Quote:
Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer
The building works is the biggest problem. Looking at the council's plans they plan to start work in 2026 and finish by the end of the year (though in the Netherlands those projects tends to run well past what they've scheduled for).
This is the website for the project. You can see a row of houses to the right of the red roof, the house we visited is the most right on that row. That roundabout is huge. The bridge will be a shortcut to the highway, the street to the top right corner is the road to the city center. I think it will reduce the traffic to the city center a little bit, but with the roundabout so close to your front door I don't think it will make much difference and you spend a year with all the trouble such a building project brings. |
Yeah. I get it. Been there, done that, got the wrinkles and irritable hearing syndrome (me being grouchy for a few years) from it.
You should keep looking. IF when you are getting sorta sad about not being able to find THE house, if it's still on the market, it may be serendipity. See if the price goes further down (as I said, we're seeing a softening in the sellers' market here and IME, as the USA goes, housing-prices wise, so too goes the EU, typically) , and between that and the noise, etc. it MAY go down further yet, making that year of agony or so worth it. You have recession and interest rates and all that possibly--possibly--working in your favor, in that regard. Not so much in others, obviously.
Just a thought.
OR, the perfect house may yet come on the market. I'm still voting for that 200-year-old spot on the canal, but I already know that's a NoFlyZone for you two. :-) My hubby is the same way (as you ladies).
Quasi-humorous tale of Ye Olden Days:
When we first started house-hunting--as a young couple does, back when we went house-hunting on Brontosauruses, you understand--I saw this house that I just LUVED. LUVED it. So, I show it to Mr. Hitch, and I'm like "OMG,
look at that brick,
look at those oak floors, look at that lovely cook's kitchen and the quarters in the back..." and the look of
sheer horror on his face was...well, then not so funny, but alll these decades later, funny-ish now.
His mouth opened and he said "OMG OMG, that house is
TWENTY YEARS OLD!" I was like...and...what? And, so what?
Remember, I'd grown up in a 400+-460 year old house; had renovated and cleaned 500-y.o. brick and scraped and cleaned and refinished oak from
before the founding of America, ffs. I earned (ha) my $5.00/week allowance stipend by hand-waxing the foyer floors of oak, each Saturday. LOL (I may be the only kid of the time that was relieved to be remanded to boarding school. The whole "work ethic" thing in my family was no joke. No work, no chores, no dough, no after-school activities, any of that stuff.)
To me, a 20-y.o. house is
brand-bloody-new, for crying out loud (and I still feel that way to this day). To my husband, that's getting ready to fall down any second.
What
slays me is, out here, where he was raised (New Mexico/AZ), there are PLENTY of older houses that age.
PLENTY. This is on the old Spanish Trail!
Viejo Sendero Espaņol. I mean, people settled here before they knew that they were
people, for heaven's sake. (Admitted hyperbole here.) 1500's and all that rot. Sigh. But apparently, his folks always had "new" homes, not sad old 'used' homes like my family, snort.
Funny thing--anyone wanna guess just how old THIS house is, the one we're in right now? The one we bought back in '08? Duh...I'm shocked that he's not making "we gotta move before the whole thing falls down on our heads" noises...
Hitch