I bet it has really good bones
The hunt for the probably-not-perfect house continues. Our newest real estate agent Jenny, the 19-year-old granddaughter of our original real estate agent Anna, sent us a new listing yesterday. Technically it's not a new listing but one that went up a few days ago, but she sent us the link again and asked for our opinion.
The main thing this listing has going for it is the price (a hair under $300k) and the fact that it's a bit closer to our jobs than most of the places we've seen up until now. The rest, from the photographs, is pretty uninspiring. For one thing, it has relatively little by way of land (half an acre, which is workable but not my preference). For another, it's surrounded by neighbours on all sides.
Normally this wouldn't be an issue, but we have three very barky dogs and I now have something close to PTSD (not really, but it feels like a much milder version of that) thanks to a neighbour who repeatedly calls bylaw to complain about the dogs. We've spoken to bylaw, and they agree that our dogs are NOT a nuisance (they are barky, but we take all reasonable measures to ensure that they aren't left outside to bark for more than a few seconds to maybe one or two minutes at most), but that didn't prevent our neighbour from continuing to complain until bylaw told her to either take me to court or stop filing complaints. She's not an immediate neighbour, she actually lives several houses away, and one day her adult son who is built like a brick shithouse barged into our backyard screaming at the dogs and then at me (I was outside in order to bring the dogs inside, since they had just started barking). The guy was purple in the face and swearing incoherently, and as a result of the incident we invested in a security camera for the back yard, just in case his behaviour escalated.
So, needless to say, we are somewhat reluctant to put ourselves in a position where we'll be getting into an antagonistic relationship with neighbours over our dogs being loud. Part of the point of moving to the country is to let our dogs be dogs and be allowed to bark at squirrels and other wildlife.
The house itself looks a little unprepossessing. The rooms are mostly on the small side, and the kitchen looks like it was built cheaply and in a hurry. So why go look at it at all? Well, the price, as I've said, is hard to beat in today's market, supposing it doesn't require any major structural repairs. It's a pretty property from the outside, with a few nice mature trees, although it would require a lot of work to put in decent vegetable gardens, and I suspect that the local bylaws don't allow livestock of any kind. There's always a chance that the photos aren't doing it justice. Plus, it will give us a decent idea of what's on the market in our price range these days.
I'm not holding my breath on this house. It might have "good bones," as the saying goes, and I'm willing to reserve judgment until we've seen it in person. It might turn out to be a diamond in the rough that we can make our own, if the price is right.