House Hunting Ugh!!!!

This past weekend was a new experience for me! Linda and I are looking for a small one level house/bungalow in Nova Scotia within approx one hour of Halifax. Sounds simple enough and the market appears to be wide open and is said to be a buyers market. We left for Bedford on Friday with appointments to see six houses over the weekend. On Saturday morning we set out to do the viewing. I have to tell that the photos of the properties are misleading and really give one a false sense of the condition of the home. We did have a couple that we had studied over the internet and were quite excited about them. The first one turned out to be a complete dump, my first clue was the towel tucked in around the bottom of the front door to keep out drafts. The second house does have potential, not exactly what we are looking for but close enough. Then it was on to see a Mini home, this turned out to be on a private gravel road, it was deep in the trees down a steep snow covered drive way, we passed fearing we might still be stuck there today.The next home was across town and described as a cute one level home, well maintained and in a lovely quiet neighbourhood. It was only partly accurate. The neighbourhood was quiet! the only thing cute about this place was the ad!. This was a very old mobile home, dating to the 1960-70’s, it had been added onto too and from the outside was well disguised. Inside it became obvious to me it was a mobile, in fact almost identical to the one we bought back in 1972. It is difficult to describe,  you would really have to see it. I had to duck to pass through the doors, it had white carpet on most of the floors, our dogs would have made short work of that!! The most ludicrous thing was the en-suite located in the master bedroom. Along on wall was a sink, walk in shower and a toilet in what resembled a telephone booth. The door folded open but in order to use the toilet it had to remain open. We headed off in another direction and this time did find a very nice little home, but it was priced well above market value, we saw one more dump then returned home exhausted and with nothing really achieved. It was a disappointing weekend but we now know a little better what to expect when we scan the real estate and internet photo ads. We are back on the Island and preparing to start over, I didn’t think buying a house would be so difficult or as exhausting. I guess its just a matter of onward and upward!!!

God Bless and keep reading.