Home-hunting update

[sylvar]

This weekend we looked around for a new home.  We started by looking at craigslist, but gave up when we found far too many spammy and deceptive postings to bother with.  (I'd love to see the owner "literally in a few minutes...bike to...CDC" from there.  Hell, I'd love to see Lance Armstrong do it.  It's 4.7 miles, and "a few minutes" would be 60+ mph, not counting traffic lights.)

Instead, we followed a few bus lines and drove around a block or two from each bus stop.  We found a half of a house that we'd love to get, but we're still waiting to hear if the woman who's first in line wants it enough to actually put down a security deposit.  The same owners also have a unit on the bottom floor of a house, but it's really just a finished basement, and Frank Lloyd Wright would approve of the ceiling height.  (I'd have to stoop, or bang my head, every time I use the kitchen, or any time I wanted to walk from the bedroom to the bathroom or the other room.)

We also went to Candler Park to see a 1/1 right on the main drag, but the house itself is inaccessible and the 1/1 unit is on the top floor up a spiral staircase anyway.

So we'll hope for the half a house, and also keep looking at other places.  A weekend festival blocked our access to most of Inman Park and Little 5 Points, as well as some of Candler Park.  We'll be able to follow bus lines in those neighborhoods after today.

We're also considering houses that we'd share with others (it would be cheaper by several hundred dollars per month) but are hoping to have a home for just the three of us for the first time in our married lives.

Comments

[pappy74.livejournal.com]

not sure if this would help, but while I don't bother with the 'normal' Craigslist postings, I love HousingMaps.com. It's a mashup of those same Cragislist postings with Google Maps... much more informative.

http://www.housingmaps.com/

(Wow. looking at the Live Journal spelling suggestions... 'Google' is not recognized as a word. weird.)

[sylvar.livejournal.com]

I've tried it, but its rent brackets are maddening. I'm willing to pay up to $800/mo for 2/1 or 1/1, or up to $500/BR for a home with more than 2 bedrooms and at least ceiling(bedrooms/2) bathroom(s). That's not easy to find with the housingmaps.com interface.

It's interesting if you want to see what locations people call "Decatur", though.

[technomom]

Oh yeah - "Decatur" is used very liberally, to refer to places inside and outside the Perimeter, on both sides of I-20, you name it. We were originally looking for something in the city limits (for school purposes), and found that some landlords would lie outright about that fact.

[loucheroo.livejournal.com]

*counting on fingers* three?

[sylvar.livejournal.com]

Me, Jodi, and Pied, who is sitting on my armrest watching Nicolas and his dinner companion talking in the front yard before going out for sushi. I think she's hoping for leftovers.

[loucheroo.livejournal.com]

Ah *smile* I thought, for some reason, that you had more than one kitty....

[sylvar.livejournal.com]

Pied's son Guildenstern is now living with Leslie's mom.

[loucheroo.livejournal.com]

Ahh ok! :-) That explains my confusion...

well good luck with the house hunt!

[ekelur.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Reading this makes me even more reluctant about our trip to New York on Monday to look for a place. Between brokers charging several months rent if you go through them and hiding listings on craigslist so you go through them anyway, I am not looking forward to this. In NY you get the illustrious "convertible" 2/1, which means it's really a 1/1 with a shoddy wall dividing a room it isn't supposed to get the second bedroom. And everything is "close to subway!" My foot. Keeping my fingers crossed for that building on Roosevelt Island...