We'll call her Megan (house #2)

We went out with our realtor again this morning to see a house that was just reduced and now within the higher end of our budget. We'll call her Megan.

Megan is a 2200 square foot 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath home with a 2-car garage, finished basement, a farmer's porch and an in-ground pool. It was built in 1999 and according to the tax assessment, the pool was installed in 2006. A pool really isn't something we are looking for. It just seems to come with every house we are interested in...weird. So, this is a pretty good house and just looks like it needs some cosmetic changes.

What we liked about the house:

• located on a cul-de-sac
• 2-car garage with two doors
• open kitchen/living room
• eat-in kitchen and separate dining room
• wood floors on main level
• finished basement with two separate rooms
• pantry closet
• white woodwork and trim
• large master with walk-in closet
• laundry on main level
• good size level lot
• farmer's porch
• shed in backyard
• central air
• vinyl siding
• gas cooking

Things that need work:

• kitchen (and bath) cabinets are ugly light wood with weathered look and need to be painted
• every single wall is white and dirty so every last one of them need to be painted (same with moulding & baseboards)
• all three bathrooms have linoleum floors, which are not our taste. eventually we would want to tile.
• the counter top in the kitchen is a light blue laminate...ugly, but in good condition, we would eventually want to replace with granite.
• appliances are mismatched and we would likely need to replace them (definitely need fridge & microwave right away)
• outside trim is extremely dirty and needs repainting
• there are very large vines growing through the farmers porch that need to be removed.
• there are a few discolored spots on the kitchen ceiling, looks like there may have been a leak at some point, so we'll need to look into that.

All in all, Megan is less work than Big Brown. But, the asking price is $20,000 more than Big Brown as well. We're definitely considering putting an offer in on this house, but we need to hear back from our realtor about the rules of putting in an offer on a second house. We don't want to withdraw our offer on Big Brown at this point just in case Megan's seller doesn't accept our best offer (which is probably $15,000 less than the asking price).