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This week, I’m diving into our house hunt, which somehow stretched to over a year but ended with us bidding on a home site-unseen (eeeps). Plus, an insightful Q&A with our real estate agent, my favorite travel source, and an excellent vintage book on color. Over on our Homeward Chat, I’m asking: What are your house-hunting tips? Any questions to ask, features to look for, or tell-tale signs that it's a good house?
The first house we looked at was a sweet one with a strong California livin’ vibe.
I’d like to say that we were methodical with our house hunt. That we scouted all the Ojai neighborhoods, spent a lot of time in the area, and made sure we understood local water and fire issues before we started looking at houses.
We did not. We drew up the below list of must-haves and nice-to-haves, but we’re romantics at heart so we knew we’d need an excellent real estate agent to be our partner and to look out for us on the practical pieces (also, it was 2021 and Covid was a real factor). From our apartment hunt in Brooklyn long ago, for which we had a great agent, we knew we responded best to someone low-key, thoughtful, and not at all salesy.
Must haves: 3 bedrooms a view fireplace
Nice to haves: heated pool 4th bedroom
We toured a bunch of homes in town, like this one.
Our friend James, who had a lovely home near town, recommended we talk to his agent, who had sold some of the area’s nicest homes. I researched her portfolio and sent her a personal note, explaining that we were hoping to spend this new phase of our lives in Ojai and asking to meet. There was no response.
A few weeks later, I sent a follow up. I never heard back. Perhaps Ojai didn’t like outsiders! Another agent we were introduced to was too busy for us (tough town!), but offered to introduce us to her colleague, Lady Michael. We set up a Zoom.
When we got on the video call, Tad realized that Lady Michael had once dated his best friend from college.
Lady Michael, a former model who dresses like a Parisian but has the warmth and calm of a yogi, turned out to be the dream collaborator (see her insights and tips below). She helped us focus our excited, scattered, open-to-everything approach so that we homed in on places that a) reflected how we like to live, and b) we could afford.
The house wasn’t right, but the plaid sofa stole my heart.
Ojai has an unmatched landscape, but if you’re into home design, it can be a disorienting search. There is nothing cookie cutter about its housing stock. There are Victorian homes, split levels, ranches, and Tudors. Every house we looked at needed work. Some needed updated wiring. Others needed floors replaced. All of them needed a design edit.
Over the course of a couple of visits, we got to know the Arbolada, a neighborhood filled with oak trees and beautiful old homes that were either way out of our price range or so shaded by all the oaks as to be oddly gloomy. We looked in Meiners Oaks, an up-and-coming nearby village where a lot of young creatives live. And we explored the East End, an area strippled with citrus trees and large plots of land.
We never got to see this house but it confirmed our love for ranch homes.
We stayed open to buying a home for its land and rebuilding, or simply buying land. This meant visiting some memorable places. There was one with an elaborate waterfall system on the hill behind the house. Another was, as Tad put it, a “Bea Arthur Museum.” And still another had a bedroom that showcased, above the bed, a poster entitled “Ride or Die.” It depicted the owners embracing, wearing only shorts (him) and a bikini bottom (her), as they fired pistols and monstrously large bullets filled the air. Across the hall, their young daughter’s room was princess themed.
We live very quiet lives.
As we learned what we absolutely didn’t want, we got more disciplined. We could see that we’d like to be in or very near town, so that a bike ride to a coffee shop would take less than 10 minutes. We wanted some outdoor space, at least half an acre, but not so much that we wouldn’t see our neighbors. And we both have a fondness for ranch houses (which have the added benefit of being easier to live in when you’re older). California 1960s- and 1970s-style wood homes loomed larger in my imagination than I realized.
A house of a certain era.
We also got more realistic about the market we were in. A lot of houses changed hands during the first year of Covid. By the time we started looking, during the second half of 2021, the market was tight because there was still demand but less inventory. Good houses sold as soon as they were listed, which put us—2,800 miles away—at a distinct disadvantage. While we would try to be ready to hop on a plane, we began to accept the likelihood that we’d need to bid on a house before seeing it in person...
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