Shopping Around

Shopping for a new home is very exciting. Our perfect wishlist would include the following:

• 3 bedrooms (or enough extra room to put TJ's weights somewhere), 2 full baths
• 2-car attached garage
• Master suite
• Walk-in closet
• Fireplace
• Full-size washer/dryer (I hate those stackable things)
• More carpeted areas for little Topher

The more we shop, the more we realize we won't get everything on that list. We found a townhome we really, really like that only has 2 bedrooms (but makes up for that by having a huge open loft area), and the master bathroom has a walk-in shower rather than a bathtub, and it doesn't have a fireplace. It sounds like it wouldn't be on our short list at all, but we think it might be the one. It has a huge kitchen, an extra half-bath, the 2-car garage we want so badly, over 1630 total square feet of living space, a HUGE master bedroom, a big kitchen, and is nestled between 2 nice golf courses (in a part of town where there are a lot of nice, fancy houses.) The location is killer...just a few miles away from all the stores in Ankeny, but far enough away to be quiet and clean. There are sidewalks everywhere and a new park being built right across the street. There is no way it could ever flood unless the whole city of Ankeny went under, and there is no basement. We're going to take a look at nearly every other condo in our price range this week, and if nothing compares, I think we'll put an offer on this one (contingent on the completion of the sale of our house). This townhome is a short sale, so we need to move fairly quickly on it, and we're hoping we can get it for about 40k less than what the owner paid a few years ago. I think we could be happy there. It's not perfect, and there are things we'd want to update and change in time, but it has a lot of potential. We know it's the biggest townhome we'll find in our price range, and we keep coming back to that. Here are a few pictures:

View from the outside (it is not an end unit, but we hope that by being sandwiched, our utilities would be lower and when we walked through, it seemed like a very quiet and peaceful complex):

Standing in the living room:

Big kitchen (I absolutely love that island...can you imagine if we upgraded to granite counters?):

Master bathroom (sniff sniff...no bathtub):

Standing in the loft area with a view of both bedroom doors, the laundry closet, and the bathroom that DOES have a tub (that would primarily be Topher's bathroom):

I have no idea if we'll end up putting an offer on this one or not. We just got pre-approved, though, so we are ready to make an offer once we are sure about which townhome we want. The buyers for OUR house are doing their home inspection today, so hopefully everything goes well with that.

TJ's birthday is also tomorrow, so we'll be celebrating that (happy birthday, baby!!!), we have several more possible condos to check out this week, we leave for Utah on Monday, and our 4-year anniversary is next week, so it kind of feels like we have a lot going on right now. But more than anything, we continue to be grateful that our home is selling. Once everything is final, it will be a HUGE weight lifted from our shoulders and we'll be able to make a new start. Be good, little house of ours, and have a really good inspection today. :)

--KC