Things that make you go "Huh?"

Update on getting the house with the mountain view deck:

It turned out that the owner of the house owes more than he thought he did on back payments and penalties and interest on penalties etc etc, so the house price actually had to be raised slightly so he would just break even when he sold.

Otherwise the house would have to go into something called a short sell...which is like a foreclosure; the bank has to approve a sale at less than what is owed on the house.

We were notified of these facts and told that if we wanted the house, we would have to re-write our offer at a slightly higher amount.

Before we re-wrote the offer, our real estate agent suggested I take a look at other houses in the same area (Cottonwood Heights...a pricier area than most of SLC) and Holladay (the priciest area.) She bumped the price point of houses to look at by about 25 thousand dollars, noting that we could make a low offer if the owners were desperate to sell.

She said she wanted me to be sure that at the slightly higher price that was now required for the deck view house that I didn't miss seeing any house that might have a better view, or a better house with an acceptible view.

Now I mention that the houses I was going to look at were in the pricier areas.
I mentioned that fact because you should note that we were looking at the least expensive houses (with any kind of view) in the most expensive areas...so it should not be expected that I would be looking at a mansion or anything, and to definitely should expect a house that needed some upgrading.

Now remember as well that our Kingwood house is now priced at $259,000.

The houses pictured below were priced at $325,000.

The door knob up high on the edge of the door was over my head. The dead bolt lock was about shin level. The door knob in the middle was at my belt line, and the knocker was at eye level.

We never did get this door open. Luckily the back door was unlocked....
They had put marble surrounds on the bathtub, and the handles no longer worked because of it.
Oh and the big picture window in the bath? A stunning view of the street in front of the house.
(And people were concerned about the picture window with a back yard garden view at our Kingwood house...)

Taken from the front door of another house. Seven steps up to the kitchen. Seven steps down to the yellow, black and red door to the garage. (Don't you just wonder about that door???)
Fourteen stairsteps to take with each load of groceries... to this lovely kitchen:

This beats another house's kitchen: the garage was right off the kitchen and the window over the kitchen sink had a view of the INSIDE of the garage!

An ugly garage at that!

Nice hard wood floor. Nice different kind of hardwood floor on the fireplace.
This was nicer than another fireplace that had a satellite style clock attached as decoration.
You know how it is when you are relaxing in front of the fire: You need to know exactly what time it is...down to the second; the clock had a sweep second hand.

One house had a full wall bar downstairs with orange formica counter on top of a boomerang curve.
Another house had the same bright orange formica on the kitchen counters.
That one was actually kind of fun because the cabinets were painted two shades of Swedish blue.
Very IKEA modern....done with masterful vision forty years ago.

Most of the houses had great views if you craned your neck, or stood in the driveway and looked up the street. Like this one above.

Or views if you looked carefully between the trees. Of course when the trees in the neighbor's yard got bigger...bye bye view.

Most of the houses smelled funny...
Some of the houses could best be improved by using a bull dozer....

All said and done...we gratefully wrote a new offer at the higher price. If we get it, it will mean paying our Houston mortgage and the lease on this house at the owner's mortgage price but we will manage.
I think we have found a pearl of great price, a perfect very rare gem.

(If you enjoy looking at loony houses, you will LOVE this blog of note called "It's Lovely, I'll Take It! There are a lot of really crazy houses out there!)