Hi everyone.
Sorry I've gone MIA lately.
So we just got back this Friday from our house hunting trip. I am beyond worn out. My project for work ended in Sept, so we had a monstrous final week on the project with several work nights until midnight. My boyfriend and I then left that Friday to drive to Orlando. The drive turned out to be pretty brutal, about 18 hours in all so we spent one night at a hotel on the road each way.
I am so wiped out. It wasn't your typical vacation either, we spent 18+ hours on the road to get there, then spent tons of hours each day in the car driving around neighborhoods and visiting houses.
To get immediately to the point, we do not have a house yet. We did put a bid on one, we bid asking price minus 5k in closing costs. I am not sure what the winning bid offered, but it was over asking.
So this is what our schedule ended up being:
Left KC at 2 on Friday Oct 2. Stayed overnight somewhere in Tennessee.
Arrived in Orlando around 10 pm Saturday night. We stayed at a new La Quinta near Sea World on I drive. It was very nice and the rooms were fantastic, we had a nice sitting area and a desk to do our house hunting. We chose La Quinta because we also brought our dog. He is getting older and would much rather do a long road trip and stay near us in a hotel than be in a noisy and chaotic kennel. Last time we left him he did not eat and lost about 5 pounds (he is only 32) and was very skinny.
Sunday morning we talked to our realtor and discovered that out of 30+ houses on our house hunting spreadsheet that we had worked on 5 days previously, only 2 were available.
That was a nice 'welcome to the Orlando housing market'.
So on Sunday we slept in a bit to recover and then went to see a house in Minneola first. The house itself was nice, but we didn't like the neighborhood at all. It was about a 40 minute drive to the parks. We didn't want to be that far away unless the house was fantastic and we just didn't like the neighborhood.
Next we went to see a house in the 4 corners/Champion's Gate area. They were asking $284 for the house. It was only 1621 square feet and seemed small and underwhelming for that high price, so we passed on that one as well. It did have a screened in pool but no fence, and we'd really like a fence for our dog and privacy.
That was it for the day with houses and it was starting to get dark, so we went to Disney Springs to get some dinner and go shopping. Springs was pretty crowded, we went into Uniqlo and the Co-Op then ended up doing a mobile order from D-luxe Burger. The food was just ok and we were pretty tired so we got back to the room and went to bed early.
Monday morning we had no houses to look at, so we spent the morning driving around and checking out neighborhoods. We focused on Kissimmee. We discovered that we don't like most of the Kissimmee neighborhoods. We liked the Eagle's Point area and that was about all. We also went to the Hunter's Creek area. We liked a lot of those streets, but the houses there are usually above our budget (300k max).
Since we were tired of being in the car and we had no houses to see, we spent the rest of the day at Epcot. I can write more about the park days and include pics later.
We were back to our hotel around 9 and to bed early again. We woke up around 6 on Tuesday and drove out to Clermont. Once again, we didn't find too many neighborhoods that really leapt out at us. We did like Eagle Ridge and Orange Tree. Even with the eventual bypass that will be built to lessen the drive time to the parks, Clermont seemed far away and didn't jump out at us. We did go to the downtown area just to look around. One of our favorite houses was in downtown Clermont, the arts and crafts that was at the top of our budget. It was already pending.
We had one house to look at this day. It was in the 4 Corners area. We were in love with the neighborhood and really liked the house, so we decided to put in a bid for asking plus some money for closing costs. We ended up getting word on Wednesday that we did not win the house.
After we spent the morning driving around, we went to MK around 1 pm and stayed until closing. Then we had dinner at the Wave at the Contemporary and then back to bed early.
Wednesday we finally had some houses to look at that had come up for sale over the past 2 days.
We started out by driving around Davenport. We finally found a bunch of neighborhoods we liked in the 4 Corners/Champion's Gate area. We had five houses that we couldn't get in to see, but we drove by the houses to see if we liked the neighborhood. Big surprise, we only ended up liking one of the neighborhoods. We couldn't get in to see it before we left, but our realtor said he would do a virtual tour for us when he could get in.
Just to be sure we decided to drive to Haines City to see what it was like. Our initial favorite house in Haines City had just been taken off the market a week before.
Apparently it's in a neighborhood called Storybook, which turned out to be so amazing. It was by far our favorite area but it was so far away from anything.
We decided to drive through Celebration right as it was getting dark. I had no idea that Celebration is like townhome central. So many townhomes. We ended the night going to Earl of Sandwich at Disney Springs to take dinner back to the room.
Next day was Thursday and we were up pretty early to drive back. We spent the night somewhere in Illinois and got back to KC right at noon, which is when our rental was due back.
Even though we didn't end up leaving with a house, I feel like it was still a valuable experience. We found some neighborhoods we liked and found others to stay away from. I think we settled on the 4 Corners/Champion's Gate area and we now know to focus our search there.
Since we got back, our realtor gave us a virtual tour yesterday of a house we absolutely love. We put a bid and should hear back late tonight or early tomorrow. So fingers definitely crossed.
We also had a virtual tour of another favorite today, it was in a great neighborhood and we drove past before we left Orlando. The inside ended up being...not great. We decided not to bid on it.
So that's pretty much where we're at right now. Fingers crossed we get the nice house and we can be done with all this.