House Hunting Chronicles: Online Pictures: the Good, the Bad and the Creepy

Online pictures are deceptive in multiple ways; the often make the homes look bigger and brighter than real life; sometimes you can tell that a special distortion lens was used; I mean, how many rooms have rounded edges? Often a portion of tiled floor or ceiling outlined in crown moulding is all that is shown in a bedroom or bathroom shot. At times this will signal poor picture taking skills; more often than not it signals poor maintenance outside of the lens view. The blurry pictures drive me nuts; the upside down or sideways ones are only mildly annoying. The inadvertent reflection, errant leg or sneaky pet are always amusing.

Some online photo galleries will include 5 pics of the front porch and none of the bedrooms. Others don't show all the bedrooms, which is almost always suspicious. Although, I will say that one missing bedroom was left out of the line-up because it was being used as a closet; that person had enough shoes to rival Imelda Marcos!

Scent doesn't translate visually, so we can't see the pervasive bleach smells that will push me back out a door faster that you can say interest rate increase. Bleach often signals to me that the owner isn't really ready to sell. A slight musty odor is always a concern as well, especially when you just can't find the culprit.

Up close, a beautiful looking house may have tiny bedrooms and even smaller closets. One bathroom we were in had been remodeled beautifully and artfully, but it was barely wide enough to turn around in.

One laundry room, located in a partial basement, was only accessible via steep, scary stairs that looked like they led to Uncle Touchy's Naked Puzzle Room. Inside the room smelled overtly moldy, the concrete floor was disintegrating in places, and the single cupboard door only had one shelf above a deep, dark hole.

The agents we have met are an interesting lot as well. One praised us for buying while we are still so young. Another expressed concern that at our age our knees might give out if we bought a two-story house. One uttered the phrase, "Right on," about every other sentence.

"It's a process" has become my mantra.

We have found two houses we like. One is priced far higher than we are comfortable paying, and I don't think we will be able to talk them down to our level. The other is not in the location we wanted and is slightly smaller than we would like, but it has a great yard, garage and storage space.

Maybe our next house isn't on the market yet. We shall see.