Looking for a house

So what the crap. I hate house hunting, almost as much as I hate moving. It is so hard to find something if you aren't living there. Here's the scoop.

We drove down this week to look at some places, and we focused on the Springville area. We set up 7 showings before we went down and ended up looking at 8 different places. We are trying to work with a budget and moving down from Logan is a huge change for us because house prices in Utah county are so much higher than up here. Seriously a house up here that rents for $950 will rent for $1350 in Utah county. I'm going a little crazy because I don't want to be house poor (meaning we spend all of our money on our housing so that we don't have anything left over to do anything. But at least we would have a house to sit in and be bored). Also Utilities are apparently more. Now we also have a rental property that we own in Taylorsville. We originally lived in the home for two years and then after the real estate market fell out we weren't able to sell it. Instead of defaulting on the loan and short selling, we rented it out and made every mortgage payment. But back to utilities, in our utilities in Taylorsville, our sewer and garbage were included in our escrow, so it wasn't an extra bill. Down in Utah county, different story.

Anyway, so we went down to Springville and saw 8 different properties, liked one, it was a bit expensive (out of our budget) and we decided not to go for it. We felt good about backing out, but still we just felt like we wasted the entire day (4+ hours in the car). The kids were great though the entire time, even Mollie, although at the end I think she was past tired and acting like an even more crazy person.

So we had decided that if we didn't get anything, we would just move in with my parents until we did. So we reserved a POD (one of those temporary storage things) for all of our stuff, and then we see a really nice house on Craigslist for $1000 a month. We got real excited, called on it, talked to the tenant and set up a showing ( but we couldn't go so we sent Kara's mom and sister to make sure it wasn't a ghetto).  We don't want to rent something sight unseen, because we've seen how deceiving online pictures can be. One of the properties we went to go see in Springville looked real nice online. Then we show up, and our mind is changed. Sure it was nice, if you like torn and dingy carpet and the smell of cat urine (and also cat feces). But back to the nice home. We really liked it and we called the landlord and tried to get an application. We even e-mailed...... Nothing. Finally we get a call and the landlord wants to interview us. So we set up a skype appointment and wait. and wait, and nothing. It's almost time to put the kids to bed and we still haven't heard.

So Kara finally calls and they tell us that they've interviewed two people already and they think they know who they want to rent to. Come on, they haven't even met us yet. We are an awesome family. Hold on, let me re-phrase that. WE ARE AN AWESOME FAMILY! Like, people want to be us (maybe that's a little over the top, but we're still Awesome). Well Long story short, we didn't get the house and I am just a little bit fuming now. I'm sure it will go away in a little bit, but I am just sick of looking for houses. So if anyone knows of a place, please let me know.