Very low intensity house shopping resumed today, after a long hiatus. Given prices in the good neighborhoods of Fairfax County, the house we saw today is the type of house were looking at. We're not paying extra for good looks, we're trying to avoid houses with major flaws.
Larger would be nicer, but that runs into affordability issues around here and ultimately I care more about the lot than the size of the house (i.e. any larger house we could afford would come with a significantly less good lot). The house here is actually larger than most we've seen, a bit under 3,000 sq.ft. plus a very usable walk out basement open to the back yard, for a total of 4,200 sq.ft. Five 2nd floor bed rooms, but not large bed rooms. Not much closet space either. And the first floor rooms could be larger as well...
Update #1: my wife has ruled out this house as "too small". Not sure how we're going to get a larger one around here that does not have more than offsetting flaws (near highway, bad basement, too dark, bad lot, not in our current first tier school district...) in the same price range. The location for this house is pretty much at our ideal point as well, partly due to status quo bias since it is a few hundred yards from where we are renting right now. But we do know by now what we're getting into by living here.
