Just like I’ve done the past few Sundays, I spent this past Sunday driving around the westside of LA going to condo open houses. I’m getting better at planning them out and making sure I make a good list of places I want to go to and figure out the best route on a map. But this past Sunday, I was also dealing with a lot of pain and nausea so I had to figure out which condos were the priorities for me because there was a good chance I wouldn’t be able to make it to all of the ones I wanted to see.
I originally had a list of 7 that I could look at and I got it down to 4 that I really wanted to see. I got off to a bit of a later start than I wanted to, but I still was ready to go check out all the places. And for 3 of the places on the list, they all had a particular reason why I wanted to see them. For one of them, it was above my budget, but it had a lot of features that looked good and my mom wanted me to see it because it looked really nice and we might be able to negotiate it down. Another was on my list a month ago, but then they had an accepted offer before I could see it. But the offer fell through, so it was on the market again and I wanted to take a look. And another was in the same building as another condo I’ve already seen, but this one was on a different floor and fully fixed up so I might feel differently about it. And then there was one more that didn’t have anything super special except that it was in my current neighborhood.
The first place I saw was the over budget one, and the moment I walked in I knew it was wrong for me. I still toured the entire unit, but there was just a lot of weird stuff that made no sense to me. And even though it was the biggest condo I had seen so far, it felt like one of the smallest because of the layout and low ceilings. The second one was the one that was back on the market. And I’m really glad I looked at it because it had been on my list for a long time. But just like with the first one, I knew quickly it wasn’t for me. There were some things that were amazing, like having a huge back patio that was almost like a backyard. But there were other things that weren’t really seen from photos and made it not a great deal. Plus, with both the first and second place I saw, they weren’t in locations I really wanted to be. They weren’t back locations, but not my ideal location.
The last 2 on my list were pretty close to each other and both in my current neighborhood. I decided to see the one that wasn’t in the building I had seen before, and I was pleasantly surprised. The main negative thing about this condo was that it was not on the top floor. I really wanted to be on the top floor because I haven’t had to deal with shared walls for a long time. But this one had so many other things right with it. It needs some work, but mainly cosmetic stuff. And this was the first condo that I looked at without my parents where I wanted to get my parents on FaceTime to see it too. Something felt right after the space and as soon as I left I emailed my realtor to tell him because I wanted this opinion on the place too. And from how I felt about this condo, I didn’t even go to the last one. I already wasn’t a huge fan of that building, and I knew that seeing a different condo wasn’t going to change my mind enough compared to this third one.
My realtor and I went back the next day for an appointment with the seller’s realtor and he looked over things. He pointed out a few issues I didn’t see, but they were almost all cosmetic things that I would want to fix anyway. There were no major red flags although he did ask me if I was sure I would be ok on the first floor. But I figure that I’m going to have noise from the side no matter what, so maybe I have to just get over some of the noise concerns.
So after going to see it again and talking it over with my parents, we are now working on putting in an offer! It was funny after I found a place I liked because I had to ask my parents and my realtor what to do next because I honestly had no idea. I’ve never made it past the open house or appointment phase. Fortunately, my realtor is awesome and gets that I’m clueless about it all. So he’s helping me out a lot and making sure I know what we need to do.
I have no clue if I will get this condo. I really hope that I do because I can see how to turn it into a place I really like. It’s not my dream place, but I also know that I won’t be finding my dream place right away. But I can see how I can make this an amazing home for me and I hope that I get to do that! I guess I’ll find out soon enough!
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