18 March – House hunting begins at 9:00 A.M.

It is many hours later – and here is a summary of the six houses I looked at today. Four of them were in one of the supposedly “better” neighborhoods in Henderson. Oh, my! If that is the way the better people take care of their homes – we are in trouble. Of course I had been reading that those who lost their homes to foreclosure were taking much of the home with them – but deliberately damaging a house so it will not sell is unreal to me. There was only one that was a distant – very distant – if there was nothing else anywhere in Nevada distant – possibility. The others either were missing things like kitchen cabinets, bathroom fixtures, carpets, and other vital parts of a house – or there was such a lack of maintenance it would have cost a fortune to fix them. One was on the backside of a huge apartment complex – not a fancy one – just lots and lots of apartments. I live in an apartment complex and I am trying to get out of it. I do not want to pay a couple of hundred thousand just to get back into that same atmosphere.

Then we went to a part of Henderson known as “old Henderson”. I was not planning on looking there because getting to where my children and grandchildren live would be more difficult. However, there were two houses that my realtor wanted me to see – and I had also picked them from the listing. One had amazing stonework inside and a pool with waterfalls and all sorts of fancy rockwork in the backyard. The rockwork inside covered the walls in the family room and the hall and it was a bit much, although one wall in the hallway was a floor to ceiling fountain. It was a little higher priced then I wanted, but it was pretty and I knew the grands would like the pool.

Then we went to the final one of the day. I loved it. It had an amazing kitchen and was laid out in the open floor plan I like. It was also on a corner lot which is always nice. BUT! By the time my realtor got back to the office and made an offer, another buyer had come in with a cash offer so I lost that one.

So I went back to number two and made an offer on the one with the pool – I was not in love with that one, but I thought I could live there and the grandchildren would love the pool. This time, I was outbid by someone who wanted it badly enough to go over the asking price. I had never heard of going over the asking price. So I was back at step one, looking at houses again.
19 March – looked at about 5 houses – some damaged so badly I could not even believe they were on the market. We gave up for the day early as there were no more on the list. Tricia, my realtor, went back to the office to cull the lists and find some more and we would look again on Monday.