We found two houses we like this week. One is a cosmetic fixer-upper to the extreme. U-G-L-Y. It even has a really old air conditioning unit hanging out of the top story front window, cheap vinyl siding, medallions on the garage door, and clearly hasn't seen a coat of paint since the 80s. Simon walked up to the house today and asked to be let into "his" house. The really great thing about this house is its size: 2000 sq feet - five (three of them really small) bedrooms and three full baths, a wrap around large backyard complete with two enormous redwood trees. The house is resting among gorgeous houses in a little cul-de-sac in an attractive neighborhood assigned to some of the best public schools in the country. But oh man do the occupants not care about their surroundings.

The second house, in stark contrast, is GORGEOUS. The owners clearly have an eye for design and touched every bit of the house with classic and whimsical niceness. It's so gorgeous we wouldn't mind not having anything to redecorate. We could move into our super nice house and play in our super nice yard right away. The schools are good but not excellent, the neighborhood seems fine but it's nothing to write home about. The house is 1800 sq. ft. with a good sized backyard.

Both houses are asking almost exactly the same price. Both houses are in Sunnyvale. We imagine that the gorgeous one will attract the 50 million other people looking for houses in Sunnyvale right now and will create the bidding war of all bidding wars. However, the bidding wars get particularly fierce when you cross into the super duper excellent school area; the area of the Ugly House. So, who knows. Ugly House is accepting offers April 10. Gorgeous House is accepting offers April 15. We'll bid on Ugly House and not be terribly sad if we don't get it as we turn right around and bid on Gorgeous House. If we don't get either, maybe we think about finally hanging some art in our apartment...