House hunting - Sunday edition

(yes, this is the post I was going write and post yesterday...)So over the weekend we looked at a crapload of houses. 23 in total. Maybe add a .1 to the end since one of the houses we went to already was pending and the open house was closed.We learned a lot about the city. We learned a lot about what we're looking for in a house and in a neighborhood. Our realtor learned a lot about us too. At first it was a shotgun approach and to the problem and we picked stuff that sorta-kinda fit our criteria and price range. We learned from that.We also evaluated our price range. It turns out we might have been too low. A bit of a bump up and the next day we looked at a fresh batch. Much better.We also learned that people can do some really defective things with properties.So, for instance, a bedroom is a room with a closet and a window that can be climbed out of. People pay more for bedrooms since it's one of the top-line search criteria. Ergo, let's up the bedroom count.Let's fill the basement with awkward bedrooms! Sweet! Win!Err... no. You suck. You ruined a perfectly good basement with a bunch of useless walls.Or... let's say you can buy a house with a little space to the side for a garden. Sweet! Let's subdivide the property and build a 14 1/2-foot-wide house in the space! Awesome! Let me say that again: fourteen and a half feet wide.Errr... No. You still suck. More than last time though. Now you're ruining the view of the existing house and you're building a fundamentally defective structure next to it.Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.Money makes people do some weird crap.

- = -

But it's not all bad. We found two definites that we're interested in and a few more that would work. Not too bad for a weekend's worth of looking! :-D