I often find myself ROFLMAO when an American goes looking for a home in picturesque Tuscany, for example, and they tell the Italian realtor they're looking for 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, a gourmet kitchen with dishwasher and a 48" Sub Zero refrigerator, with a big yard for the dogs and a post card view. Their budget: $1,000,000. Something like this is what the realtor will often show them....
Really? Those are some mighty expensive rocks! I always wonder, is this property really a million bucks, or was it $20K until the realtor saw their American passport? Regardless, Americans always have a wildly unrealistic expectation of how the rest of the world lives. Four bedrooms and 3 baths? They're asking for the Presidential Palace!
And it's now immensely popular to request a home "with character", which apparently means this:
I keep looking for a red "Condemned" sticker on a window.
And of course they want to live the "charmed life" of a local. Sipping espresso and playing bocce ball all day, strolling the piazza and dining alfresco in the evenings....
Then I tune in the domestic version and see couples asking for a move-in ready home for $400K, and in many/most parts of the country they're shown something like this:
Nice, cute, well kept house....absolutely. But $400K? *choke*
It all makes my humble little apartment feel quite special. I guess you could say, to me, House Hunters is a "comfort show". :)
S
