We bought a house!

Over the past few months we've been spending a lot of our free time closing on our house which is now officially ours as of the 2nd of April!

It took us a very long time to find this house - we have been looking since Cheryl arrived last summer, and started looking diligently in November. I think Cheryl and I personally walked through ~50 homes, and our real estate agent previewed a lot more than that - finding something we liked at a price we could afford was not easy.

Here's a shot of 110 of the houses our realtor previewed for us:

The biggest issues we had with most of them were lighting, street noise, or age related issues (price and location were all within our bounds since our realtor - Ken Nicholas - did a good job of filtering new listings for us.

Apart from price, the major points we really wanted to nail were:
- Safety: No issues walking, jogging, and biking in the neighborhood at night
- Commute: No more than a 40 min commute for either of us
- Lighting: Lots of natural light
- Proximity to shops: Short walk from restaurants, a bar, coffee, and groceries
- Move-in ready: Doesn't require major work before moving in
- Noise: No major street noise when windows are open
- Size: At least two bed, 1.5 bath

At first look it seems like these points would not too much to ask for, but in our price range it was hard to find a house in Seattle that had even these base characteristics.

Finally we found one though. Here's a shot from the outside:

Here are some internal shots showing the lighting in the main room:

We're likely going to re-paint at least that blue wall sometime soon :) The house is just north of Genesee Park near the Mt. Baker district in Seattle. It's a 3 bed/2.5 bath house with a media room and unfinished basement. The unfinished basement is a decent size and has a patio door that looks out into the backyard. The backyard is relatively small, but since we're a couple of blocks from Genesee Park it's fine with us.

Here's a shot of the unfinished basement - no idea what we'll do with it:

The backyard is a registered "backyard wildlife habitat" which is one reason it has no grass. In the summer it will look a lot nicer as the trees/flowers begin to blossom, but right now it's a pretty muddy place to be.

Backyard:

There are two decks - one off the main level, the other off the master bedroom. Both of these decks overlook Genesee Park, and you can see Lake Washington to the far left. The house is on a small lot, so it's not as big as many of the other housing in the neighborhood, but it's plenty big for us. The master bedroom is pretty small, but we said at the outset in our search that we'd rather a small master bedroom than a small living room space since we don't need that much room to sleep :)

Couple of other thoughts on the neighborhood... It's about a 7 min walk to the Columbia City shops, it's a minute to Genesee Park, and Lake Washington, and the commute for me will be somewhere between 30 and 35 mins. For Cheryl it will be somewhere between 15 and 25 depending on traffic. It's also right across the street from Henry's house which is great because we already know one of our neighbors :) He's lived there for the last year, and recommended the neighborhood to us. The light rail - which is meant to be completed in 2009 - is also a short walk to us. The light rail will travel from the airport, through our neighborhood, and up through the city, so getting downtown will be really easy without a car in the not-too-distant future. It's far enough away from the house that we will not hear any noise from the light rail station as well.

Anyhow, in other news it was Cheryl's birthday this past weekend, and we went out for a great dinner at "The Met" where I had one of the best filets I've had in a long long time - possibly ever - and I've had a lot of steaks... After doing my taxes this year and buying this house it's time to start eating kraft dinner :)

Have fun!
-Aaron