My dad stalks rural acreage for sale, preferably with some kind of river or pretty creek on it and a nice spot for an imaginary house for him to plan in his head. No, he's very rarely in the market to buy, and some of his stalking is "research" since he is an attorney who does a lot of real estate deals. But really I just have lots of childhood memories of "Dad, this isn't the right way home"..."I know, there's a piece of real estate I want to drive by and take a look at."
My older half sister, Courtney, goes to open houses just for fun and...not so open houses. She has walked up to houses with a for sale sign in the yard and a yard worker or maintenance man on the property, pretended to be interested and asked the worker to let them in to look around. Or she peeks around in houses under construction before they have locks on the doors.
Me? My concentration is stalking residential real estate via MLS listings online.
If I drive or jog by a house with a for sale sign in the yard and the house looks interesting to me, there's a good chance I'll look it up on the internet later to see what the asking price is and look at pictures of the inside of it. I have found that kellyrealtors.com has pretty much any property listed, even if they are not the realtor representing the property. I can search just by street name lickety split and not have to remember the exact house number. They have good pictures too, usually more than some other sites I have tried out. Works out pretty great.
Does anyone think I'm a dork yet? Well, I was already a dork for several reasons long before I picked up this hobby. Sorry.
So what houses have I been stalking lately? An old favorite is the "Waco White House" on the end of Valley Mills Dr where it turns into Lakeshore:
It has apparently been reduced from $700,000 (yikes) to $675,000 (still yikes), if anyone is interested in it.
Our backdoor neighbors are moving so I promptly checked out the inside of their cute yellow house when the for sale sign went up in their yard:
Anybody want to be our new neighbors?
And we passed a neat looking house on Rambler today coming back from our Back to School Bash with the youth group:
Really pretty inside and set on the edge of a ravine or draw of some sort with trees everywhere.
No I don't want to buy any of these houses. Any time I do, Trent always says "We already have a house..." and I assure him I just like looking at the pictures and putting imaginary furniture, decor and paint colors in that particular house. Kinda like my dad looking for acreage next to a creek or river to build his imaginary house...
You can imagine how totally stoked I was to actually be on a house hunt ourselves before we bought ours and I actually got to go IN some houses. But until the future, when and if we are in the market again for another house, I'll just be plenty content with my online real estate stalking hobby.
