Stay at Home Moms

Xp: house hunting help me decide


We are house hunting and someone out bid us on our dream home. The inventory for the rest of the houses in my desired town is slim. Out of the houses that remain there is one on the intersection of a highway and busy street with lots of traffic ( mini mall across the st), another house is in different city than we desired which has high crime and bad schools but reasonable priced housing, another house is in major need of fixing up ( we would probably need 6 months to fix and I want to move ASAP. Which would you choose?

Re: Xp: house hunting help me decide

  • The fixer upper, hands down.

    Our first house was a major fixer, on a busy street near a busy intersection, and in a relatively high crime area (I even found a crack pipe in the yard once). Of those three things, what caused the least worry was fixing up the house.

    You can make a house super nice eventually, but there's no way to change the location or neighborhood.  We lived in a construction zone and even did dishes in the bathtub for a few months, it's possible. 

    Married 07.07.07. Mom to 3: Ruby 11/08 and Oliver & Austin 12/11
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  • Yeah, keep waiting or fixer upper if you like that kind of thing.  The market in our town was going crazy because of a bunch of new hires at the U. and we were just bidding on everything.  We're happy with our purchase, but then a couple days later two houses--one in a neighborhood we like a little better and one in our neighborhood but on a beautiful park--came up.  When the market is good, people decide to sell.
  • roxy_jjroxy_jj member

    imageLalaMama81:
    I would keep waiting. If you'd have to wait 6 months to move into the fixer upper, why can't you just wait to see what comes onto the market?

    I agree with this.  If you don't have to, don't rush into buying a house.  

    Ms. A  - 2007, Mr. C - 2009
  • imageLalaMama81:
    I would keep waiting. If you'd have to wait 6 months to move into the fixer upper, why can't you just wait to see what comes onto the market?

    These are my thoughts as well.  One thing you can't change about a house is location so that would immediately rule out the first two.   I would keep waiting for something better to come along.  

    11/2010 Diagnosed with PCOS 
    10/31/11 M/C at 9 weeks
    1/12/13 DD was born
    4/9/16 DS was born 
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  • When we were recently house hunting my top priority was schools. We had similar choices and we picked the fixer upper. I'm really happy with our choice. We got an awesome deal because it needed work and after putting 30k into (we bought it knowing it needed this much work it wasnt a surprise) it is really amazing. I got to redo the whole thing from the floors up. It was about a month of work but allowed me to make a shell our dream home. Now our home has almost doubled in value and we are in a great spot. You can change whatever you want on the inside you cannot change your location once you buy.
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  • 2-Step2-Step member
    Easily the fixer. You can fix a house, and six months is not that long compared to how long you will live there. You can't move a busy street or improve a neighborhood/schools and both of those things would be deal breakers for me. 
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