And the hunt goes on...

and on, and on, and on...

I have absolutely zero pictures from yesterday.  Why?  Because we spent about 10 hours in the car, driving around Los Angeles/San Fernando Valley looking for houses.

I didn't realize it was going to be so frustrating.

Our house in Ohio wasn't a humongous house by any means.  Nick and I actually decided that it was a little too big for just us.  But at just about 1800 square feet, it was plenty enough room for the 2 of us and our big dogs.  We were a little spoiled with the house, though.  After all, it was owned by an elderly lady who was in a nursing home, and so she was selling the house at a premium.  We got a steal of a deal on the home, and then Nick was able to fix up the house the way we wanted it.  We had a renovated kitchen, 2 renovated bathrooms, remodeled hardwood floors, fresh carpet upstairs, and a huge front and back yard.  We were close to a local park.  And our house was cute-looking!

On the long journey from Ohio, Nick and I discussed our requirements for our house here in CA.
Allison: porch or patio, close to a park (or good sized yard) for the dogs,
Nick: garage parking, "the cute factor" (in other words, when you look at the house, it looks cute)

There were some things that we didn't put on our lists, but they became part of our list as we went along.  We didn't want to be on too busy of a street, we didn't want to have bedrooms that were too small, we had to have SOME yard to let the dogs out in.

Yesterday (Thursday), we went out looking.  Some houses, we didn't even have to put the brakes on the car before driving past them.  Ugly (like, falling apart ugly), next to a gas station, on the busiest street in the neighborhood, in a sketchy neighborhood, etc.  Some of them were Monets--they look okay from far away, but up close they're all messed up (name that movie, anyone?).  One of them we actually liked--then got around to the back of the house and realized that a really bad Bob Villa had gotten his hands on the back of the house and put up a "covered porch", and even calling it that was a stretch.

We were using a paid website that most properties here in the LA area use to put properties on to, and we quickly learned that pictures can be deceiving.  It is like that saying that "the camera adds 10 pounds"?  Well, in this case, it was "the camera adds 10 feet".  In other words, the rooms were a lot smaller than they looked online.  We also learned to avoid houses that say "charming" and "has character".  Inevitably, those are DUMPY houses. :)

By midday, I was completely bummed out.  Out of the 15 houses on our morning list, we had only actually stopped at 5, and only one of them was a remote possibility.  And that one was a $2000/mo., 780 square foot matchbox!

We went to McDonald's for lunch (yummy), and decided to look online again, to see if anything new had come up.  We got a few more houses to drive by, and set out with a new resolve.

One thing you need to understand about the LA housing situation that is unlike Ohio (and maybe other places as well): you will never see a guy dressed up as Mickey Mouse, standing outside of a housing/apartment complex with a sign that says "Free Rent".  The renter's market is so flooded with people that apartments don't need to advertise, or promote amazing deals.  A listing can go up on this renting site, and within a couple of days, they will have 15 interested parties.  To rent a great place here, you actually have to APPLY, just like in a job.  Unless a place is an absolute nightmare, an owner can pick-and-choose who they would like to have living in their property.

One house that we saw online that we were interested in seeing was listed as "rented" a day later!

In the afternoon, we thankfully were able to drive to several more places that we didn't have to drive by quickly.  One we found was especially nice, and a handyman let us in to look at it.  WOW!  Nick and I both said it was a 9.5 out of 10.  Unfortunately, the landlord wasn't taking any applications until Saturday during an open house--which meant that we would be one of a flood of applicants, and we didn't see our chances as very high of being picked.

Bummer.

Coming up later: How We Found Our House

Until the next...