Tucson, Arizona
House Hunting Trip 2
January 6-10, 2004

We left Florida early Tuesday morning, the 6th of January, 2004 and arrived at our Tucson motel at about 3:00 PM. The rest of the day was spent checking out local real estate listings, reading novels, and eating at an all-you-can-eat buffet at a wonderful local Chinese restaurant named "New China". All day Wednesday and Thursday was spent looking at houses, Friday we did paperwork, then attended a 2½ hour home inspection of our potential new home.

Note the following, which is not in any particular order:

We did not do any sightseeing at all . . . this turned out to be purely a "business" trip for us.
Our minimum requirements for a house were that it be at least 1,800 sq. ft., 4 or more bedrooms, 2 or more bathrooms, a 2-car or larger garage, and a swimming pool. Note for this trip we've raised our maximum price to $425,000 or less. All of the houses below met these requirements.
For what houses cost in Tucson ~ we thought we could sell our Cape Coral home, buy a home in Tucson, and have enough money left over to buy a small condominium to use as income property. But since we ultimately closed on home #7, we now have both our personal home and a rental property, and hopefully in the future we'll be able to purchase an additional investment property ~ it's going to be interesting! :)
Before leaving for Arizona, we spent a LOT of time doing homework on the Internet and creating various property reports. Thanks to this effort, we managed to tour 12 houses the first day and 6 more the second day, which according to our Realtor was a lot more than the average home shopper usually views. Additionally, we had no problem keeping the 18 homes straight in our mind ~ normally a daunting task!

The pictures below are of the 18 houses we viewed, as well as 13 different pictures taken in or near the property we ultimately purchased . . . enjoy!

(Click on picture to enlarge)

Bonnie is making last minute preparations prior to our viewing houses!	Day 1 #1 ~ $412,750.		#2 ~ $365,000.	#3 ~ $279,900.
#4 ~ $319,000.	Cactus blooming in front of #4.	$5 ~ $379,900.	#6 ~ $375,000, 3,700 square feet!	#7 ~ $424,000. This house was our 1st choice. We made an offer of $400,000, and as of 2/20/04 we became the new owners!
The preceding picture, this one, and the next 11 photos were taken in and around home #7.	View of the northwest corner of the house.	Cactus growing in the NW corner of the 1/2 acre lot.	House directly across the street ~ the people in this neighborhood seem to take pride in their properties!	Mountains to the north.
Diagonally across the street is 12.56 acres of authentic Indian ruins dating from the late 1300's!	The property includes a 2,020 sq. ft. main house and a 947 sq. ft. guest house. This double door leads from the street, between the houses, to the back yard.	The other side of the double door.	Spa and ramada.	Bonnie with Linda Nelson ~ the selling agent and a new friend of ours.

Bonnie with the listing agent, Joan Caruso. Note that Joan lives directly next door to #7.	Bonnie likes this home! Note that this fireplace, as well as the one in the casita, both work by remote control.	#8 ~ $349,500.	Seen up the hill from #8. If you're asking how much it cost, you can't afford it! :)	#9 ~ $399,000.
#10 ~ $370,000.	#11 ~ $285,000.		View from the front of #11.	#12 ~ $399,000.
I accidentally backed into a cactus similar to this ~ it took hours to pick the needles out of my legs!	That was the end of our real estate viewing for the day ~ Bonnie is making plans for day 2!	Day 2 #13 ~ $419,000.	#14 ~ $295,000. This was a nice home, but there was a busy intersection behind the back yard.	#15 ~ $399,000.
#16 ~ $259,000.	#17 ~ $309,900. This was a very nice house! If our purchase on #7 had fallen through, we would have made an offer on this one.	#18 ~ $379,900. Another nice home, but the high tension power lines were too close to the back yard.

If you would like to see the pictures from our first Tucson trip ~ click here.