Just over 5 years after we purchased our first house, and almost 4 years to the day we sold that house, we are once again house hunting. This time, we are in St. Louis, as opposed to the last time around with http://going2colorado.com/ and ultimately http://ourcoloradolife.com/. I don’t envision building a full blown website like we did last time around, but who knows, maybe I’ll get creative one evening and do it.
So, why St. Louis? With all the bad stories lately (#Ferguson and the fact that Missouri is rated poorly) you might think, “Who in their right mind would want to live in Missouri?”.
Well, I wonder the same thing myself some days, but not most days :) Living in St. Louis, especially in West County, is actually quite nice. It is suburbia, but I am totally cool with suburbia, I actually prefer it to city living. The cost of living here is WAY better than it was in Half Moon Bay. Don’t get me wrong, I loved living in #HMB, but what we paid in rent out there was obscene compared to what you get here in Missouri for 1/2 the price.
Also, Natalie’s family is here in St. Louis, and we quickly learned that with kids, having family around makes things a lot easier!
We’ve been back in the St. Louis area for going on 2 years now, and while we had originally hoped to buy the house we are currently renting, it has water issues in the basement and yard would require (guessing here) $30-40k in work done to shore things up.
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So I just had to take a break from this blog post, for… A Tornado warning. Crazy amounts of rain just came through, and reports of hail from people on Twitter, but no hail here at our house. This is just something that you live with in Missouri. Sure, there will probably be some tree branches down tomorrow, but we’ve got plenty of water and green grass, something you would be hard pressed to find in California these days.
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So the current place, would be an awesome house, 3 car garage (car lover’s garage, a pit in the floor, a gas heater, and a place to put a window mounted AC). But the basement here just leaks, especially with all the rain that Missouri has been getting since we moved back here. The yard needs to be relandscaped with better drainage, and the foundation of the house needs to be jacked up on all the corners to stabilize it (Claymont neighborhood is built on clay, go figure). The house also needs a sump system built in, which would require digging up around the house (inside or outside, or both, not sure). The floors squeak, because of all the settling that has occurred in the house.
Part of our contract, selling our house in Colorado was that we would use a referral from the selling agent when we went to purchase our next house. So we’ve followed up on that and met with our agent for the first time today. We looked at a couple of homes over in Wildwood, Missouri. We don’t think any of them are the home for us, but it was a good start to the process. Apparently right now in Missouri it is a seller’s market, so we may have to act quick on things if we find something we want.
We’ll see what comes over the next few months. I’ll be blogging more about what we are looking for, and what we find.