Soccer was great on Sunday, but unfortunately, the houses weren't. One was in Chatham Village and that the other was in Old Chatham. They are both for rent or sale.

We looked at the Chatham Village one first, and the owner told me that there were nightmare tennants there and that she was going to have to evict them. They had told her that they didn't have the rent this month because their dog had been killed. (Steve wondered if the dog was the one earning money.) Sure enough, when we pulled into the driveway, on the side of the garage was a little grave with flowers for the dog. The house is on a busy road.

Before we got out of the car, Aidan announced that it was an old house and that he didn't like old houses.

The tennants were in fact a mess, though they were making an effort to clean up for our visit. It was hard to not see the house through them though. It was a modest farmhouse with two bedrooms upstairs and a room downstairs that was being used as a third bedroom. The family has three kids that are probably middle school aged. I hope they aren't paying rent because they are saving money for first month's rent and security somewhere else. It's an ugly situation.

We had high hopes for the second house because we wanted one of them to work. Aidan immediately expressed his disappointment that this one was old too. (When Aidan says old, he means run-down. He insists that our friends' well kept Victorian is a "new" house.) This house was in a rural setting, but very close to I-90. It had been bought and renovated in order to rent or re-sell for a profit, so it had all brand new everything, though the renovation was not finished yet so it was a bit of a construction zone. It was very small. We were told it was a two bedroom, but the bedrooms were awkward - one was right by the front door and the other was the second floor of the house, and the stairs were very steep, as is often the case in very old houses. The location was much farther north than anything that we were familiar with, in what is apparently a very wealthy town, which does us no good at all unless we want to be close to the Old Chatham Tennis Club.

So we left feeling like it could work, but the price was a little above our price range, and it seemed to involve too many compromises to pay top dollar for. We already did that once with the barn. The way that the bedrooms were set up, I couldn't imagine transitioning Aidan into his own room and bed there. There was no room for Steve's tools and ladders. The bathroom was not finished, but there was not going to be a tub, just a shower. (In the barn we had a tub but no shower.) We'd spend half our lives driving.

Whenever we talked about it, I would bring up the Chatham Village house and Steve would spit venom about it. He didn't want to have anything to do with that house, but also acknowledged that it was mostly the tennants that bothered him. However, it had some good features, and the selling price is in our price range. It's on a nice, large, flat lot, it has a two car garage and although it is on a main road, it is a good, central location.

So where we're at now is looking at the house again with the eyes of potential buyers. It's not on the market and it might be possible that the owners would hold the mortgage for us for a couple of years. Even if they wouldn't, I think we could get a mortgage for it. Another possibility presented itself this week - my friend who is an accountant has a client that needs to unload a small house on seven acres, and is willing to do it for a shockingly low price if it can happen quickly. He hasn't returned my calls yet, so this may be one of those things that's too good to be true, plus, my experience with these things is that they are never quick when a mortgage is involved.

In the meanwhile we are committed too trekking up there every weekend for soccer. Aidan loved it so much that he brought the soccer ball to bed that night. The sight of the shin guards lights up his face.