We had a second viewing of the Holkerweg today, together with our purchasing agent (I'll call him W). He pointed a few things out to us that we hadn't noticed ourselves. The house is of sturdy and decent build. However, there's not much isolation, the floor in the living room is broken (under the rug...), the roof of the shed is questionable, the walls on the first floor are degenerating and would probably come apart when you pull off the wallpaper and a few more other things.

Still, the bathroom and kitchen are good. The toilet, though old fashioned, is in good repair, the paint on the window frames is still good and there's lots of room inside the house. W told the sales broker that the price they were asking is too high and the sales broker told us that he'd advised his clients to ask less than the price they are asking now. So that's a win already. Aside from that W let fall that the interior of course is quite out dated, the floor was bad and there was not much ventilation in the house. He thinks that he might be able to have the sellers drop the price quite a bit. On the other hand, the sellers are not in a hurry to sell because their new home is still being built so they can't move out soon anyway.

Even though there are lots of things to be improved about the house, there's no telling what you'd find "under the rug" in other houses and so far this one looked the most promising. We are not afraid or incapable of working with our hands, so I think it's a matter of planning and priorities. Which things to do before moving (floor at least..) and which things to do some time later.

It's starting to getting finalized (though we're still not there yet), but I really dread the whole mortgage thing we still have to go through.