House shopping is no longer enjoyable

My wife and I no longer enjoy house shopping.
It was fun at first because we liked getting guided tours of some nice homes. These tours were our own Christmas parade of homes minus the holiday decorations – bah humbug to them anyway, people aren’t looking at the decorations because they’re really looking at how much better or worse that house is compared to theirs.
But after more than three months of house shopping, and purposely looking for flaws, the joy of private tours has become a nightmare of “not this again.”
It’s sad that we reached this point because we finally have an offer on our house, which means we have to be gone from our Wautoma home when the deal closes. Instead of looking at houses on a speculative basis, we can be serious in our pursuit of our next home. We’re not looking for a dream home; we know we can’t afford that yet. We just want something comparable to our current home, which we love.
Unfortunately the market in Wautoma doesn’t compare to the market in Stevens Point. We’re selling our current home for $95,000, a bargain price even for Wautoma. It’s been newly remodeled, which includes a new roof, windows, siding and appliances, and the only thing it really needs is an expansion of the garage to accommodate two cars instead of one.
We could easily sell our home for $140,000 if it were located in the Stevens Point area. As a kid I remember my second-grade teacher taking us outside to watch a giant house near our school get moved to another location down the block. I’ve told my wife that we need to find those movers so they can bring our house here. Then we’ll receive the amount the house is really worth. Just imagine a two-story house being carted down Interstate 39. I don’t know if the on- and off-ramps could handle it.
So buying a comparable house in Stevens Point with a budget that doesn’t allow you to has made house shopping a miserable experience. We’ve looked at some houses that are the same price we’re selling ours for and have nearly tripped over each other trying to get out of them. Two words: shag carpeting. Some homes apparently haven’t gotten out of the 70s yet.
We’ve upped our budget and have found some decent homes. But when we bring my father-in-law, a plumber who could teach MacGyver a thing or two, to look at them, he manages to find serious problems. In one case he found a major problem the municipal inspector didn’t catch.
We did find a zero-lot line house that we liked, not the type of house we want permanently but good enough until we can afford the dream home someday. We made an offer less than the asking price, reasoning that since we had to come down $15,000 from the original asking price of our home to the purchaser, we could do the same. The seller countered, which we expected, but dropped the price less than $1,000. We’re undecided if we have to counter that counter. We’ll probably opt to keep looking, a process my wife has cutback on because she is so frustrated. I’ve now become a screener and she’ll only look at homes I give approval to.
After looking at more than 30 houses the excitement of walking into a potential new home has completely disappeared. The excitement has become “that needs to be replaced,” “the roof is ready to go” and “sorry you came from two hours away to show me this home but you shouldn’t advertise it as three bedrooms if it really only has two.”I know we’ll find the right home. Like any repetitive process that gets boring and frustrating, you just want it to end. Then we can really enjoy this wonderful Stevens Point community.