Why House Hunting Sucks

Today was difficult annoying.

as many of you know, Ryan and I are house hunting. We're looking in a specific area and we're trying very hard to find The Perfect Starter Home. 

I know that phrase seems like an oxymoron but i am of the firm (read: idealistic) belief that it doesn't have to be. I am keeping my eye opened for our veritable Diamond in the Rough. 

although recently the emphasis seems to be on Rough and not so much on Diamond. 

Ryan and I watch enough House Hunters and Property Virgins to know that we are going to have to make some compromises during this search for our home. The problem is that it seems like so far everything is a compromise. 

We went into this looking for a three bedroom, two bathroom house in a certain school district which is pretty large and includes at least three towns. So far, we haven't been able to find anything that fits that criteria at all in that area and is also a.) affordable, b.) NOT in the shady parts of those towns or c.) free of a Home Owners Association fee. 

I love that, by the way. The HOA nightmare. 

it makes no sense to me. They build townhomes and condos which are apparently the ideal homes to live in when you're just starting out and yet when you take these HOAs into consideration, you're really spending more than you would be on a SFH (Single Family Home for those of you who don't spend all of your free moments downloading real estate apps to your phones). 

But all of the Single Family Homes in our price range are either clearly haunted or are falling down. 

So compromises, right? okay, here are the things we've compromised on so far:

- price (we started looking in a higher price range and we STILL can't find anything that's decent)

- location (we expanded our horizons to include places far enough away that you can literally see farm animals on your way there...still nothing)

- number of bedrooms (why is it that these 2 bedroom homes are either smaller than what some bums live in OR they are just as high cost as regular houses?)

none of these compromises have yielded us any real results. It's almost as if the House Gods are looking at us and laughing their heads off. 

It seems like in order to get anything even remotely decent in the areas we like we're going to have to magically find $30,000 more. Anyone reading this wanna help me out with that? 

didn't think so. 

And so our search continues and I too will continue to stay up late into the night fanatically scrolling through zillow and trulia and stalking everyhome.net while my son and husband sleep because i am hell bent on finding us a cute and affordable and inhabitable first home. 

we just might be in our 90s when we finally get to move into it.