More House Hunting

Sunday morning Brett and I drove to the Ontario airport to catch our flight to Sacramento.  We got to our gate and, funny thing, it said the next plane (at the wrong time) was flying to San Jose.  Hmmmm.  Maybe they changed the gate?  We checked the board and our flight did not exist.  Brett was pacing in circles around me by this point.  I looked at my boarding pass... whoops!... we were supposed to be boarding a plane in Sacramento, not Ontario.  I totally flip-flopped the flights.  Brett's jaw got very tight.  In fact, his whole face got tight.  I don't think there were any wrinkles anywhere.  The smile lines were gone for sure.  Fortunately, the ticket agent (I love Southwest) was very nice and got us on the next flight to Sacramento.  I told her she saved my marriage.  Brett tried to smile but he was still decompressing.

We went to Sacramento to look at one house in particular although we had four on our list.  One had sold the night before so that brought it down to three.  We went to the "particular interest" house first.  It was advertised as great horse property, in an equestrian community that has miles of trails within the community and links to trails going to Lake Tahoe, Canada and Mexico.  The house was one story and just the right size for two people with occasional visits from children and friends.  It was also priced low enough that we could make an offer without selling Aspen Meadows first.  The kitchen was clean, bright and cheerful.

 In fact, the whole house was clean, bright and cheerful.  I loved the house.  The trouble was that it was sitting on a very steep slope.

There were stairs to get into the house from the garage, the deck and the front door.  You could not get into the house without going up a long flight of stairs.  The "pasture" was slope so steep and overgrown that you could hardly walk it.

The only horse amenities were a run-in shed and a small tack room.

We spent over an hour at the property trying to make it work.  There was no place to park a horse trailer or Brett's utility trailer.  There certainly was no room for an arena.  We threw in the towel and moved on to the next house.

This house was at the end of a quiet road that climbed a sloping hill.  They did not advertise as "horse property" but the kitchen was to die for and it was enough land that we thought we could make it work.  Brett loved the house.  Me, not so much.  The kitchen was gorgeous but the house felt chopped up to me, split between three floors.  But, the views.... awesome!

The land sloped gently down from the top of this hill.  We could have made it work and it would have been beautiful.  However, the house had been on the market only three days and there had already been 15 people to see it.  The price was high enough that we couldn't swing it until Aspen Meadows sold.  I'm sure it will be sold to someone else within the week.

The last house was, again, horse property.  By the time we got there in the middle of the afternoon, it was pushing 90F.  There were ten acres on this property.  Plenty of room for horses and pasture, right?  Wrong.  The house was fine but the land consisted of an acre or so of usable ridge-top that dropped steeply down on both sides.  The usable land was being used by a hodgepodge of garden, orchard, vineyard and waaaay in the back at the bottom of the property a postage stamp sized area for two horses.  Definitely not.

Our realtor dropped us off back at our car.  I'll tell you about the rest of the evening in my next post.