HHT Day 2

Good morning and welcome to Day 2 of the HHT. Yesterday we looked at about a dozen overpriced houses. The list is shorter today.

I must admit I'm a little shell-shocked. These places we looked at, which have an average price of about $245,000, are old (built, on average, in 1965), in need of work and, in some cases, downright ugly. We found one house that seems to be in move-in condition, but the taxes are ridiculous ($258/month), it has no garage and is in a questionable neighbourhood. And by questionable, I mean it is surrounded by low-income housing which, I'm told, is home to many of the many gang members in Thompson.

I guess it's probably true of any house-hunting trip. You find one house in your price range with a nice upstairs, another with a nice rec room in the basement, another with a beautiful garage and another with a well-landscaped yard. But you just can't find one that puts it all together . . . unless of course you have a good chunk more than a quarter of a million dollars to spend on a house. We don't.

We're not looking for the Taj Mahal here. Just a decent house on a decent street at a decent price with a reasonable amount of space for a family of four. And I'm beginning to believe that, in Thompson, we might as well be looking for the Taj Mahal.

Before I go any further, I should point out that, after 8.5 hours of driving on Sunday, I got about six hours sleep. After a day of house-hunting with two children in tow, I got about 4.5 hours. So if I spell something wrong, or miss a word or sentence entirely, forgive me. But I digress.

The plan today is to look at a few more houses. Two of them we ignored yesterday because they only had two bedrooms on the main floor. We'd prefer three so that we're closer to Sonwun and Sontoo. The third house we plan to see today is . . . you know what? To describe the house for you, I just checked the real estate sheet. There's not a snowball's chance in hell we can afford it. So, maybe we'll only look at two today.

One of the two-bedroom homes we planned to look at today was built in 1969 (40 years old). It's on a 54' X 100' lot and it is 1008 sq ft. Gross taxes in 2008 were $2,919.93. It has oak cabinets in the kitchen, two bedrooms upstairs and one down, two bathrooms and a "fully fenced and landscaped yard." And forgive me for being pessimistic, but I saw several "fully fenced and landscaped yards" yesterday that were, well, mostly fenced and somewhat landscaped. So we'll just have to wait and see. Asking price, by the way, is $249,900.

We'll also be looking at a newer, two-bedroom home today, in a decent neighbourhood. It looks nice on line, but so many of them have. This one was built in 1990, is on a 60 X 120 lot and boasts 1190 sq feet of living space. There are actually 3 bathrooms, including the ensuite, it has a concrete foundations, 2X6 wall construction . . . blah, blah, blah. Asking $259,900. Oh, yeah, and gross taxes of $3444.60 per year.

Anyway, that's what's happening here in the Hub of the North. Stay tuned . . .