Observations from Attempting to Buy a House

Zach and I have gone full throttle into our quest to buy a home in DC. It has been fun and we're learning a lot, but also difficult because housing inventory is at a historic low. We've seen some very good contenders go on the market and sold within as little as 2 days. So once we find what we're looking for, we need to be ready to STRIKE.  As a person I'm acquainted with says, striking may involve me waving my check book around drunkenly in the air at the Open House and screaming that I want to "lock it in." That person has a curious imagination.

As we've gone through the process, I've noticed there are a few buzz words I keep hearing and styles that seem to pop up everywhere. So in case you are a novice to home buying, here is what you need to look for:

Exposed Brick
The first thing you should do if you're at an Open House is scour the home in search of the rusty red good stuff. If you can't find it, you should storm out and take it as a personal insult that someone would dare waste your time by putting their house on the market in that condition. The best next step would be to make a protest sign, return to the Open House, and shout "we want the brick" until the seller comes out of his/her hiding place with a hammer and pounds away at the plaster, sobbing until it's all over. If it turns out that the foundation does not include any brick at all, do the seller a favor by grabbing their hammer and tearing down the entire house so they can build it right next time.

the process of exposing brick in a home

exposed brick done right

"exposed brick" done wrong

Exposed brick for the sake of having exposed brick

Breakfast Bar
It is unlikely that you will complete a house search with out coming across a few dozen breakfast bars, which are often on the side of kitchen islands. Breakfast bars are most functional in teeny tiny houses where it's not possible to comfortably fit a table anywhere; however, in DC, the breakfast bar is usually just a stylish addition to your kitchen. Visually, the benefit of having a breakfast bar/island is that it brings the kitchen space together, especially considering open floor plans are hip right now and kitchens sometimes are not separated from the living room. I can't really imagine myself ever actually eating there though, I kind of like eating at a real table. Here is a house we looked at with a typical breakfast bar/island:

Below is another place we saw where the kitchen is just one long continuum and it's sort of awkward. Unfortunately, this space is too narrow to have an island or breakfast bar. This place also didn't have any exposed brick. You shouldn't be surprised that it hasn't sold yet.  

Boutique
Boutique houses are all the rage right now.  What is a boutique house, you ask? I'm not sure--in the real estate world it seems like it refers to anything that has had a nice renovation and stands out from the riff raff around it. I think there is a lot of backlash against the "builder grade" houses that seem very manufactured and are identical to other units in the building our houses on the block. Quality design and building, I can rally around that. However, I can't rally around the "boutique." The word conjures up ideas of luxury and specialness. It's obviously a marketing term adopted by the real estate world to make people feel good about themselves when they are overpaying for their house. This unit, which Zach and I might look at this weekend, would probably be described as boutique:

not shown, a motorcycle, which was included in the staging of this house

It's beautiful, but it's in a terrible neighborhood. So I'm not sure if that still makes it boutique. I'm still learning. Stay tuned.