4 more houses

I have now seen 9 houses. Is that normal? I've never bought a house. My parents moved into their house when I was 2 and the apartment was already ready by the time I graduated college, so I've been fortunate enough to not have to worry about finding a place to live.

So today I met with the realtor at 9:30 to go see 4 houses. The first one was close to the other house I really like, maybe a few blocks away. It was pretty cute. The rooms and closets were a nice size, the backyard was adorable, and there was a nice spacious family room that could be turned into a second master bedroom of sorts. It was a converted garage so it was pretty big, and since it had a closet it could be considered another bedroom. It had a window unit, and nice windows facing the backyard. The pantry was a pretty nice size. The kitchen itself was pretty small. The countertop space was about the same size as the apartment's, but it was open instead of a galley. There was a small island with a cooktop and there was a double oven. The shower in the master was quite small, but the other bathroom was fairly nice. I did like it and for the most part everything was up to date, but I wasn't completely sold.

Second house was a mile or so away from the first house (Double Oven), and was also pretty cute. The bedrooms were nice sized, the kitchen was galley and updated with a nice eat in kitchen area with built in china/plate shelves. The fire place was nice as well. It seemed like they hadn't opened a lot of their drawers in a while because they were very hard to open, like they got painted and then never opened again. The yard was cute as well. There wasn't much to fault, except minor cosmetic changes, but I wasn't really feeling the house.

Third house was one my dad and Dave told me was a foreclosure. The outside you couldn't tell but holy moly you could from the inside. Okay, it's not AWFUL but it wasn't great either. The floor was littered with small brown pellets I would assume were rat droppings. They were under all the furniture and in all the corners of the house. There were some dead pickles in there too, which made me super squeamish, even though they were dead. The bathrooms were pretty hideous and really tiny. The garage was CARPETED and had all sorts of junk in there - boxes, about three or four mattresses, a baby seat, among other things. There weren't any holes in the walls or wallpaper ripped up, but it was not well kept. I try to look past the ugliness but this one was just not the one.

The fourth house was really cute. I liked it a lot. It was a two story house with a really nice big open kitchen and a nice sized living room. There was a half bath downstairs and all four bedrooms upstairs. One bedroom was teeny, probably 8x8 or smaller, but it was being used as a study. The two other bedrooms were nice sized and so were the closets. The master was about the same size as my current bedroom and the master bath was really nice with a big tub and a HUGE closet. The backyard was on the smaller side, but was nice. Completely shaded and the back half was landscaped a bit. It was a really cute house. The downfall to this one is that it's in a gated community, which means the homeowners fees are a bit more because the city doesn't pay for street or sidewalk repairs, so that comes out of the higher fees.

I'm still on the prowl, perhaps I'll see more houses next weekend.