After months of house hunting, this is just the right house that we are looking for. This house got my immediate "affection" when we dropped by at its open house. It has 2 car garage, 4 bedrooms, 2 full baths, a formal living and dinning room, a large kitchen, with all new stainless steel appliances, opens to family room. The most attractive part of this house is its unique interior design. The lovely golden orange floor tiles that are so warm and inviting. The ceiling at the dinning room and family room are very beautiful. All fans are fanciful to match the color scheme of the wall and the flooring. According to the broker, this house was bought by one rich man who remodeled the whole house as gift to his daughter, but she did not like it. ( Hmmm.. some people could be so lucky !)
The whole idea of getting a house aroused after we are sure that we like Sarasota and believe that we will be here till we retired from work ! In the meantime, this is the right time to take the advantage of declining housing market. Florida is among one of the states with high ranking in unemployment and foreclosure.
Since we have the desire to buy a house, we started to drive around housing community during weekends. While I was shipping at garage sale from one place to another, Ah Don would hang around the nearby area , looked for "House For Sale" sign; In the evening, after dinner, we would browse through most of the MSL & house sale listing online. We marked those units that we were interested for our Agent- Laura to arrange for the viewing after office hours.So, for over 3 months we were busy visiting one house to another. After the visit, two of us would sit down to discuss and analyse the "Plus" and "minor" factors to narrow down the list of houses that we would like to have a second visit. I think we could have visited more than 59 houses !!!!
The whole idea of getting a house aroused after we are sure that we like Sarasota and believe that we will be here till we retired from work ! In the meantime, this is the right time to take the advantage of declining housing market. Florida is among one of the states with high ranking in unemployment and foreclosure.
Since we have the desire to buy a house, we started to drive around housing community during weekends. While I was shipping at garage sale from one place to another, Ah Don would hang around the nearby area , looked for "House For Sale" sign; In the evening, after dinner, we would browse through most of the MSL & house sale listing online. We marked those units that we were interested for our Agent- Laura to arrange for the viewing after office hours.So, for over 3 months we were busy visiting one house to another. After the visit, two of us would sit down to discuss and analyse the "Plus" and "minor" factors to narrow down the list of houses that we would like to have a second visit. I think we could have visited more than 59 houses !!!!
Altogether, there were 3 houses that we really liked before encountering this house. The deal did not go through, They were all wonderful & nice. The house No 1 is till my favour house. Unfortunately, the owner misquoted his asking price. He was not aware that the listed price was not adequate to settle his mortgage. The House No 2 is just 2 blocks away from our present house, regrettably, we were late to make the offer, so the house went to other buyer. It is a corner unit, with bigger yard..... Now, whenever we drove pass the house I wanted to see who is the smart buyer ????? The house is almost $35,000 less than what we paid for this house !!!!! The house No 3... Oh! ! this is another house that perfectly match with our "dream". The house is so nice and beautiful in its design and layout. There is a cosy swimming pool as bonus to the listing price.!!! Now! you may ask why didn't we go for it ????? Well, we viewed the house on Saturday afternoon, thinking that we could contact the agent to submit our offer On morning. Before Ah Don could related to her of our keen interest, she told us that the house has been sold and there were 5 other buyers lining to offer should the 1st buyer did not get through the deal !!
Anyway...... we are happy with this house. We completed the whole transaction in less than 3 weeks and moved in on 9th October 2009.
One week before moving, we had our garage sale at our office's car park to sell those extra stuff we don't need and not easy to sell at eBay. On that Saturday, the weather was fine in the morning; we had fair amount of people came to our garage sale. When the sun was getting too warm toward noon,we closed the sale by 1pm. .. Ha ha ha.... I manged to make a little money but Ah Don wanted to claim for his time and the gas for his transportation! I bet he forgot that I am his wife and what is his is mine !!!
So here are some pictures of our new place
The Exterior look of the house
The Timber panel at Ceiling
Part of the view of Family Room where our big TV will be here
The Lanai looking into the matured trees and plants
The view From Family Room
The Cloud in the master bedroom
Kitchen with Cherry Wood Cabinets ,GE Profile appliances, Granite counte-tops
The Slates to the bathroom at Master Bedroom
The Golden Orange Floor Tiles which we are not sure of its name!
We are still in the process of opening boxes. Most of the things have got the places to go..... but there are still plenty of boxes left in the garage ..........
