House hunting in the Vegas

First day highlights: We got to see how the other have live. We saw the Summerlin area on the first day. Summerlin has all of the good stuff that you could hope for, shopping, restaurants, parks, all that yuppie goodness. Except that it's truly impossible to buy a house there unless you have serious money. I know what people say about the market, but take out short sales and other sketchy real estate practices, and you're left with...not much. We saw a good house in a very good location, but it backed to a busy street. We went into a house that smelled very strongly like cat pee, a spa that had green slime growing in it, and a pool with all of the doors punched in with an air hockey table as an added bonus. All in all, we were not very optimistic about finding anything where we wouldn't have to spend $20K right off the bat to make it liveable.

Second day: Centennial Hills and North Las Vegas. Right now this area borders on the middle of nowhere but it is much closer to the base for Ben and has the stuff I'd need on a daily basis so as to not go crazy. We saw quite a few good houses, one ridiculous house that apparently had already sold when we looked at it, and our backup house in Club Aliante. We also saw one house that I fell in love with because of the backyard pool and upgraded inside. This was the house I was going to fight for...except as we were leaving Ben looked up and said, Did you see those high tension power lines? Oh crap. It's never a good sign when the realtor says, You know, there's no solid data either way that power lines like that cause cancer. I think I might have to jump off of a bridge if I gave poor lil' Tupac cancer before she was out of the womb.

Little did we know that after the house hunt was over that the fun would begin. Later that afternoon on the Fourth of July, we found out that a pretty decent house had just come up for sale in Club Aliante, our preferred neighborhood in the area. So we got excited. Then, at 7:45 in the morning of the 5th, we found out that the house we originally put in an offer on had popped back up. This one is still a short sale, which equals sketchy, but the people who outbid us originally backed out literally a day before they were supposed to close. Which means that we, the lowly backup offer, now have a shot. This house is nice, upgraded stuff, good insulation, and the small backyard (They are all small fyi) overlooks the golf course. The golf course gives way to views of the mountains, so that's a plus.

So this should be the week we find out if we have a house somewhere in Las Vegas. So when you visit and people tell you they're giving away houses in Las Vegas there are so many, please, for me, punch them in the face. 90% of houses are short sales. Less than 10% of short sales work out FYI.

If you'd like to see pictures of this adventure, please visit our Flickr site at
http://flickr.com/photos/63633934@N00/sets/72157606009876156/