Alaska Houses

Amy has been earning her realtor fee with us! She spent the first day on
a marathon househunting run, about 12 hours by the time we were done!
She's also been very patient with our indecisiveness, and done a great job
finding houses we might like to look at. She's very down-to-earth, not
pushy at all, and cares more about finding us the right house than
putting money in her pocket. You won't catch her trying to impress you
with a fancy suit, or trying to push you into a house you don't want.
Maybe that's why she had the second highest sales last year, even though
she works from home.

The very first house we looked at in Alaska, we call the "Ugly" house.
Not that the house itself is necessarily ugly, it's actually quite nice inside,
but the outside colors are hideous. The price was well within our price range,
but we don't like the location at all... it's right behind the lumber yard. The
Fireplace was the best part, but the inside just wasn't what we were looking for.

Alaska Houses
Alaska Houses
The next house ended up being our favorite for quite a while. We called it the "Sarge"
because there was a picture of an Air Force Staff Sargeant. I love the street name, it's
on Beaujolais Ave. It also backs on some woods, something surprisingly hard to find
here. After looking at several more houses over a couple days, we finally put a bid on
this one. Guess we moved too slow, because they accepted someone else's bid. There
was something fishy about the selling agent though, and the sellers never even saw
our offer. I think it was her own client that had the "winning" bid.
Alaska Houses
Alaska HousesWanting to Explore all our options, we looked at some pretty interesting houses.
This one someone had started a massive addition on, adding an entire second floor.
The odd thing is that whoever started the project knew what they were doing,
what was finished was professional work. No idea why it suddenly went up
for sale half finished. If the living space downstairs had been in better shape,
I might have been more tempted to get this one. The price of $250k in a less
desirable area didn't make it any more appealing.
Alaska HousesWe decided to take a drive out to the Palmer/Wasilla area, because there
are some REALLY nice houses out there for much lower prices than the
Eagle River area. Amy has been showing a model home built by Hall Homes,
which apparently does some pretty good quality work. Brian Fredericks, our
friend and co-worker from Tyndall bought a nice Hall home in Palmer. The model
home is gorgeous! The yard is huge, about 1/2 acre, and there's a creek across the
back. That house was listed for $252k, which we could easily afford. We were
almost ready to put an offer in on it, until we drove back to the hotel. It
took us 25 minutes just to get to Eagle River, so add another 30 minutes
to Heather's work. That was in good weather. I can't even imagine how
long it would take to get to work on bad days, like this morning when it
got icy, and it took about an hour just to get to work from Eagle River.
So here's a pic of the beautiful house we had to turn down because it's
just too far from base. Being new construction, I think the value will go
up considerably once the subdivision is paved and landscaped.