First Round of Houses

Before we got an Ishur Ekroni (pre-approval), we were walking home from synagogue one night and passed by a realtor's office.  In the center of Ariel there are a few realtors and my friend and I have made a point of checking the windows from time to time.  This time I saw something interesting in the window - 5 rooms for 1.25 million, so I looked inside and the realtor, C, was in.  I introduced myself and my husband and explained what we were looking for - 5 rooms for 1.2-ish.

Just a reminder, one room is the living room/kitchen, so a 5 room house should have 4 bedrooms.

He was very friendly, but a little on the oily side.  He gave me his business card and we made a plan to see houses later that week.
My impressions of him:  Used-car salesman.  He also mentioned a house that was a "deal" because it needed work.  He kept saying that everything was from heaven.  On the other hand, though he noticed that my parents were there, but did not automatically assume that we could afford something very expensive.

Later that week we met up with him at night to look at houses after S came home from work.
The first house we saw was on HaShikma.  It was a rowhouse with houses attached in either side.  It had a large living room and a decent dining room, but virtually no counter space or cabinets in the kitchen.  The bedrooms were also very small.  Lastly, neither of the bathrooms had room for a tub without serious renovation.  The upside - room under the house around back for an apartment, should we want to build one, and a large backyard.  Also, the house was very nice - redone, pretty, etc.

The second house we saw needed serious work.  It had not been taken care of, and needed spackling and paint.  On the other hand, it was HUGE.  The main floor had a kitchen and living room/dining room. The next floor up had 2 rooms, the floor above that had 2 rooms and the floor above that had 2 rooms.  It also had a gigantic storage closet (machsan) outside in addition to a spacious backyard and front yard.
The downside was that the top floor had obvious water damage in the walls that was either from a bad roof or not airing the rooms out.  If the roof is ok, then it's a quick fix.  On the other hand, it is possible that the entire top floor was done poorly.
The owner also told me that his brother had just redone their roof.  I didn't know what to make of that.
The upside of this house was the number of rooms and their size.
S and I decided that we liked it, but before we did anything, would have a roofer in addition to an engineer take a very good look at the roof.
The asking price was originally 1.2 million, but according to C, the guy lowered it to 1.15 mil to cover repairs.  C also said that all it needed was a new coat of paint.

We decided to see what E, the next guy had to offer.  But first, the bank.