The Bargain Hunters

continued

So in the summer of 2007 they decided to sell the Saline house and move back to Ann Arbor. By then they had two boys, Chakor, now three and a half, and Kabir, now two. Anuja wanted a place where they could walk the kids to school and would see friends and neighbors walking by.

They checked out larger homes in Burns Park, Ann Arbor Hills, and other neighborhoods. “It was our third house, so we knew what to look for and what worked for us,” says Anuja, who grew up in Okemos and runs a fitness program called BollyFit. Vijay works at Ford’s Dearborn headquarters as an information technology executive.

Their home didn’t sell, so they decided to start again this spring. But they already had their eye on the house on Harding.

A gigantic gray place with a side yard, it had been vacant for more than a year. It had been priced as high as $720,000, in part because the former owners had added a mother-in-law suite and a master suite, giving the home five bedrooms and five baths in addition to its big living room and kitchen. Built in 1948, it was less elegant and less traditional than some others in Burns Park.

But by spring, the price had dropped to $460,000. “A fabulous buy,” Anuja calls it—“really a jewel” with “a good feel.”