Shopping for our new home

We're officially in the market for a house and spent a few hours today with our agent/friend looking at open houses.

The first house was a bungalow in a Toronto neighbourhood called The Bluffs, or Upper Beaches. It was in a great little area with a mixture of smaller sized homes and larger, newer mini-mansions. We quite liked it... the basement is rented out so that'll help with mortgage payments. The upstairs, or our home, includes a fantastic livingroom with a fireplace and two bedrooms. Or, our bedroom and the pet's room. The backyard looked quite nice although the snow was made things difficult to get a true sense of potential. Included a great garage for our motorcycles, ATVs, sailing boat and lawn mower.

The second house was a two story semi. Aside from the wonderful skylights and exposed brick, this place didn't have much to offer. The backyard was very small, the basement was locked so we couldn't see it and the foundation was shifting. Yeah, we didn't stay very long.

The third place was even closer to the beaches but in a high-traffic neighbourhood. The upstairs unit was quite ugly so it immediately turned us off. However, the main floor/basement was nice although the ceiling fan in the main bedroom was a recipe for decapitation. Backyard was cute but not very big. Unfortunately it was close to 100K more than the other houses.

So we ended back at the original bungalow.

Oh, and i quickly realized i'm not the best person to go shopping for big purchase items. I would have bought anything if I had my cheque book with me.