TBH I've updated this post since I first made this post lol.

Since we are getting married this September, my fiance and I have begun the house hunting process. I still live at my parents and he lives at his parents, so it's exciting to think that we will soon have a home of our own! But we've also had some painful experiences as well.

The inventory in my area is pretty awful. As in, there's barely anything on the market. Last week, most of them went pending (even those that have been on the market for a good while) because people are settling with one at this point. My fiance and I have looked at about 15 different homes. However, the last one is the one we loved! It's move-in ready. The only area of concern is the deck. It has a few rotting boards that are sagging, but fortunately it's not a large deck so we don't have to replace too much. After a bit of a negotiation war, we agreed on a price and we are currently moving forward with it! We will be closing in mid-April. My parents are against me moving in with him right now since we aren't married yet, which I get. I'll just hang out at the house and drive home to sleep until we get married. That's basically what we are doing currently, only he drives to my house and goes home to sleep.

Story-wise, there have been a few others we liked, but they had horrible basements. One had clearly flooded at one point by several feet even. You could see the damage around the perimeter and on one of the unfinished walls. Another house had foundation problems where it caused the whole house to shift. Some had some problems where the seller was unaware of the cause of the problem (yikes) and others had some significant damage caused by a leaking roof that the sellers didn't bother looking into fixing. Another house looked gorgeous, but then I saw that the backyard was one of the steepest slopes I've seen. It was basically a cliff and it looked like the house would just slide right down the backyard. I was convinced it would be on the market for a while. It went pending in two days.

So Subeta, is anyone else house hunting? Or does anyone have any house-hunting woes or horror stories from the past they'd like to share?

This wasn't me personally looking for a house, but a while back my best friend's parents were thinking of moving, and they were going to a showing so I tagged along. This house was a disaster. First of all, the house was dated and filthy, and the entire family was home -- there was someone sleeping in an upstairs bedroom!

There was pink carpet stained black (never have I been so thankful to have been wearing socks), and the basement was gross, and had a ton of water damage in the bathroom (and god knew where else). Her dad was enthralled with the place while me, her and her mom were like 'what the fuck is this.' Thank god they didn't end up buying, but that was easily one of the grossest houses I've ever seen, and I've seen some bad ones...

That is so bizarre that someone was sleeping while their house was being shown. Let alone the family actually being there. I'd feel kind of uncomfortable if the family was there. You can't speak your opinions as freely. I mean I suppose you could, but you don't want to offend someone either.

Oh goodness, with those problems you listed I couldn't imagine how her dad could've been fascinated with it, haha. Is he a fixer-upper kind of guy?

We also checked out the house I mentioned in my OP. The only real downfall (literally) was the backyard--it was a downward slope and didn't have much flat land. It did have a deck with a staircase down to the ground. It would be a pain to mow. But it had these gorgeous woods further in the backyard, and the property actually claims a small section of the woods, but it made the house so private and peaceful. It's something I could overlook, especially considering it's a slope that goes away from the house rather than towards it. At least water from heavy rain will flow towards the woods rather than the house and foundation.

They also did something dumb with the bedrooms. The two smaller bedrooms are adjacent to each other. However, the homeowner decided they wanted to make one of the rooms bigger. The bedrooms had closets, but they actually took out the wall that separated the bedrooms closets and converted one bedroom's closet into the second bedroom's. They threw in a wardrobe in the first bedroom to make up for the fact that it no longer had a closet. The second bedroom still has placeholders on the ceiling from where the closet was located originally, they simply laid a strip of carpet over the floor where a wall was removed, and they didn't even bother to properly put floor into the 'new' closet. (Essentially, the closet that was room A's now belongs to room B.) Idk what they were thinking, but if we move forward with the house, we will definitely be reverting the closets back to their original state and moving the wardrobe to the basement for extra storage lol.

It was insanely bizarre. I'm not usually one that speaks super freely, but I did at that house to my friend and her mom, haha! Like, it was just so unacceptable. I don't really know what was going through her dad's head... in hindsight he might have just been being polite, but who knows.

Ooh, that sounds nice having the woods nice and close! And shame about the slope, but at least, like you said, it goes away from the house as opposed to towards so you won't have to worry about flooding. Huh. That sounds like a really odd renovation to do... but yeah, switching it back is definitely a good idea.

We actually moved a few months ago too, and the house is really nice (needed a few updates, but nothing major), except they have these weird... columns in the middle of the house near the front door. We think it was supposed to be something 'fancy' to separate the living room from the dining area, but it just takes up space... Thankfully it isn't structural, so my mom has been itching to take them down, haha!

Oh I'm the same, I tend to keep most of my thoughts to myself rather than express them like that lol. But you're right, that could've been the case. Maybe he didn't want to offend the family aha. Though let's be honest, some people just don't care for their house well.

It's a shame with the yard, but tbh I don't imagine either of us using the yard much?? We don't at our parents house anyway lol. I'd use the deck the most in the backyard. We went back to the house again today and noticed that the garage door is a little wonky. I think it's off its hinges on one side of the house. It can be fixed, but another reason to talk down the price aha.

Some people like columns to 'spice it up' or make it 'fancy,' you're right. This house we're looking at does have a column as well at the border of the kitchen and living room (the kitchen opens up to the living room rather than having a wall separating the two so that's nice.) But this column is definitely for structural reasons but we can overlook it. What's weird is when you enter the house and walk straight...there's this short section of the wall (floor to ceiling) that sticks out at a 45 degree angle and is only like, two feet long. Like ??? The fridge door opens into that little random wall. And we don't think it's a structural wall but we don't really know. It's just awkward, but if we removed it we'd have to match the ceiling and linoleum floor in the kitchen and idk if it would be worth the trouble if we pursue this house. But seriously, removing those columns could really open it up!

Yeah, unless you have kids or pets (or dogs rather) yards are kind of over-rated, and having a minimal one will definitely make the up-keep a whole lot easier.

Yeah, people love columns... like, a little too much, haha! When we were looking at houses there were so many with them inside and it's like, 'why?' Also with renovations and potential fixes you'll kind of find that things you thought would be an issue end up being not as big of a deal, at least that's what happened with us. There were a few things where it was like, 'k, that needed to go like, yesterday' but then other things are like, 'yeaaaaah, we'll get to it' hahaha!

I do have a dog currently and he would be coming with me. We don't have kids yet--don't plan on it for at least a few more years either. Mowing would be the only hassle but such is life!

I know, I even notice people wanting columns on HGTV and I'm like...but why. Lol. And that's a good point. I'm not the biggest fan of the carpet, but if we pursue this house, I think we just need to clean it up. It's a vacant house at the moment so the carpet really stands out, but once furniture is inside I don't think it'll be as bad.

The bummer thing is, at least in my area, there is just barely anything on the market currently. My fiance's parents want us to look at 20+ houses, but so far we've looked at 8 (two more tomorrow potentially) and we don't have many other houses we could potentially look at for our price range and preferred area. Between my dad (he's a mortgage loan officer so he knows this stuff pretty well) and our realtor, my fiance currently lives in a large neighborhood. Usually there are a minimum of 30 houses on the market to look at. Currently, there are only two houses just above our price range, but they're both pending already. I'd love to look at a ton of houses, but the market isn't there for that lol.

My husband and I are currently looking. We have a VERY small location window. We walked into one house, and it was obviously some kind of party house. The carpets were SO worn. By worn I mean dark grey with spots missing... it was fairly new carpet, you could tell from the edges. In all of the bedrooms there was a mattress on the floor, and only a mattress. In one of those rooms a sex swing hung from the ceiling... So we go down to the basement... and, I am not kidding, we walked face to face with the wall-o-bras... and in the opposite corner there was a HUGE pyramid of liquor bottles... Part of what enticed me to this house, is the basement went under the garage... so we go in there, and from the I beam there was something dripping... at that point, I was DONE.

Sorry for the late reply! I just now noticed there was another response here.

That sounds pretty terrifying, lol. I can imagine that being a hard sell because people already have trouble looking past some things such as bad taste in wall-color. I would say I'm pretty open-minded, but if that is how it looked visually, I can only imagine what other problems might've lied in that house that you couldn't see (such as plumbing problems...or something.) Have you had any luck since then?

How has the hunt been for you? I'm not sure about you, but where we live, the inventory is terribly low. We've seen 15 homes, including ones we were kind of ehhh about going in, and there are no other homes to see currently. We decided to pass on the one I mentioned earlier because the more we thought about it, the less interested we became due to the work it needed and the backyard. But I found a listing just yesterday and we were fortunate to check it out that same night, and we really loved it. It's towards the top of our budget but it's been the first house we were like 'YES WE LIKE IT' lol. We've had horrible storms the past couple days and truthfully it's been the perfect opportunity to check out the basement, which fortunately had no leaks. We are going back out today so that we can see the backyard and roof in daylight. We're hoping to ultimately make an offer on the house.

Because of the mass exit from Illinois to Iowa, the inventory in Illinois is quite high, but, we have been unsuccessful.

I'm over in Kentucky. I wish we had more to choose from, but it is what it is. I forgot to mention that this is actually the second house we've liked, not the first. The first house was a foreclosed home in a fantastic neighborhood that was definitely underpriced for the neighborhood. It was in great condition too. We made an offer but unfortunately there were 7 other offers as well. Two of the offers were cash offers, above the asking price. So that was obviously a no-go lol. Hopefully things go smoothly with this one, however.

Ah man, how long have you been looking? It is tough when you have a location window; we are in the same boat. I hope you'll find something great soon!

I hope this house works out for you. We get discouraged and then stop looking. Sometimes my husbands job is in danger of moving so we stop looking. We have been looking on and off for 5 years. We have never agreed on anything though.

Do apartment hunting stories count as well? Because my journey to get an affordable place in the city I go to university in took like 2 months, and I was so damn lucky omg.

Yes, of course! I didn't think of mentioning apartments/condos/townhouses etc.

Ohhh looking in the city. My friend did that as well a few years ago and she had a hard time not only looking for an affordable place in the city, but a place that allowed pets as well, since she wanted to get a dog.

Did you get a decent-sized apartment for what you're paying in rent? I always hear stories of how people had to sacrifice some space for the price but I'm sure every situation/location is different.

I had the most insane luck with this place, really.

So the original plan was that a few family friends would move to [university town] as well and we'd take over the flat of one guy's dad. Said family friends decided to stay in hometown and the dad wouldn't sublet to me, and so the rent would skyrocket because old building in the hippest & most expensive suburb next to downtown. I was allowed to stay there for a week for pre-semester classes and apartmenthunting.

The week is over, I've been combing the internet and all newspapers for affordable prices, and my parents visit with a few items I couldn't take with me in my small suitcase on the train. Go grocery shopping, and my dad takes a look at the selling/seeking board and finds someone looking for a new tenant, just a subway station down from where place is. So we go there, talk to the guy, then talk to the association owning the place. Turns out they'd only accept a living community if these people are already friends with me, but I lived in that town for grand total of a week, so nope, and it's 2-bedroom-1-livingroom (really no way to make that anything but a communal space with the setup) and I couldn't rent it alone (too expensive). What they do have is a flat four more subway stations farther out that's being renovated, but it's not finished yet. So we decide that I sublet from the guy still renting until that place is available (6 weeks, 7 weeks would've been the cutoff for place ), and then move there.

It's a nice little 1 room apartment that is below the rent index, and costs me about 9€/square metre in warm rent, which is pretty dang hard to find in this city (we have three universities and a shit ton of private ones). Excellent transit connection (got tram, bus, and subway literally across the street).