House hunting

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Lisa writes: We've been on the hunt since last September. Northern Virginia is an interesting market because you're looking at construction between 1890 and 2007. A lot of them were built right after WWII as homes for returning GIs and their new brides. Back then, these little 3-bdrm 1 bath bungalows sold for $7,000. Now, they are going for $450,000.

Here are some samples of things we've been considering.

The first house to the right is in Fairfax. Built 1955. 4 bed / 2 bath on .27 acres. Mucho, mucho wallpaper upstairs and wood panelling in the basement.



What you can't tell about the next house is that it has amazingly steep stairs leading down to the basement and an awesome homemade Tiki bar. 3 bdrm/2 bath for $429K on .17 acres. Built 1956.


We haven't gone to see this one yet. It looks great on the internet, which makes us suspicous about why it's priced so low. Only $449,900 for 3/2 on .28 acres built in 1970.



This one was fun because the basement ceiling was too low for Tom to stand up. And it had a Tiki bar.





And finally (for now) this is the most serious contender. Sadly, they could not have taken an uglier picture of this house. According to this picture, it looks like they're asking $459,822 for a driveway. But, really, it's 4/3 on .28 acres, on a cul-de-sac, built in 1978 with two living rooms and a gigantic kitchen. But then there is the problem of this mysterious wet spot in the roof and the basement...

We'll keep you posted as the saga continues.

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