The Search Started

So, yesterday I explained why we started looking at CHEAP houses. When you're trying to find a place that you can pay cash for, and you're on one income to begin with, the pickings are pretty slim. However, we managed to find some interesting places in our price range.

Take, for example, a 1300 square foot home with garage, all set for central heat and air, two bedrooms, picture looks nice, for just slightly more than we had available. Sounded like a good deal! We called a real estate agent (pretty much at random) and we set up a showing for a few houses in this area.

That was a bit of an eye-opener. The garage? The door was not working. The back door out of the garage had been forced, and was now just boarded up. The walls were a mess, the electrical was so-so, and that central air conditioning had vanished. Someone had stolen it. And the facade didn't look as good in person as the picture showed.

And this was several steps up from the place next door. In fact, most of the neighborhood showed either run-down or uninhabited houses. Bars were on windows. Spray paint was on many of the abandoned areas.

Three houses, one afternoon, all pretty much the same story. We couldn't stomach the idea of living in that particular neighborhood, especially if we didn't know anybody. But this experience helped us to formulate the finishing touches to what we had begun calling the Fallujah plan. Later on, I'll explain it in its fullness.