You think the logistics of buying a house would be a nightmare — getting THE loan, moving out of the apartment, lining up the paperwork … After several months of looking for that perfect home, I’m here to tell you that doing all that is the easy part. The hardest part – finding a house you (and your significant other) actually like.

Here in Austin, Texas, the housing market is really volatile, and choices abound. Want a smaller, older 1,200 sq. ft. abode in town? Wanna take the same amount of money and build a 2,800 sq. ft. chateau beyond the north city limit? How about a shack on a creek? A brand new condo?

There’s so many choices, it makes my head spin. However, after looking around for a while, I realized that our seemingly reasonable laundry list of criterias for our new home is not so reasonable, after all.

Here’s what we want:

• Location – north side, but in town, to take advantage of great suburban school districts;
• Backyard – not huge, but moderate size, moderately private, so that we can have friends over without neighbors flipping out;
• Layout – no crazy-assed 50’s kitchens, 60’s bathrooms, 70’s lofts, please. Open areas. Ceilings taller than 8 ft. would be nice;
• Quality (reasonable) – seen “Money Pit” with Tom Hanks? No thanks.
• Price – this is an awesome indicator of what kind of house you can get, but we would never buy an outhouse in town for the same amount as a castle 5 miles the other way;

You would think those simple factors would converge into one perfect home we both would like. Wrong. If you agree with the criterias, here’s what you would most likely find for approx. the same price:

• A gigantic, brand new house in a brand new subdivision … outside of town. Granite countertops, closets the size of rooms, Notre Dame-style ceilings, prewired security, awesome amenities, manicured lawns. Sounds nice, sure. That is if you like a sterile backyard the size of a sandbox, 1,200 identical neighbors, a hefty dependency on the world’s No. 2 computer maker, and the probable return on investment of 0% in 5 years. In Austin, you can build from here to El Paso – so why settle for a smaller, older home when you can have the newest, the biggest, and the most A/C-hungry? Hell, you can buy a bigger, newer home every time you lease your next silver Nissan Altima.
• A small, musky-smelling 3 bedroom 1.5 bath with a horrible layout in an established community in town. I guess back in the 50’s people didn’t care too much about cooking and taking dumps comfortably. Therefore, as a legacy they left us small, long, separated and subdivided kitchens and bathrooms, where not only 2 people can’t get ready for work at the same time, they can’t even both be in there — one person in the bathroom, the other one hanging in the doorway just to talk. And by “us” I mean “whatever house-flipper watched entirely too much HGTV” and “updated” everything with brushed nickel, IKEA laminate, and spunky accent walls while forgetting entirely about, oh, I don’t know, necessities like creating a better place to take a shit in peace. Knock out a wall, geniuses, it’s not load-bearing, and we’ll pay you extra 20 grand for the trouble of putting in a tub.
• A seemingly nice, well-priced, reasonably new house. It sure looks good until you pivot city crime stats for the last 5 years and realize that based on the number of aggravated assaults, larcenies, thefts, and armed robberies, the house you are about to make an offer on is actually a safehouse sitting in the epicenter of the aforementioned activity. Sure, the neighbors are nice, but a) they are old and are moving out b) their security systems are hardwired to the police switchboards, granting them instant police response for a hefty fee.
• Another seemingly nice, well-priced, reasonably new house. It sure looks good until you run some checks on it. What? It was under contract twice, but both fell through? Ah, I see, undisclosed flood and termite damage … That’ll do it. What else? Replaced the roof? How the hell do you replace “the roof” … shingles AND the plywood? Oh, I see, NOT the plywood, just the shingles, leaving rotten plywood on the house. NEXT!

You can always build. That’s if your job allows you to take frequent 1-hour long breaks to check on your crews and ensure that the walls in your new home will be perpendicular to the sea level, and the opposite sides of the doorways line up.

We’ll keep looking …