It has been a while.

Things have been fairly uninspiring on the housing front, we haven't looked at anything in a while. I've been a little chagrined about the tax credit and tax credit extension that passed. We don't qualify for it under the old or the new criteria, so I feel that we are in a situation where people are being subsidized to bid against us. I'll make an uninspired analogy for anyone who doesn't think that is a big deal. Picture the Cash for Clunkers program, and for whatever reason you didn't qualify. Would you buy a car while people are rushing to the dealer to get their Cash for Clunkers or would you just wait for the program to be over? We'll be seeing some goosed numbers for the next few months due to demand being pulled forward by the credit, then it will sputter out at some point, because only so much demand can be pulled forward. I suppose only then will it be politically safe to pull the program.

Maybe we shouldn't be so pessimistic, because we are starting to see listings that seem somewhat reasonable, it's just that we have to go into the next pricing tier to do that. We aren't crazy about paying 350 to live in an iffy neighborhood, but now we are seeing things in the 500 range in prestigious zip codes. Are they real or just another mirage? We haven't bothered to waste anyone's time on this yet. But we have a little more cash coming in than we thought and we think we might be willing to move into that pricing tier if we truly like what we can get.

At any rate, we've decided we're going to put in our notice to end our lease by the end of this year. This will let us move out by February or else go month to month (for a yucky fee.) At that point we will either be looking for a rental or looking to buy. That much we are committed to.

1713 Mark Lane, Rockville MD 20852

We went to see some more open houses this weekend. In spite of my aforementioned slightly increasing optimism, these choices were quite uninspiring. This house is listed at $545. We live quite near that street, so we are familiar with the neighborhood. In essence, this is the type of house we like, a somewhat roomy brick "midcentry" "rambler" (whatever). The issue here is that this house is unrenovated and features older bathrooms and kitchen. We're pretty flexible with these but we want to feel that the price reflects them. With a formica kitchen counter and older vinyl floor, in addition to ugly bathroom tile (red/pink/black) this is even past the point where we might live with it for a while until we get around to fixing something up. The listing has been on the market for a while and I suspect that the DOM currently listed doesn't reflect the true time it has been on the market, it has probably had a listing expire before. The comments say that they are planning to fix it up and they have reduced the price.

My husband still gets irritated when he sees houses at a high price that he thinks are just plain crappy houses. As I've said before, I've mostly put that aside and I'm no longer feeling offended by listings. I imagine that this owner is probably overleveraged or in some similar bad spot. They just may be making the best of things by trying to list at this high price, and they have a right to try. I'd estimate (I haven't looked at the comps, just guessing) that they could reduce the price by an amount similar to a year's holding cost and move the house very quickly. Maybe that isn't an option for them.

6100 Stonehenge Place, Rockville MD 20852

We passed the sign for this on Montrose Avenue, and decided to stop by. We're not all that interested in a townhouse but I've always wanted to see what these particular townhouses look like inside. It was very elegant. The ceilings are high, the living room is roomy, and then there is a kitchen that opens up to a family area. The house backs to woods (and the new Montrose Parkway) and has pretty picture windows. The upstairs bedrooms are nice and roomy, the laundry is upstairs, and the master bath is lovely. It has a big soaking tub which is situated so that you could soak in there and look out at the woods. There is also a glass-enclosed shower which my husband likes. None of this modern unenclosed shower thingamabob for us. First of all, my husband would manage to wet down the entire bathroom, no, make that the entire second floor, if he didn't have an enclosed shower. Plus, the unenclosed shower thing seems like it would be drafty to me.

Personally I am not a fan of tubs with jets. I picture the jets being too hard to clean and filled with bodily detritus from the previous occupants. I know I'm not the only one weird enough to have these thoughts. I'm sure my husband would dismiss this as neurotic and a jetted tub wouldn't be a dealbreaker for me.

Another detail I noticed was that the upstairs landing was broad and wide, this gives everything a good feel.

There's no way in hell we'd pay anything resembling the list price, 685, for a townhouse. But if for whatever reason you're going to spend a lot of money on a townhouse, I guess this would be a decent one to buy. It is roomy, light filled and elegant, with no notable defects.

10611 Nash Place, Kensington MD 20895

We saw this place as we were driving around looking for another open house that was advertised on Drumm street in Kensington. This house has a very spacious eat-in kitchen (with formica) and a nice front room with fireplace. It is decorated somewhat like one of those "Victorian Teacups and BricaBrac" magazines. The master bedroom for this house is prohibitively tiny. Also the room entranceways and the stairway to the basement are way too low, my husband hit his head. This house is not for tall people. The basement has a walkout family room and a laundry room. The doorway from the laundry room was so narrow that my husband literally could not fit through it. We would have to full-body grease him up with some kind of lubricant to get him to do the laundry.

We never made it to the place on Drumm, just seeing where it was situated (close to crappy Wheaton plaza shopping center) and how narrow the streets are back there made us not want to bother.

We reflected that wide swaths of Montgomery county just aren't that great. A lot of these neighborhoods back here are just plain iffy. Yet a decent house is usually over 400K. Yadda yadda, you've heard it here before.

11720 College View Drive, Silver Spring MD 20902

This house was a perfect example of a listing that looks great in the pictures but not so great in real life. The house is pretty small and feels small. The living room is just miniscule. I didn't get a good look at the bedrooms since some doors were shut and others propped open in order to maintain some kind of complex cat configuration, like, some cats were allowed in some rooms and not others, maybe there were two cats that didn't get along and had to be separated, or something. I didn't look at the basement as it was carpeted and I am pretty allergic to cats, so it wasn't worth the risk.

This was another amateur re-do. I think if one is renovating for resale value, one should consult...someone on what finishings to select. This kitchen had dark-stained cabinets which in my view just looked crappy with the lighter-stained floors. I also didn't like the stone they had picked for the counters. However, my husband thought it was fine, and he would have the final say on the kitchen. My husband also thought the kitchen would be big enough, but I think he was mistaken about that. I don't think all of our stuff would fit into it.

There was some very odd slate stuff in the hallway by the bedrooms with track lighting on the ceiling. I thought it looked ridiculous, but again, my husband kind of liked it. My husband once wanted to buy an area rug which in my opinion, looked like one of Bill Cosby's sweaters circa "The Cosby Show".

We had plenty of time to keep looking, and in fact I had offered to drive to one of our more preferred areas to look around, but my husband didn't want to see any more, and this is after watching HGTV on our new bigass TV all week. He opted to go to Target and to get his car washed. It is that time of year where in certain parts of Rockville, flocks of crows and starlings roost in trees and festoon cars parked below with crap. Maybe it is a good time of year to look for a home, since if you buy in the spring and then find out after Halloween that you live in one of these birdcrap zones, you'd be pretty unhappy.