Finding the Perfect House

Written by Jaqui Lividini

When you’ve found the perfect house and you’ve fallen in love, but it’s set in a location you’d like to change, it’s hard not to wish that you could simply blink your eyes and move it.  We had that experience with our beautiful house in Connecticut’s Litchfield County.  It was on a lake, and as much as John (Speredakos) and I tried to convince ourselves that any body of water would do, we realized that what we really wanted was to be on the ocean.

So we set our sights on the Connecticut shoreline.  There are many charming and authentic towns along this stretch of the Long Island Sound, and it’s also a very easy commute from our home in Manhattan, an important consideration when you’re commuting with a child.   So now the real fun would begin—house hunting.  Like any house hunting experience, it began as a kind of meant-to-be mayhem.  We made eight different offers on eight different houses—all of which eventually fell through—to the point where it felt like Groundhog Day.  The search process was a long one and began before our daughter was born.  We finally bought “the” house when she was four.  It took us five years to find it.  Only for a New Yorker does the real estate process take half a decade!

We happened upon our cottage while looking at another one that we ultimately had no interest in.  Suddenly, we both noticed the house down the block, pointed to it, and said “That’s our house!”  Like Kismet, it miraculously went on the market the next week.  We were the first to see it and make an offer.  This time, it took.  The rest, as they say, is real estate history.