This is our first (and hopefully last) home. We purchased it back in February 2018 and was drawn to its potential and beautiful backyard. Darrel really wanted a home with large trees and a backyard. Since he grew up living on an acreage it was important to him to have similarities to country living while living in the capital city. During our house hunt that took place between December of 2017 and January 2018 we found it difficult to find a house in Edmonton that checked all our boxes.
1) Larger backyard
2) Trees
3) 3-4 decent sized bedrooms
4) 2-3 bathrooms
5) Double attached garage
6) South Edmonton
8) Close to schools and parks
7) Price
As mentioned it was important to Darrel to have a larger backyard with larger tree's which essentially eliminated all newer built homes. We did see a few online listings and the problem with these newer built homes in Edmonton and probably other areas is they are so squashed together. A lot of the times your back yard consists of a walkway to your garage. And while looking out the deck all you see are rows of other similar looking houses. Because these houses are new the yard have either yet to be landscaped or the trees are still very much growing so the large tree factor was also not met. I wanted space between my neighbors, and as much as I like the aesthetic of new homes, I just couldn't get behind the lot size.
It was not too hard for us to find the appropriate bedroom and bathroom requirement, only sometimes the sizes were too small and often with older homes, the master bedroom did not have an en-suite, which was not ideal for me. I want my own bathroom, I do not want to share it. Growing up with 3 sisters, you get very territorial.
Finding an older home with a double attached garage slimed our choices down a bit again. Mainly it seemed like for our price range the garages with either detached or single.
Finding a house we liked within our price was wasn't too bad. I mainly had to wrap my head around the fact that I would not visually love it right away. The houses that I did like aesthetically were WAY out of our price range. Of course. If I like it, it is usually one of the most expensive options. What can I say, I have good taste haha.
We luckily came across our home fairly quickly. We saw it on our options menu our realtor Michael Pino sent us. We called it Baba's home as it reminded us of a home a Ukrainian grandmother would keep. It has pink carpet, pink wall paper and seemingly never updated since its 1978 build. Darrel was the one who wanted to view it in person, he saw the backyard and the square footage and was sold. I was hesitant as it was not "pretty". It did however check off other boxes that were important to me like close to schools and parks, double attached garage, 4 bedroom 2.5 bath, and large trees. We saw it on a week day night in December when it was already dark out which made viewing difficult as 2 rooms on the main level do not have any ceiling lights and the backyard was harder to view. As we walked around this house I just got a good feeling about it, it felt right. Then Darrel and our realtor started talking about renovations and ideas, then I was essentially sold. We left the viewing and I messaged my friend telling her we are probably going to put in an offer. We viewed a few homes after this one, but none of them felt right and did not match up. We viewed this house again in the day time, brought a family friend/handy man to check it out, by the end of it all we decided to put in an offer. We were not in any bidding war and didn't have to negotiate too much as the owner had unfortunately passed away and the children wanted to settle the estate. At 11 p.m. one evening it was almost all settled. It was a quick turnover, 3 weeks. Pending inspection and mortgage it was ours!
We were so thrilled to have been found our forever home so quickly and didn’t have to go through too many hoops or headaches to get to the end point. We were also very ecstatic to be living on our own again after living with my parents for the last 4 months post lease termination/house hunting. As grateful as we were being able to live with my parents for cheap allowing us to save some extra cash prior to home ownership, nothing is like living on your own, especially somewhere where we can call OURS.
Lauren xo
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