House Hunt

On Monday night (February 6th) after Mr. Hunt had already flown to Austin, I sat at work (and all day that day) looking for houses to rent.

We don't know the exact length of time we will be in Texas so we dont want to buy a house not knowing how long we will be there. Plus we still own our house here in Charlotte. I will be back with the decisions about what we will do with the house here.
So since I don't know much about Austin, or Texas in general I decided to download the Zillow.com app on my iPhone. It was very helpful because I could tell it how many rooms, how many baths, and my price range. I could also choose what neighborhood, what square footage, or the age of the house, but I didn't want to narrow it down that far.

What we were looking for:

• At least three beds
• At least two baths
• In Cedar Park Texas

I have a good friend named Chris (you might know him as the father of my sweet little flower girls) who is from Austin Texas so the first thing I did was call him so he could tell me some good neighborhoods. That's how we decided on Cedar Park.
So after looking through all 74 houses that came up after I put in all the requirements, I had about 16 saved to my favorites. I then gave Mr. Hunt my user name and password so that he could see them and narrow some down. Sure enough he crossed off a few so we were left with 12 houses on Monday afternoon.
On Zillow each house has an agent that you can email if you are interested in the house so I started with the first three. I didn't want to do them all at once because I knew it would be crazy trying to keep all 12 houses and their agents separate.
As the day went on, some of the agents emailed back to say that the house was already rented out and they just haven't taken it off Zillow. I was starting to get stressed and annoyed because I only had Tuesday (the next day) and Wednesday to look at houses. Plus the fact that I had to somehow coordinate meeting several different agents for each individual house without knowing the area whatsoever or knowing how long it will take me for each house.
That's when a lady names Laurie emailed me. She said that the house that I originally asked her about was already rented out but if I gave her my requirements then she would send me some choices. About an hour later, I had a list of about 50 houses for rent with my requirements. After going through all 50 I was so surprised and super excited to see the other houses that I had on my list on her list. I guess I really didn't have to go through a different agent for each individual house. So I emailed her right back and gave her the 9 that I was still interested in and we set a time to meet the next day (Tuesday) at 3pm.

On Tuesday after I got to Austin and had some (birthday) lunch with Mr. Hunt I got a call from Laurie saying that the houses were going fast. Out of the 9 houses that I gave her the night before, only 3 were left! WHAT? What the heck is going on in Austin. Again, stress sank in, but we had to keep going.
I really wanted to take pictures of the houses that we looked at, but I wasn't allowed. The pictures that are on here are from Zillow.com. Only two were left online when I wrote this post. The other two houses you will hvae to picture in your head!

House #1: BEAUTIFUL HOUSE! Great neighborhood. Nice hardwood floors. Beautiful kitchen. Living, dining, and family room. Smaller bedrooms. Fenced in backyard. Ready to move in. Only problem was that they were on the fence about the fur babies. Usually when you rent there is a pet deposit (between $300-$500) so that they could repair any damage done by the pet. If no damage is done, when you move out you get your deposit back. The pet deposit is given when the house deposit (usually one months rent) is given. Pretty simple. At first the home owner said no dogs, then they said double pet deposit (so instead of $500 he wanted $1000) which we highly considered seeing that the house was very nice. Then out of the blue he changed his mind again. He said he wanted a double the house deposit (so instead of $1800 and $500 or $1000 pet deposit, he wanted $3,600 deposit). And that's when we walked right out of that house. This home owner is stupid! He wasted our time. He just needs to decide if he will allow pets or not and just stick with it.

House #2: Great neighborhood (better than #1), smaller house, cute kitchen, fenced backyard, front loader washer and dryer included, yard maintenance included, two pools. Besides the house just being so cute and homey feeling, Mr. Hunt was sold on the yard maintenance included (we aren't very good at yards yet), and I was sold on the front loaders, but we didn't want that to make our decision. We decided that we liked this house better than #1 anyway, and off to #3 we went.

House #3: Good neighborhood (still #2 was better), horrible yard (weeds everywhere), fenced in backyard, house was not clean so honestly I dont really remember much more about it. Plus there were about 5 cats running around and Mr. Hunt is allergic to cats. I love cats, but these cats were scary looking and following me around. The biggest red flag was that there was a "SOLD" sign in the empty lot next to the house. This means they will be building a house there soon. I didn't want to deal with that. So #2 was still the winner so far and we were off the see #4

House #4: This was a little further away from Mr. Hunt's work than the others, huge house (bigger than our 2,400 square foot home now), awesome backyard with fence and beautiful mature trees and no house behind it, ugly kitchen. This house reminded us alot of our house that we own here in Charlotte. It had a formal living and dining, a family room, a master, three other beds, and a loft. We talked aloud about this house because (besides the kitchen) it was pretty. We decided that the only reason now that we go upstairs in our current house was to go to our bedroom to sleep. We never use the other rooms or the loft. This house had the master downstairs so we thought that they upstairs would never be used. We didn't want to pay for that large of a house if we weren't going to use it.

After seeing the 4th house (the first three I picked and #4 the agent picked), we decided we didn't want to really see anymore that day. It was already 7pm and we wanted to go get something good to eat for Mr. Hunt's birthday. Only problem was that these houses were going so fast and Laurie suggested that we pick that night. Out of all the houses, we loved #2 the best. We decided that we would just go with that one. If we decided a year from now that we didn't like it or we needed more room, than we could move. We are only renting. So we said YES TO #2!!!!!

Now I am in love with the house. Actually, I'm in love with the house that I have in my memory. I get my front loaders and Mr. Hunt gets his yard maintenance. I cant wait to show you the rest of the house, and how I will decorate!


Love,
House Huntin Fool