At long, long, long last we are home owners in Houston, Texas. Many times during this process I never thought I'd live to see it, but perseverance has won out in the end. We closed today on a new house in Northgate Country Club north of Houston.
In my last post, more than a month ago now, we'd found three potential houses to buy -- all close to each other on a golf course in a country club. All beautiful, brand new, not over our (expanded) budget, and only 35 minutes by bus to my office. Unfortunately all three were close to the airport. My last comment was: "What to do? What to do?"
Well, the answer was: "Buy one, you idiot."
We negotiated what I think is a pretty good price on a brand new home on the course in Northgate CC. It's a single story patio home: big family room, formal dining room, study, breakfast area, beautiful open-plan kitchen, large master bedroom with huge bath and even huge-er walk-in closet, two guest bedrooms each with private bath, covered patio, backyard big enough for a pool. It has tile floors throughout except for shag carpet in the bedrooms and hardwood floor in the study. It has a two-and-a-half car garage; the 'half' is for my golf cart. The clubhouse is a mile away with its restaurant, swimming pool and tennis courts. The park-and-ride for the bus into town is about 10 minutes and the bus ride itself about another 35. Walmart, Home Depot, Kroger, and Walgreen's are just down the street.
Our plan for the rest of the week is: refrigerator delivered tomorrow (Tuesday) plus we do some cleaning and go buy a washer and a dryer; household goods delivered on Wednesday -- hopefully without mold after being in a container for four months; clean the apartment and move out on Thursday; get TV, cable, and Internet hooked up on Thursday; play golf on Friday!
A picture is worth 1000 words. Here's a link to a FaceBook album that shows what we've gotten ourselves into: Our New House
Assuming we get Internet access established quickly, I promise to start posting to this blog more regularly again. I quit because frankly, I figured you were as tired hearing about our house hunting problems as I was tired writing about them. Also, my ever superstitious wife claimed that I was jinxing us by letting anyone know what we were doing. I hate to feed her paranoia, but it looks like she was right!
