4 houses visited

The first one was the only good one. Favorite house remains favorite house, by far and away. The barn was even better than I had hoped and the outdoor riding ring is elevated so it drains nicely. In fact, despite there being standing water on other parts of the property, the ring looked dry. There are several pastures plus gravel runs out of each of the three stalls. Everything is fenced with electrobraid and it looks in good condition.




The house is huge and in great shape. It's got a partially finished basement and 3 bedrooms on the first floor. The master and master bath are AMAZING and the master looks out on the back pastures. DREAM COME TRUE.

Driveway down to the street. It's right across from the high school.

House, a ranch with basement

Living/family room overlooking the back deck, barn, pastures and riding ring

Kitchen with stone backsplash

Back deck and view, nice big size!

Looking toward the front door (Kaylee is honed in on the cat)

Master with vaulted ceilings (and our realtor)

Awesome bathroom. That's a jetted deep tub. Toliet is behind the wall to the left, and closets are behind me.

Master opens onto the deck

Basement finished room (there was one other)

Unfinished storage part with slider walkout door to patio under the deck

Back of the house

Some of the pasture

Walkway to barn (little bridge over the low part)

Tack room

One of three stalls

Hay storage

Stalls have dutch doors to gravel runs

There was also a wash stall area

Three sets of cross ties plus outer hitching post with rubber matting 

Play set

House 2 was a joke. We've been calling it Pumpkin House because the only photos are of the outside with a bunch of pumpkins for decoration. The inside was awful. We didn't bother going past the first floor to see the second or cellar. It wasn't worth our time. It's been on the market 1100 days. Good grief.

House 3 was TINY. It was just a ranch, not even a basement and it smelled of cigarette smoke. The property was soppy despite having a pond and the majority of the 10 acres were leased to a farmer for corn. The pole barn was less than ideal as well, though granted in good condition.

House 4 I had some hope for. It only recently went on the market and it didn't look like it was in bad condition. It also had a HUGE barn and 7 acres, listed at 200k. The house wasn't bad, it did need updating, and potentially electrical overhaul since it was old enough to still have knob and tube and potentially even asbestos. So we'd have to do new floors and repainting, possibly even ripping out walls. But for the price, feasible.

The barn was a huge thing, big and red and had 6 stalls all tucked away and dark. We didn't try to turn on the lights. Then the realtor pointed out that a ton of the ceiling brace posts had tiny tiny holes typical of termites. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

There was even an indoor arena :(  So we'd potentially be facing replacing the barn in addition to all the work on the house and that 200k is suddenly becoming MUCH much more. Plus since it was over 5 acres we'd be paying closing costs.


Ugh. So frustrated still. And now I really don't want that first house from today, our Turnkey Favorite, to be sold. We're going to look at more, in a different area, but that's the one I really want.