The House that Circumstance Built

The new agent we connected with through the really far away agents turns out to be everything one could possibly hope for in a real estate agent!  She gets back to us quickly, she does the things she says she's going to do, she updates us on things that take a while, and she actively works with the other people (like financial people) who are part of the process instead of making us always the middle people.  It's sooooo good!

Melissa's set us up with a personalized real estate search forum like Adam did.  In fact, it's the same software.  I've been checking it daily.  There's not so much in the way of small homes, big land, which is sad.  There's one place out in Descanso.  I don't like the look of the home at all.  It was built in the 20s, but instead of looking charming, it just looks cold.  And it turns out that it's not able to have a regular mortgage because it's unlivable as yet.  Something about peeling paint, a ceiling that's half a foot too low, and ... something else.  Honestly the pictures make it look like it has bigger problems that those.

However, it could have enough land that's already cleared in the right orientation for an earthship.  Maybe.  But first we need to find out if we could get a 203K loan to finance the deal.  If you're not in the know, a 203K is a loan you get for improvements that need to be made on a property.  Once the improvements are done, it reverts to a regular mortgage.  There's been much going around with Melissa and Cory (the loan dude) about if this is feasible for us.  I figure we might as well see if it's feasible before even seeing it, though frankly it might be less of a PITA to see it and find out if we're interested enough to keep nudging all the people.

Following the idea that maybe we don't find exactly what we want right now, but perhaps we find a home where our payments for a mortgage would be comparable to our rent and we'd then be happier with a home and a place where the dog could take care of his own business, we saw our first home with Melissa yesterday.

This home is in Lemon Grove, a place that sounds extremely appetizing and yet... lacks in some regards, which sucks to say because it has a large population of folks of color and that is certainly not why it lacks.  It's more about how Lemon Grove is laid out.  It's like people settled there and didn't make any particular plans and let the space grow and develop organically.  Which is the way many places develop and frankly, it's a little metastatic.  For instance, this home was right across the trolley tracks, which is super for getting to downtown SD.  However, it also means that the driveway is blocked by traffic waiting to cross the trolley line much of the time.  And you can't park on the side of that street either. 

Another example: there's a grocery store just a little bit away from this home.  Perfect!  Right?  Well, sure, but it's not only over the trolley tracks, but also across a main street through an intersection that connects maybe 16 lines of traffic and basically, you can't walk there.  It would be like a game of frogger.  You'd have to get in your car and drive the 3 minutes to the silly store!

Eff those new characters; I still like the 16 bit frog

Chris and I stayed in Lemon Grove when we came to SD to look for a place to live.  So I have a soft spot for it.  But I can say, even with our limited experience, if there was a plan when it was set out, no one followed it!

The weird thing is that this home was exactly the same.  There must have been some original structure and then... they just kept adding on with no particular foresight until you ended up with a number of mostly solitary rooms connected by a misshapen space with a cursory closet and some carpet that someone must have spent hours measuring and cutting. 

The space very much reminded me of learning to square dance in the second grade.  Have I mentioned that before?  Probably.  This is what happens when you grow up deep in the countryside of New England in a town with one yellow line embellished road, one slowly blinking yellow light at the school house, and frankly, more horses than humans.  These rooms came together like us second graders trying to make a contra dance star, which looks like this: 

...but for second graders ends up looking like a tangle of last night's spaghetti.  Of course I failed to get a picture of the awkward space, but I don't know what I'm going to write while I'm looking at the things.

The home has two front doors, one going into the kitchen, the other going into a... main room of some designation.  Or perhaps two side doors as the front yard went off the other side of the house?  I guess it depends on your perspective.  

The kitchen was very spare and also very blue.  I really liked the sink in the corner because I've always appreciated a window to look out while doing kitchen sink things (which are often unpleasant and it's nice to be distracted).  Because the sink was in a corner, it included a small rise up to the windows that would be great for plants and for a certain cat to plant his arse upon.

Many kitchens are narrow and this one was no exception.  The main issue was that it had near to no space for making food.  At one point there was another structure present.  Who knows what it was.

You can see where it was with the line toward the bottom left

But because the kitchen is so narrow, it seemed to us that there might not be a good way to remodel the space such that anything more useful was done with it.

The description of the home on the site said it had an open floor plan.  It didn't by my definition.  Maybe it was just thinking that this passthrough between the kitchen and front room of some designation constituted open.

I would like to take a moment to give a shout out to the carpeting of the living room in the house I grew up in.  It was perhaps a little more 70s golden than this, but pretty close.

May I also take a moment to speak about how much I hate wood paneling such as this?  This home had a little of it and ... I hate it so much that I can't even like real wooden planks on walls.  I once had to live in an apartment that had this in the living room and I have nightmares about it.  That said, this wasn't the worst fake wood paneling I've ever seen.

We moved into what would probably be bedrooms from the awkward spaghetti space beyond the door to the left.  We had another moment of extreme 70s carpet.  I have literally found this exact carpet on the Google.

I couldn't get a great picture of the tone because of the light

Here's the better pic from Google:

Ah, all that mossy barf color

So, what was under all this passé carpeting?  Well, it was actually fairly nice, thin, wooden slats.  Like, you probably could have brought up all the carpeting, pads, tack strips and refinished the floor, although possibly the subfloor wasn't insulated and maybe you'd be too hot or cold at some point in the year.  

This bedroom opened up to a sun room, which seems to be a porch that was covered in with windows.  Melissa warned us that it was quite possible this room was not permitted and that could foul up financing.

From here you could go out to the back yard and detached garage.

I was well happy with the garage

The yard was odd.  The initial pictures on the website looked like there was quite a large yard on at least one side of the home.  This is absolutely not true, which is a good reason why you must go look at a property.  I am not sure how the picture did that, but sadly, there's little ease for the dog here, nor play space.

It had nice potential for growing beds

Back inside, through the spaghetti space, another bedroom is clearly where they used the rest of the kitchen paint.  Or visa versa.

And between the two bedrooms was the bathroom, which I was prepared from the online pictures to not like; but honestly, I liked it as much as the rest of the home, which is to say, not much.  Still, I am a fan of green and this bathroom had that.

We discussed with Melissa another property we'd asked her about seeing.  She'd emailed us a report on the property that detailed the many termites it had as well as the cracked foundation.  We'd decided not to see it but we changed our minds and will see it next week.

And yet, as we drove away we got into a conversation about how much these homes cost and, given the usual 20% down payment, if we bought a home like these, would we have enough money left to buy land?  Because these are not homes that would provide us what we ultimately want.  

So, we are confused.  Yes, it's good to get in a better living position, but not if it undermines our ability to get what we actually want later.  And as a home owner you can't declare when some home emergency will need you to invest $10k at a drop of a water heater.  

Altogether, we will not be buying this home.  It's too far from what would make us comfortable and what we need in a home to risk diverting money we might be able to use later for something more in line with what we really do want.