Smoke gets in your eyes

We’ve been looking at houses for sale for the last six weeks and have seen between 20—30. Yesterday we saw our first home owned by smokers.

That’s a pretty big change, I think. I remember when my ex-husband and I were house hunting in the late 80s/early 90s, many of the homes we looked at were owned by smokers, including the one we bought. In that situation, we had to rip out all the carpet and pads, paint all the walls and remove the faux paneling in one long hallway in order to get rid of the smell.

I’m not sure the smell in the house we saw yesterday can be mitigated so easily. The sellers had a note in the kitchen saying they were moving after 46 years of living that house. That’s a lot of smoke in the walls, carpets, drapes, and wallpaper. It’s a shame too, because the floor plan was pretty interesting and the price was really good (although not good enough what with the smoke).

But think of the ratio – one home owned by smokers in the 20 to 30 homes we’ve looked at. That’s a real, positive change in my opinion.

And the winner is . . .

Last night we checked out the property I mentioned in yesterday’s entry. This unit is a penthouse unit and is on the fourth floor; you climb five flights of stairs to get to it because the building’s entrance is a full flight of stairs above the street. I will say the kitchen was fantastic, and I really liked it a lot. And the apartment was very bright because in addition to the windows, someone had put in a lot of skylights.

But all those skylights limit what can be done on the roof (the unit has roof rights, which is considered a selling point). Boston code requires that any roof structure be set back three feet away from the edge of the roof at all points. Because of the large number of skylights, we’d have had space for at most a four by four deck space. To us, the juice just wouldn’t be worth the squeeze. So combined with the unit being further south than we really wanted to be, plus the huge number of stairs required to get to the apartment, plus no outdoor space since the roof was useless for renovating—we decided against that unit.

As we hiked down the stairs (why did I wear my cute Van Eli sandals?), Kent and I briefly touched base just to make sure we were in agreement, and we were. By the time we reached the second floor, we’d told Paul we were ready to make an offer on 3 Claremont Park.

Now here’s another interesting difference between how real estate is handled in Boston compared to Kansas City. We still have not seen a seller’s disclosure form because apparently those are not shared until an offer is received—the buyer just puts in a contingency about the disclosure. And we don’t know the owner occupancy rate for the building yet—another item that is done after an offer is made. Finally I know if we’d told our realtor in Kansas City that we were ready to make an offer, she’d have hauled out her paperwork on the spot. Paul smiled and said he would pull everything together the next morning.

We had dinner at Stella’s last night. Paul said it was good and he was not wrong. Of course this morning I’m wishing we hadn’t split a bottle of wine. Running will not be much fun.

Updates and changes

So we’ve made a couple of decisions, although not the final decision of which unit to buy.

First, 114 Chandler is off our list. The living space is just too small and that’s something that cannot be fixed. I still love the two floors and the extra half bath but I think we’d all go nuts trying to cram desk space and eating space and living space in the tiny living room.

Second, 31 Concord Square is also off our list. I told Kent last night that while I love the apartment, especially all the light and the really nice kitchen, at the end of the day I think that apartment would be a gilded cage. He got my point immediately, and agreed 100%

3 Claremont remains on our list. We checked it out again last night when there was less natural light, and it was no darker than it had been when we’d seen it Saturday morning. That surprised us both. We love the layout and we really love that it's just a bit bigger.

We have one final potential contender we will look at this evening. Hopefully this link will stay up and you can take a peek at the listing details. I found another site that does show pictures but requires registration. This site doesn't show the pictures but take my word for it, the space looks amazing. We don’t especially like the location since it’s a little further south than we’d prefer to be, and we definitely would prefer not to be on the 4th floor. However this unit does come with a parking space and also roof rights (that’s a fancy way of saying we’d need to spend money to make the roof into deck/outdoor living space).

House Hunters

We love to watch the show House Hunters on HGTV. Right now I think we are in the show, or at least the at-home version of it. For those of you who’ve been following along in fascinated horror as we look for a place to buy—we’ve narrowed down our options to three choices. I have floor plans for all three, so you can take a look and tell us what you think.

We started by figuring out what was important to us and then sort of ranking those features because we knew we probably wouldn’t get everything. You never really do when you buy a house, there are always trade-offs. So our pie-in-the-sky wish list included a bath and a half, laundry in the unit, some sort of outdoor space, and two levels of living. For anyone familiar with the Boston real estate market (within Boston, not the suburbs), I’m sure you are already shaking your head at us. But as someone we knew in Kansas City was fond of saying, “A closed mouth don’t get fed.”

I'll start by saying all three have laundry in the unit and all three also have some outdoor space. Now for the details:

One property does have all four features—114 Chandler. We saw this unit during an open house, and really liked it a lot. However, it’s the smallest of the three on our list (just 671 square feet), and the living space is small while the bedroom is large. We’d rather have those proportions reversed because really, who needs a bowling ally as a bedroom? On the plus side, we love the deck, we love that the half bath is on the upper level, and we love that the unit isn’t all garden (aka basement) level. On the down side, the kitchen needs to be updated, as does the full bath. However, this unit is the cheapest, with a listing price of $419,000. Yes that one is the cheapest . . .

We also really like 31 Concord Square. This second floor unit is in a brownstone overlooking Concord Square itself, which is a perfect example of the Victorian style of neighborhood common in Boston in the 19th century. Although this unit doesn’t have two levels, and lacks the extra half bath, we do like that you can get to the bathroom either from the living area or the bedroom, plus it’s got in-unit laundry. It’s also a little bit bigger than the Chandler unit at 683 square feet. The deck is pretty big, but since it’s the top deck on the building, it doesn’t get any shade. That can be good in the winter but possibly not so good in the summer. Plus you have to go through the bedroom to get to the deck. The kitchen has been recently updated but the bathroom needs some love. This one is the most expensive of our three choices and is listed for $499,000.

Finally, there’s 3 Claremont Park. Here’s where the variables get tricky. This unit is by far the largest (1038 square feet), and has a huge patio (about 400 square feet). I love the floor plan because the largest amount of living space is where we’d need it—in the living room and the dining nook, not the bedroom. As with Concord Square, there’s only one bathroom but you can get to it from the hallway or the bedroom, plus it has in-unit laundry. However, this is a true garden level unit which means the bedroom is mostly below street grade and has just one small window. The living room has two windows, but they don’t get lots of direct light (one window is below a deck for the unit above it), and the dining nook has an exterior door which has windows in it. But make no mistake, this isn’t a sun-drenched unit by any means. We do think the current owner did himself no favors by the paint colors he’s chosen, and he definitely shorted himself on ceiling lights. Both of those issues are fixable, but there’s no way to add more natural light. The kitchen is up to date and the bathroom is fantastic. This unit lists for $495,000.

The homeowner association fees are about the same for all three units; taxes are not because they are based on size, but they aren’t crazy out of line. We can rent a parking place right by the unit on Claremont for $175 a month (which is a great price); parking isn’t available nearby for the unit on Chandler so you are talking street parking which means you have to move it for the days when the city does street cleaning.

So what do you think?

Banished

I banished Eddie to the green pet carrier at 11:30 last night. Enough was enough.

We looked at about seven properties yesterday evening. The very first one we saw a week ago remains on the list, along with this parlor level apartment, and this penthouse level apartment. We'll look at more on Saturday.

Progress!

We had a real breakthrough last night for the kitties. We slept until almost 7 AM—that may not sound like much but you have to realize that since we got here last Saturday, the cats have gone bonzo nuts around the apartment at 5 AM, especially Eddie with his thunder-kitty paws and his penetrating yowl. So yes, we were ecstatic to sleep in a bit this morning. Of course we may have helped them settle down more by staying up a little later last night, watching Stargate (we have the entire series on DVD, why yes I am a geek). As you can see, all three kitties found their way to me.

Yesterday Kent and I spent a couple of hours walking around the South End looking at apartments for sale. We are almost certain that’s the neighborhood we want to live in, partly because of the neighborhood, a lot because of the real estate prices (they are not nearly so insane as the prices in, say, Back Bay) and also because we like the diversity we see there. I found a neighborhood association that had some interesting information about the area; you can also read more about the South End including information about the bowfront row houses here.