DH and I continued our house search for our first home. We got a little more serious and contacted our friend/Realtor. He took us to see 6 houses in the Northwest suburbs of the Twin Cities. With my husband working in the Southwest suburbs, one might ask why-oh-why are we looking at the NORTHwest suburbs?!?!
There are several reasons for this.
One: More bang for our buck. Plain and simple. We can get more house (and I mean, a lot more) for our money. The home prices drop dramatically the further north we travel. We looked at places just outside Hennepin County which means lower taxes, lower land costs, etc…
Two: Home is where the heart is. By this I mean, our families live in the Northwest suburbs. And it would be great to raise our children close to family. We also have good friends from high school living in the Northwest suburbs.
Three: Lakes and trees. This one actually doesn’t count. In all honesty, you can find lakes and beautiful trees pretty much anywhere in Minnesota. So I guess there are only two (good) reasons why we are looking in the Northwest suburbs.
How did it go, you ask??? It had its positives and negatives. We found two great homes that we would be very happy with. The issue comes in where DH’s favorite happens to be different than my favorite. This gets frustrating. We approach things very different. And we have different priorities when it comes to buying a house.
DH’s main concern is the yard. He wants a large yard, with mature trees and a fence. He would also like a nice patio and deck, with a beautiful front yard with plenty of possibilities for landscaping.
My main concern is all contained within the house. I would take a large, beautiful house with nice finishes over a large yard any day! Of course I want some room for the kids to play outside and a deck to hang out on and grill in the summer. But I don’t need anything larger than .25 acres.
That is where the differences come in with our two favorite houses so far. One has a nicer yard the other has a nicer house. Our solution is to keep looking. Oh! That reminds me about the other difference between DH and I. I know what I want when I see it. No further looking required. DH, on the other hand, needs to analyze every possibility before being comfortable about even THINKING about putting an offer in on a house. *sigh* So we will keep looking until he realizes the house I want is really what we want 😉
Our next step is to head south. We are going to be looking in a Southwest suburb on Wednesday. It is a little further out than where DH is working, so it would still be a little bit of a commute, but less than where we were looking today.
There are several benefits of living Southwest:
One: Proximity to DH’s work.
Two: Proximity to our church.
Three: Proximity to new friends.
I’ll let you all know how things go on Wednesday 🙂 Our Realtor will be working hard for us to find out if my favorite house from today will be a possibility in our price range. It’s a short sale (like most of the houses we looked at today), so there might be some wiggle room on the price, and there might not. We. Shall. See.
Love,
Macy
Real Housewives of Minnesota 