We have two big projects right now: I need to find a job, and we need to find a house. Every Sunday is househunting day: we take the tube to Spånga and go to all the viewings we can, as long as they seem even remotely interesting. In fact when we have time we also view houses that we don’t expect to be interested in at all, just to see what’s out there, and to educate ourselves.

What are we looking for?

• Location: Northwest Stockholm, at a distance that’s convenient for commuting. Spånga is the area we’re focusing on, because it’s a nice area, and not as expensive as some other nice areas in NW Stockholm. It also has good communications in to the city centre.
• Open plan, or something that can be converted to an open plan through judicious tearing down of walls. We loved our last flat in London, which consisted of one small bedroom and one huge everything-else room, with a high ceiling, exposed brick walls and exposed beams. If we could have taken it with us to Stockholm, we would have. We want something similar here. We want a house where it is natural for the entire family to spend time together in one large area, so that whoever is cooking dinner in the kitchen can hear the music that the others are listening to in the living room, hear their comments on what they’re doing on the computer, etc.
• Lots of light, lots of space. High ceilings.
• About 3 bedrooms.
• A house. Ideally a detached house, but a good terraced house might be interesting, too. No flats, though. This is because we also want…
• A decent-sized garden/yard. It should have enough space for children to run around and play, for some flowerbeds and berry bushes, and perhaps for a small kitchen garden.
• We don’t care very much about the current state of the house (as long as there are no structural problems). Ugly 1970s wallpaper, worn-looking bathrooms, old fridge/freezer/washer – all that can be fixed later.

Swedish real estate agents have a shared database that lists all houses for sale via an agent, in all of Sweden. This database is freely available on the internet, with photos, maps, viewing times, floor plans etc. We keep track of everything that’s put up for sale in Spåga.

I’ve created a del.icio.us account where I will be saving all the houses that we consider even remotely interesting. They’re tagged by viewing date – this weekend’s viewings, for example, are tagged houses+20080413. Feel free to take a look and send us your views on what you see!