wanted

Our house is for sale again (for a few weeks now). Can we pleassseee get a buyer? Please? I accept that we'll likely lose a nice chunk of change between our repairs/upgrades and the realtor fees.

But I am ready to move on. We need to pack up (and stop commuting between our "vacation" home in PA on the weekends and my parents' attic in NJ weekdays). We need to nest (more on that later).

But meantime, we mostly browse. And I've made a mental list of what to look for in our next place. In an ideal world, we could have all of these things. Heck, we probably could elsewhere, someplace much cheaper than the NYC Metro (Seeing as a number of my wants didn't make the cut in the somewhat cheaper PHL metro). Alas, our jobs are here and so is my tiny family. So, we will make due with our limited budget (seeing as I owe Citibank my first born for my graduate education, but am opting to keep the kid and pay on my loans for yearsssss) and I am sure have to settle of a limited number of wants.

Must

• Dry basement. An actual basement, none of this crawlspace crap. Better than nothing but annoying. 
• Garage.
• Bathroom with the bedrooms. This sounds weird, but its not unheard of for small capes to have two bedrooms upstairs (or one for that matter) and no bathroom.
• Flat-ish yard, and no retaining walls on the property. The sloped yard has been an issue for selling our current house, and I'm not doing it again (and would never even entertain a yard sloped TOWARDS our house). 
• No in ground oil tank
• Not ON a main road
• 1200+ sqft (not counting basement)
• Close to appropriate highway & train for commuting

See how short that list is? I'm a realist. But these are non-negotiable.

Wants

• Attached garage. 
• Finished (or finishable) basement
• Gas heat
• Central air
• Non-original windows & siding
• Three bedrooms upstairs
• A half bath downstairs

In reality, we'd settle for half of these. Less for the right price.

Would be nice

• Second full bathroom
• Nice closet space
• Attic (walk up, of the storage variety, finishable would be even better)
• Attached two-car garage
• Updated electric
• Hardwood floors
• A kitchen not from 1978. OR 1957.
• No wallpaper.
• Exhaust fan in the bathroom
• Fireplace
• Walking distance to the train/a downtown area/schools. I can probably keep dreaming on the first two unless we want to live in the hood with a shady downtown where I can send money orders.