13901

As a former owner (well, in her eyes I guess I was the walker/provider of food & treats and mediocre ball thrower) of a German shepherd I was looking for a Gumbo photo and i'm glad there was one! Look at those ears, was he eyeing food?

wakesetter93

Oh yes, he had his eyes on some food. My fiance's parents (our built in dogsitters) brought him over as well as dinner so he was keeping a close eye on the happenings in the kitchen.

MarkCron

looks like you are/were well prepared for a celebration as well (background bottles)!!
Did you hear anything on offer?

wakesetter93

We're always prepared for a celebration but unfortunately we won't be celebrating on that house. It ended up having 11 offers and sold for 100k over asking.

We're headed back down this coming weekend do do some more searching and I'm running in a race Sunday.

catmndu

good luck on the house and the race!

wakesetter93

Thanks catmndu! Hopefully my race is better than the house hunt so far

apodo77

Both my brothers live in the Austin area and I attended UT with several friends still living there. That's pretty common these days. It'll be hard to get a house not far above asking.
Good luck.

wakesetter93

Nice, if you know of any of them looking to sell a house let me know! My fiance is also a UT grad and her brother is a Junior there now.

I've seen a few things sit on the market for a while (The Opendoor listings seem to sit forever) and some price drops but things are still white hot. We'll be back down Saturday morning to look at some more!

dat4life

Thanks! The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind, but I'd definitely be down for a beer. Hopefully our paths cross at some point.

I lived in the Metroplex for five years, though it's changed so much since I moved away in 2014. My luck looking for a house there right now is the same as what you experienced down in Austin haha.

wakesetter93

I'm sure they will, let me know when you're up here next. If we don't find a place on this trip and don't see anything that checks all of our boxes we'll probably pump the breaks on the house hunt until our wedding and honeymoon are over, sometime in mid/late May.

Good luck on your house search, hope you find something! The metroplex has changed a ton since I first moved here in 2016.

wakesetter93

After our first trip down to Austin we were feeling excited as we found a great home that we decided to make an offer on. We made what our realtor felt was a strong offer, signed the paperwork, and hopped on the plane back to Dallas. Unfortunately, the Austin housing market reared its ugly head, and we were beaten by an offer that was $100k over asking. Knowing that I was heading down the next weekend for a race, it quickly turned into another house hunting trip as well. Our 5 days in Dallas were absolutely chaotic as my parents came into town to do a walkthrough of our rehearsal dinner, wedding and reception spaces as well as do the tasting and select the menu. Exhausted from the prior weekend and the week, I was less than thrilled when my alarm went off at 5:30 on Saturday morning.

Having packed most of our stuff the night before, we managed to get out of the house and on the road by 6:15 and, since I hadn't checked the fuel levels in the truck, we made a stop at a QuikTrip in Waxahachie for gas just before 7:00. I-35 through Texas has some of the worst construction and congestion of any Interstate I have ever seen; however, it seems like early on a Saturday morning is the best time to be out as there were very few other cars on the road. This allowed me to set the cruise control and relax a bit for the majority of our drive.




A deserted I-35

45 minutes after our QuikTrip stop, I made one more stop in West, Texas. West is home to a large Czech population, and they have a couple of famous bakeries/kolache shops right off the highway. I normally stop at the Czech Stop but on this trip, we stopped at Slovacek's which is a much larger and newer place on the other side of I-35. Since we had Gumbo with us this was ideal as they have a fenced in dog park next to the building. We loaded up on breakfast kolaches and coffee and were back on the road towards Austin. Traffic picked up a bit as we got to Round Rock and stayed fairly steady all the way to Austin. We got to my buddy’s house, an old roommate from grad school, and dropped off Gumbo and caught up for a bit before going to see the first of 6 houses that day. The bulk of them were located in South Austin so after navigating some of the traffic we arrived at our first one just after 10:30. From there we spent the next 2.5 hours bouncing from house to house quickly crossing some off the list and leaving others to consideration. Our realtor had to go down to San Marcos for the afternoon so we told her we would think over what we had seen and let her know that evening if we wanted to put in any offers. Every house we looked at was some sort of compromise and we knew there would be tradeoffs with whatever we chose (one car garage but great location, completely remodeled with a pool but close to a train, massive yard but cheap flip, etc.).



Slovacek’s


Tiny with a great location



Cheap flip with a massive yard


Since we were near my friend's place after looking at the last house we stopped by there and picked up Gumbo before heading downtown. I had to pick up my race packet for tomorrow and because of Covid restrictions, my fiancé couldn't come in, so she and the dog went and walked around a nearby park. The pickup and expo were limited to participants only and they did a vaccine check before allowing entry. Mask use was also enforced. The pickup process itself was a breeze and there were no lines, so I was in and out in less than 15 minutes. From there, we headed up to the Austin Beer Garden Brewing Company, which was a large outdoor space just off of South Lamar. I wasn't drinking to prepare for the race, but I did get one of their delicious homemade pizzas to load up on some carbs. We talked through the houses that we had seen and decided to place an offer on one. The house was already in a multiple offer situation with a deadline of Sunday at 7:00p. We emailed our realtor and when she went to get the paperwork started, found that it was already under contract. Apparently, they got an offer so good they pulled the offer deadline and went with it. Knowing we had struck out that day, we made plans with our realtor to see a couple more properties before leaving town after the race.



3M Half-Marathon Packet Pick-up



ABG Brewing



Another driver for the trip was my fiancé’s brother was turning 21. We took him out for dinner the night before his birthday at a ramen place called Ramen Tatsu-Ya on South Lamar where we had a delicious meal. From there I headed back to our friend’s house to get some rest before the race while my fiancé and her brother caught a late movie at Alamo Draft House before going out to celebrate his 21st at midnight. Fortunately, I had a late start time for the race and didn't have to be out on the course until 8:20. My alarm went off at 7:00 and my fiancé dropped me at the start line just after 8:00. Th crowd had thinned so instead of starting folks in waves, they allowed people to start whenever they wanted. The race started up at The Domain and I crossed the start line around 8:10. The course weaves through north Austin and the first 4-5 miles are largely commercial, running past a mix of office buildings and warehouses, passing Q2 Stadium (home of Austin FC) before crossing under US 183 and into Allandale where the course mostly parallels MoPac. Here is where the course got more residential and there were families tailgating in their yards cheering on the runners. Some even offered snacks such as fruit, cookies, beer, wine and shots of Fireball, all of which I chose to pass on. Coming out of Allandale, we ran across town on 45th street almost to I-35 before turning south and running through the campus of The University of Texas. The look on students faces who had no clue there was a race happening was priceless. From there it was a quick sprint down to the State Capital building and the finish line which I reached around 10:20.





Start line

Finish line

My welcome party


I was hoping to complete the race in under 2 hours, but I'll take a 2h12m time for my first half-marathon. After collecting the finishing medal and t-shirt I met up with my fiancé and her brother and headed off in search of brunch. As always when in Austin, we made our way to Banger's for mimosas and sausage. We met up with some friends there for brunch before heading back to the house so I could shower and change. That afternoon, our realtor had lined up a few more houses for us to see but we weren't wowed by any of them. So, for the second week in a row we struck out on the house hunt. We left Austin around 4:30 and with no stops made it back to Dallas around 7:15. With the wedding and honeymoon coming up in the next few months, we don't have any house hunting trips planned back to Austin. We'll keep looking on Zillow and through the targeted search from our realtor and will only take a trip if the house looks like it would absolutely fit our needs. We have the added bonus that my fiancé’s brother lives in Austin and can always meet our realtor and do a video walkthrough of the house before we decide to make the trip.



Rainey Street

More houses

Gumbo is ready to go home



Thanks for following along on another installment of this trip, more to come soon!

GregWTravels

Fireball while running a half? Woozers! Whoever took them up on that offer is either very brave or very stupid!

Great time. Congratulations!

Shame you haven't found the right house yet, but I am enjoying the trip report.

13901

I'm having PTSD from my own house hunting here in London, minus the hassle of getting a mortgage approved and the next-to-useless estate agents. Good luck wakesetter93!

wakesetter93

Thanks GregWTravels! I did not participate in the shots of fireball but I did have a guy handing out beer in a 10k once and imagine my surprize when I got a cup of Hazy IPA instead of a light beer.

Thanks 13901! It seems like the housing market has gone mad everywhere. We'll keep looking and hopefully we can find something that suits our needs soon!

wakesetter93

Given that it is the shortest month of the year, one may wonder how many things you can possibly squeeze into February. The answer for us was a lot! February has been a very hectic month both on the house hunting front as well as the wedding front.

We started the month off shopping for wedding suits before I had a trip down to Baton Rouge for a board meeting. That trip just happened to coincide with a massive ice storm that hit the DFW area. For folks up north, this would have been considered a routine weather event but for us here in Texas it was chaos. I ended up changing my departure to Wednesday instead of Thursday and still ran into issues getting out of town. Gumbo was not happy that I was leaving but my fiancé handled it quite well as it meant she could stay in all weekend and watch movies without my input. We took off out of Dallas, bound for Atlanta, less than an hour before the sleet/freezing rain began and snarled air traffic around the state for days.

A very unhappy Gumbo

My getaway plane from DAL

Got out just before the rain turned to sleet/ice

A photo from our neighborhood the next day

Aside from some nasty weather in New Orleans for my drive up to Baton Rouge on Thursday, it was a great weekend in Baton Rouge and I managed to get some face time with the new university president, Women’s Basketball coach Kim Mulkey and retired Gymnastics coach D-D Breaux. I even took a virtual 3-way call with my fiancé and our realtor at a Gymnastics meet as we made an offer on a house after a FaceTime walkthrough. On the way home I made a pit stop in New Orleans to see some fellow FT’ers.

A beautiful weekend in Louisiana


After an uneventful trip home, we jumped right back into planning for the wedding and my Alumni Association Crawfish Boil (Which is a part of the Dallas DO if anyone is interested). We managed to sneak out for some fun here and there and I even managed to catch a couple of Dallas Stars hockey games. In an effort to get in wedding shape, we also got a Peloton and I’ve become addicted to it in short order. Multiple other homes were offered on but each time we were beaten out by offers of $100k+ over asking price.

Finally, we ended the month with a cake tasting, more wedding and bachelor/bachelorette party planning, and a visit from Zorak as part of a day trip from the Houston DO. We’re planning to make at least one trip down to Austin in early March in a last ditch effort to find a house prior to the wedding. Otherwise, we will have to postpone any serious searching until after our honeymoon, though I do refresh Zillow 8-10 times a day so I doubt the search will actually stop.

Gumbo loved his NOLA souvenir

Cake Tasting

Bar hopping with Zorak

Thanks for continuing to follow along on this drawn out trip report!