House Hunting

Art and I have been spending all our free time lately on the house hunt. In our life together so far, we have bought 3 houses so far and sold 2 (praying for the third to sell!), so certain aspects of this house hunt are very familiar. We kind of have it down to a science, and don't bother worrying about a lot of the stuff we were concerned with when we got the first one. However, that was all in PA. This is in Alaska, so as in most things, its a little different.
First, a mass answer to all the emails and calls we have gotten from loved ones - no, we are not going to be getting an igloo. Also, even with all the ice technology advances they have made what with all these new "ice hotels" that are so popular nowadays, we are not getting an ice-duplex or even an ice-townhouse. We are looking in the popular non-melting building material category of housing. Smart alecks! ;)
One thing that is very different here is that everything is pretty new. This is a big switch from the east coast, where you cannot swing a cat without hitting a colonial-era house. It often seemed as though roughly 75% of the housing stock in the Lehigh Valley was constructed around the Revolutionary War era. Not so here. The oldest houses you see are from the late 60's and early 70's, and even that's rare. The big quake of 1964 destroyed most buildings older than that. There has really only been any kind of housing boom here in very recent times, so almost everything is pretty new.
Also, there are very few builders in Anchorage, so if you are in a development, if you have seen one house, you have basically seen them all. This means other than individual houses, which can be surprising in a lot of ways, there is not much variety of style. Oh, there might be a couple of different floor plans, but there isn't going to be a big variety of options to choose from. In a way, this simplifies the search. Once you have looked in a given development, you can kind of assume that any others there will be pretty much the same.
Other than that, it is probably similar to looking for a house anywhere. You have to make your trade offs in what features matter to you and what you are willing to let go of to fit in a price range. But even there, you have to factor in the fact of where you are living. Now, we like to cook on a grill and eat out doors when it is nice out. So we are looking for a place with a place where that is possible. However, how important is that given that it is winter for 6 months out of the year? We would really like a place with a view of the mountains. Enough to live in an otherwise dicey neighborhood? and so on down the line.
We think we might have found our place, and are in negotiations to see if that works out for us. If not, more tales from the dark side await. So that's something to look forward to!