House Hunting Sucks

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As I've said many times before, I hate to shop. And house hunting, I now know, is the worst kind of shopping. Plus, a house is the most expensive thing you're ever likely to buy, and there's essentially no return policy.

From the start, Arnon and I agreed, despite his dad's warnings, that we were going to find a house as quickly as possible. In fact, we did find a house on the first day of house hunting but our offer was rejected.

At the outset, we determined that we wanted to live in either Sunnyvale or Santa Clara and that we would look for a house in the $550k to $850k range. We quickly learned that houses under $650k in the areas we were willing to live were horrible.

One house smelled, as Arnon later described, like a giant cat's bladder had exploded in it. Another was owned by a man who bought it from his mother shortly before she died several decades ago. Everything in the house was left exactly the way his mother had it at the time of the sale, from furniture to funk. Creepy!

Yet another house boasted a handful of room extensions that looked like they were constructed by a blind construction crew.

One house in downtown Sunnyvale, that was not on our list but I was curious about, was about a hundred years old, had just under 800 square feet and looked like it should be condemned, but had a $1.3 million price tag. I realize that the postage-size plot of land the house sits on commands the bulk of the price, but come on. That's just crazy.

Anyway, I'm glad that our search for Casa de Chung is over and that our suffering was limited to only a couple days.