Posting it here for my UK buddies....see, we DO have "old" houses in Texas:

http://homes.realtor.com/Prop/1078612807

Gawd, I love that house; I know the area and it's goooooooooooooorgeous. It's in our price range but it sure as hell won't be on the market when we're ready to buy.

It sure is a lovely house, HA. I have to say that there are some gorgeous houses around here too, many of them really old. My hubby and I live in just about the oldest standing house (Federal style) in our little 10,000 people city, it was built around 1838.

We are currently doing it up, gonna be a long old project, but it'll look soopa once it is finished.

I love looking at old houses, you'll have to keep us posted on what you eventually buy over here!

School quality is the most important issue for us since we're going to send our future sprogs to public school. The house I showed you is in the catchment area for some of Dallas's finest public schools. Strangely enough, the local high school was rated 'academically unacceptable' even though its standardized test scores are very high. It got the unacceptable rating because the performance of one ethnic group was below par. The new TEA guidelines seem to be REALLY strict. The locals consider it the best traditional public high school in the city.

I would LOVE to be able to live in old East Dallas, where a lot of the homes were built from 1900-1950 and you can still walk to the shops. Some areas have a lovely small-town feel. Unfortunately, EVERYBODY is after that location and prices have skyrocketed. I'm almost praying for a recession or real estate mini-crash to put the brakes on prices in Dallas...which are forecasted to have risen by 10% by the time we're ready to buy. That'll put that house closer to $450k.

Basically, I don't want to end up in treeless McMansion suburban hell with snooty b!tchy neighbors who are all SAHMs who drive Ford Expeditions and pledged some second-rate sorority and got psychology degrees from some sh!t school like Sul Ross State looking down on me. Maybe I'm a snob at heart but what I really REALLY want is to be with my own kind in Dallas proper...y'know, people who read books and don't laugh at fart jokes and don't watch NASCAR, where every third girl on the street ISN'T named some variant of MIKAYLA. Where people won't sarcastically coo "Well la dee DA" when I tell them I have a French degree. Where every neighbor isn't cursed with a gut the size of a beach ball lapping over poorly-fitting belted khaki shorts, showing off legs that look like big giant white funnels stuffed into $150 trainers that aren't used for any kind of athletic activity.

BTW Mags, if you liked one you'll probably love this one:

http://homes.realtor.com/prop/1076024376

Both of them are very nice!!!

I loved the first house So much character and charm. But wtf was with the RED foyer?!?!?
When is your estimated date to moving back to the states HA?

Haha, I completely agree! That is a freaking beautiful house! You've got competition That's one of the best things about where I live right now. They have some of the lowest housing costs in the country and we have really been hit with the real estate slow down. Bad for everyone else, but good for us first time home buyers!

Jeeze, jsut looked at the 2nd one and its SO high compared to here. Same house would go for 1/2... I love Ohio

*shudder*

I hate Ohio, I got out ASAP.

Hey its Ohio, its all we got. That and corn...

Ohio is not exactly known for corn.

im in ohio also...where u from. yes housing here is so nice. for the kind of money they are asking for those homes would but a small mansion here. i dont love ohio but its home anyway.

Dallas is still pretty affordable for real estate. The houses that you're looking at are in historic areas of Dallas where homes cost twice the median price for the whole city, and they are very desireable since it's one of the only parts of town where you can still send your children to public school and still sleep at night.

If you want to see cheap but big houses, we have those too! By the TON.

And yeah, Texas isn't Ohio...but I'd rather have Texas's economy any day!

Yeah, I didn't care for the color scheme either but that is something that can so easily be changed. If you're going to drop almost $400k on a house, what's $25 more for a bucket of paint?

I have no idea when we're going to get out of here. Soon I hope. I'm getting sick of this conveyancing crap, it's taking too long. We've been waiting THREE F*CKING WEEKS for the council to send the old planning documents. I took back EVERYTHING nice I ever said about them. They can suck my proverbial fat one. That's three weeks i've had to spend here that I didn't have to.

i liked the red walls. i thought they looked good. i like it when people are not affraid of color.

That shade of red is my favorite color but I wouldn't use it so liberally on the walls, particularly in the foyer. It's like walking into a blood clot. I'd use it as an accent color, not the main color. Plus, it makes the foyer look dark.

Both of those houses are beautiful, love the first one best though.

Dawn.

Me too; arts & crafts is an acquired taste and I don't like the color on the exterior, but that's so easily changed.

I just talked to our estate agent and she says everything is moving forward and is fine; the buyers are still mad keen to get into this house. We're already getting mail for them.

I LOVED this one.

Oooh, I love that one too!

When we first touch down in the States, we'll be living at my parents' house, which is a 1910 Arts and Crafts house in New Haven. So many houses in New Haven are Arts and Crafts or Craftsman, and it is a style I adore and which always reminds me of home.

More houses! More houses! Give us more houses to look at!

I've only just started looking at areas in Dallas itself; we're restricting our searches to the catchment areas for W.T. White and Woodrow Wilson high schools, but this site won't let you search by schools. I'm having to put in the zip codes where the feeder elementary schools are located and I have to check each individual listing. Unfortunately Dallas's school zones are bizarre so houses on one side of the street go to one school and houses across the street go to another, plus they've shifted a lot of the areas around.

Houses in the Wilson area are generally from 1900-1950, the ones near White are generally 1960s ranches, which are roaring back into style.

I really liked this one; the interior is stunning but I don't like what they've done with the ceilings with all that recessed lighting. It's not in keeping with the style of the house. Plus, the yard is miniscule.

http://homes.realtor.com/Prop/1075757712

This one is in the Bob-O-Links area; 1950s ranch houses are definitely an acquired taste but it's gigantic for a house from that era:

http://homes.realtor.com/prop/1079596422

This one needs a ton of work but just look at that porch. Paradise! It needs renovating so I think it's way overpriced.

http://homes.realtor.com/prop/1069277168

Just for some variety, here's what they're now referring to as a 'mid-century' ranch *snicker*:

http://homes.realtor.com/prop/1079058397

And here's a completely bland and featureless jumbo house in a nearby suburb (that still attends Dallas schools):

http://homes.realtor.com/prop/1075539695

The last one is really what we DON'T want, but realistically we may end up out there if old East Dallas and the White area become priced out of our reach.

The price of that house to a Californian seems like a steal! I'm jealous!

LOL...move to Texas then! Plenty of Fornicalians have made the trek in the last 20 years.

Just curious, what would property taxes run on houses such as these?

Eh...I'm the wrong person to ask, but my parents live in the same city and their house is around the $350k-$400k mark, so probably about the same as theirs. Their property tax bill last year was around $7k, I think.

Property taxes in Texas seem high compared to other places, but you have to remember that there is no state income tax in TX.

I didnt realize TX didnt pay state income tax. Thanks for answering
I dread getting my property tax bill for this year.

How much for climate control, though?

Hmm, nice. 2,300 square feet for less than 1/2 of the price of a tiny studio in Manhattan.

Yes, I was just going to say that we need to consider relocating. It's a beautiful house, for sure. 400K doesn't go very far around here...

That one was GORGEOUS. I loved all the original dark wood. I hope whoever buys it keeps the original features. It didn't need that much done to it really. Painting the outside maybe, new kitchen perhaps. The rest of it looked in pretty good shape.



I love my central air. *sighs*

I thought you WANTED to come back to America.

I think you and I both know that I'm describing only PART of American culture. Maybe it's one that's more familiar to you, but I didn't grow up in an area like that and I don't really want to raise my family in that sort of environment.



In winter, next to nothing. The summer months can be very expensive, though.



You'd hate me then; I'd strip back and refinish that wood so it wouldn't be so dark...and if I couldn't get it light enough, I'd paint the beams. That place is as dark as a tomb. I'd also paint the outside of it a lighter color to make it more inviting. I'd definitely re-do the kitchen; that kitchen was crap!

I'll agree that the kitchen was crap. I sang "la la la can't hear you" when you talked about the other bits.

Too much dark wood like that is very unappealing to me. I'd strip that dark varnish off the floors for sure. I doubt the wood is actually that color.

I'm trying to figure out if you really need to learn a new typing style, or if you just took a swipe at me.

Either way, I can tell you this. How much a person reads, what degree they have, what language they speak, or for that matter where they live doesn't mean one healthy sh*t to me.

Some of the worst neighborhoods I've been in were inhabited by wealthy, supposedly educated people. Some of the best people I ever met have offered me soda in a paper cup while we sat in their un-airconditioned mobile homes.

America is what you make of it. Just like the UK.

Play nice, people.

Ladies,

I'm not sure who first swiped at who, but can we stick to the topic of what makes a nice house?

Yodrak

We all know HA's been negative about the UK, and it's good to see her showing she's not blinded by the 'wonderfulness' of the US. Regardless of how much each of us love this country, there is bad with the good...and I'm glad to see her express that.

I'm just wondering where my response to the latest attack went, particularly since there's still at least one post where someone is calling me a snob.
If we're gonna delete posts to keep the peace, fine; but there's still some inflammatory stuff there.

You should have known me in the late 1990s.

I am in no way blind to the US's problems. If I criticize some aspects of American culture, I'm a snob. If I criticize the UK, I'm a xenophobe or I'm intolerant.

Can't win, why bother even expressing an opinion.

Yodrak and I requested that people keep this topic on the matter at hand; looking at houses. It hasn't stayed that way, hence some of the more inflammatory posts have been made invisible but NOT removed. No one was singled out, posts from at least 3 people have had this done to them, mainly until the Captain or more than one Mod has looked at it.

Please don't take this personally.

Edit: I'm going to lock this thread for now. If you wish to discuss houses then please feel free to open a new thread. Thanks everyone.