I just wanted to update and say that I'm absolutely in love with two of the "bottom houses".
I could be beating myself up about this since if I had gone through with pref and given these houses a chance, I probably would have loved them and could've been in a house a year earlier, but I think it was necessary for me to grow up a bit and look beyond the superficial. This time I will (hopefully) be going back to these houses during pref round not because they are the only ones I got back, but because they are the ones I want to go to.