House Envy

I knew I shouldn't have stopped and looked, I knew it would make our tiny house look even shabbier if I looked, but there is something about new houses and looking at model homes that I just can't resist. Never mind that I couldn't afford the furnishings in just one of the rooms in these houses let alone the actual house, it really is fun to look. Of course if I were ever rich enough to buy one of these houses, I certainly wouldn't want it to be in Bakersfield, but still, fun to look.

I was driving up to the post office, going what is kind of the back way in the hopes of less traffic, driving to the post office since I wanted to get some orders that came in this morning out before the weekend and it was too late to drop them at Office Depot for pickup. I haven't driven to the post office in a long time and was surprised to see an entire new neighborhood cropping up. A neighborhood complete with model homes. Yay! An 'upscale' neighborhood, meaning incredibly expensive at over $400,000 for a house. Who the heck buys these houses anyway, by my guess the payments would be somewhere around $5000 at minimum so you'd need to be making per year about what the house price is.

Anyway, on the way back from the post office I went and looked. I had heard of the new houses with a little 'mother in law' apartment as part of the house and one of the house models was that style. And it was nice and mother in law would be really lucky to live in it. The kitchen/living area was small, but it had 2 bedrooms and even a laundry closet. The house around it was absolutely huge, these houses being in the 3000 and up square footage range. Our house (including the garage I think) is 999 square feet. So just imagine our house times three and way way nicer.

I went through all 4 of them, drooling over how perfect they stage the houses, and if you want your house to look like the model, add on another $30,000 or so for the furniture. It reminds me of the huge dining table we saw when shopping for our measly little recliner chair and love seat, both of which barely fit in our living room. The table was like 12 feet long with 10 chairs and would have filled up our entire living room. It would go perfectly in one of the houses I looked at today though, with plenty of room to spare around the table.

So here is what just one of the houses looks like.

And a few pictures of the inside and furniture, direct from the Lennar homes website.

Living room. Some of the  houses had separate dens/living rooms in addition to the main living room/dining area.

Kitchen and separate dining room in the back there.

And this is the master bath.

Now, I would really not want a house quite this big because you'd spend all your time maintaining it, cleaning and mopping and taking care of that expensive furniture, but as Keith would say, if you can afford the house you can probably afford the cleaning lady that you let live in one of the smaller bedrooms or maybe the laundry room.