This past Saturday was really beautiful and it was nice to go out and hit some open houses. As I mentioned earlier, there were 36 listed for the Village on MLSLI, although not all of them were for this past weekend.

We saw two houses, one very attractive and one…well…not. It was a Goofus and Gallant experience, if you know what I mean.

Nothing really on deck for this weekend. It looks to be beautiful weather, but nothing out there really interests me, so this is going to have to hold you guys for a while.

109 Washington Street

One of the keys to good house hunting is not to let yourself fall in love with any particular piece of real estate. While I didn’t actually fall in love with 109 Washington, there were some definite romantic stirrings that I needed to be wary of.

This is a three bedroom, split level house and boy is it split. There are actually four seperate levels in this house. On the main level, as you walk in the house are the living room, dining room and kitchen. The livinn room and dining room have nice, hardwood floors. The kitchen isn’t big and while it’s well kept, it’s very old. The cabinetry probably pre-dates my high school graduation and it’s cheap laminate. In the back of this level is a nice, screened in porch which leads out to the backyard, but more about that later.

One level down we have the den/family room, laundry room, half bath and a storage area. This level is a bit below grade, but it’s not a basement. The den area is big, but the walls are covered in painted paneling and the floor is done in carpet tiles. The half bath is OK, if somewhat bare bones. The space on this level isn’t well laid out and moving a wall or two would make much better use of the space.

One level up from the main level we find two bedrooms and the full bath. The bedrooms are not huge, but they’re of decent size and there’s good closet space. The bathroom is original to the house, classic 50’s tile and fixtures. Debra really likes that, but most people probably won’t. There’s some unfortunate wallpaper in the bathroom, but that could be remedied.

On the top level we have the biggest bedroom, the penthouse if you will.

Out the back , the yard runs into the Southards Pond nature preserve. Actually, because there’s no back fence the backyard is more or less part of the nature preserve. The preserve intrudes on the yard about ten feet past the property line.  I can imagine sitting out there (or in the screened-in porch) and imagining that you’re in a little house in the middle of the forest.

This is a great house with a lot of potential.  The layout is decent and the backyard abutting the nature preserve is truly special.  However,  I can’t see a half million for a modest-sized home that needs this much updating.

46 Lee Ave

When the only thing good about a house is the price, it’s probably best to move on. At $309K and down near the water off Little East Neck Rd South, 46 Lee is a tempting proposition for prosepctive homeowners looking to slip into the Village on the cheap.

This is a REO, a bank-owned, foreclosure. The place is caught in mid-renovation. The bathrooms are half-finished. The kitchen is mostly done.

But something is very wrong with this house. The floor is seriously buckled up on both the ground and second floors. None of the walls seem plumb. Either the house has settled oddly or there’s something even worse wrong with it.

Apart from that, the layout isn’t very livable. The placement of the kitchen and dining areas leaves a big, open, barely usuable wasted space right in the middle of the house. If you wanted a decent place to sit, relax and watch TV, you’d have to use one of the downstairs bedrooms as a den/family room.