So...we went to look at houses this weekend.

Well, my friends. Mr. C & I did a little something cah.ray.zee. this week.

We went to the bank to see if we could qualify for a second mortgage on a separate home because we have decided we want to go into the rental business. This is an endeavor we have watched many, many of our close friends do, and we have been intrigued for years. Now after a lot of praying, a lot of talking, a lot of what ifs...we decided to go to the bank on Thursday expecting to hear, "You've got to be kidding me. Why do you think you can get a mortgage on another house?"

Turns out thanks to Dave Ramsey and paying off most of our debt, we have some pretty desirable things as a potential buyer including the ability to buy a house in this market. So I started "trolling" the internet for cheap houses in good areas of town. This is kind of a hobby for me. I came upon this house which I really thought was ugly at first.

Mr. C & I drove by it on Friday night, and he said, "I absolutely do not even want to go inside it. It's long and skinny. It looks weird."

Well, we lined up several houses on Saturday morning in a very cheap range. We went in foreclosure after foreclosure after foreclosure. I saw some of the most bizarre things I've ever seen in my life! Seriously, in one house they had taken the ceiling out of a bedroom to build a second set of stairs up to another bedroom where there was a hole in the middle of the floor. Bizarre. We kind of have this dream to buy something uber cheap, fix it up, and live in it for years and years to come. In this plan, I'd have the option to stay home because we'd be significantly cutting our mortgage while adding to our square footage. However, getting out there to see these crazy houses made me realize I can't just "look past it" as easily as I thought I could.

Then we came to the house above. The ugly one (as C thought). Our real estate agent told us, "I'm not sure what we are going to find in here, but the price is great. The neighborhood is great, and I guess we'll see."

Immediately, I fell in love. It is so close to my dream neighborhood where I used to live in an apartment. It is closER to my husband's job and way closer to my job. It has trees. Lots of trees. It has original hardwood floors & glass doorknobs. It's close to my parents house and closER to my in-laws. It's in the city where I grew up. So if you know where that is, then you know. If you know where I teach, then you also (kind of) know. It is the other nice adjacent city to where I teach.

It also has a horrid kitchen. Stains on the walls. And a bad roof. See said horrid kitchen below:

 

However, what you CAN'T see is the huge keeping room that opens into the kitchen that overlooks a gigantic yard with trees. You can't see the formal dining room, and the beautiful living room. Here's the living room. Isn't it awesome? Did I mention except for the crazy kitchen these hardwood floors are throughout the home??

 

So. Here we are crazily looking at the price an all this work that needs to be done. It's not too big, and it's not too small. We're currently living in 1300 square feet, and I think it is safe to say, we are out of room. This house is missing several things that I want. It doesn't have a laundry room. It doesn't have a "master bath", but shares a hallway bath. Even still, it was bright. It was airy. It had windows, and I could see Micah running through the fabulous yard for decades to come. I can just see it all.

Depending on several certain things, we are thinking about putting an offer in on the house. It will be a "low ball" offer not much more than we paid for our original home. If we don't get it, we don't get it. If we do...holy moly. I might be moving before Christmas. That's kind of insane! Then we're going to rent out our house. Instead of buying a rental property, we'll just keep up our current home as our rental income. Why buy one when we know what has been done to ours and we are nine years into a 30 year loan.

So...we go to see this house again on Tuesday to make sure it is what we want to do. If we still like it, we'll pull the trigger. Then there are tons of hoops because it is a foreclosure, and it could easily still fall through. Fun to dream, though! I guess we'll see what this week holds for us. =)