basement and tilting a stairwell to make the new bathroom fit. Tiling every floor in the house. Blocking stairwells off completely. Adding second kitchens in the basement. Expecting me to pay good money for a house that's been empty and collecting mold and animal poop for two years.
Houses I'd actually want to live in are few and far between. And in the day or so it takes me to make sure I really want to buy the house, make sure I'm not moving into a high-crime area (which in Fairfax County is pretty much limited to high-schoolers swiping your car stereo to pay for weed, but still), and get the paperwork done, the house is under contract.
This is, as you might imagine, somewhat frustrating. And I just keep going on this little merry-go-round, while my lease gets ready to expire in a couple weeks. Which means that on Saturday I need to haul my furniture to the storage locker since I'm going to be crashing at a friend's house for a few weeks while I try to find a house that (a) doesn't suck (b) I can afford (c) stays on the market long enough to submit a bid on.
It's a good thing the rent's gonna be cheaper, because I see myself spending a little more money than usual on booze in the coming weeks.
