Feb 25, 2017

In the interest of bringing you all along on this emotional rollercoaster with me (jk I’m really not freaking out, just hopeful), I thought I’d give you an intermediate update on the house we put an offer in on yesterday. 

Yesterday morning I did something I rarely do and actually checked the updated listings our realtor automatically sends out to us whenever something new comes up on the market that fits our search. Most of the houses in our price range are townhouses, which we’re not super interested in, so I kinda scrolled past all of those and ended up looking through a listing for a really nice little 3 bedroom single family home. I liked it a lot and planned to text the realtor to see if she and I could go look at it later that day.

Then about ten minutes later my realtor texted me (I hadn’t gotten a chance to send her anything yet) saying, “So should we just put in an offer on such and such house now?” I laughed and told her I was about to text her about that house and we set up a time to go see it yesterday afternoon. My morning was a little busier than usual yesterday and in all the bustle I never got a chance to mention to Bryan that I was going to look at the house, or even that I had looked at the listings at all. So I had to laugh when he sent me an email an hour or so into my morning saying that he really liked this one house. The same house I had already set up an appointment to go see.

That afternoon when Olivia was home from school I woke Felix up from his nap (never a good idea, but oh well) and the kids and I went to look at the house. Everything was in great shape and it showed just as well in person as it did in the listing online. There honestly wasn’t a single thing I’d change about it, paint colors and flooring and cabinets included. We could move in tomorrow and I’d be happy with it all.

The only slightly weird thing is that the washer and dryer are pushed into this weird back corner of the unfinished part of the basement and you have to sort of squeeze past the water heater (or maybe it just seemed tight since I’m getting hugely pregnant) to get back and put clothes in the washer and dryer. But considering the long lists of compromises we’d have to make with any other house we looked at, having something minor like that was fine.

Other minor compromises: It’s a 3 bedroom instead of a 4 bedroom. It has a detached instead of attached garage, though both the garage and the driveway are two-car instead of one-car like several of the other houses we’ve seen. The yard is small and is really just the space between the back of the house and the garage, but there’s a nice patio and grass and some flowers planted behind the garage and, on the whole, it seems like a pleasant little backyard. We might fence it later if we felt the need, but it might be just fine as it is. And there’s a playground only a few houses down, so there you go. There’s no front porch to hang a porch swing on (my dream), but it does have a little overhang kind of porch over the front door, so it’s not like one of those weird houses that looks like it has no eyebrows. There’s no dedicated room I could use as my sewing room, but there’s a little nook in the finished part of the basement that’s carpeted and nice and has a big closet right next to it which I think could work fine. It’s in a different ward at church and it would be another new school for Olivia next year, but I think if we moved in and stayed settled none of us would care about that in the long term. And it’s a 10 min commute to work for Bryan instead of his current 5 min commute. But, ya know, like I said, these are all minor things.

Other nice things about the house: It’s carpeted everywhere except high traffic areas (where it has hardwood) and it seems to be pretty nice carpet. Apparently it’s a west coast thing to want carpet and an east coast thing to want hardwood everywhere and, while I love hardwood where it makes sense, we definitely prefer to have carpet in the living room and bedrooms. There’s a bathroom on the main floor (don’t even get me started on how uncommon this can be). It’s in a nice little neighborhood, really close to the elementary school and our church. Also closer to most stores and shopping and the freeway that we take to drive to Bryan’s parents’ house. There’s a good area for a playroom in the basement as well as a big unfinished storage room down there. Ok I’m tired of listing stuff, but it’s a nice house.

So the kids and I went to look at it yesterday at 4pm. The realtor and I agreed we should move fast and put an offer in on it. (Bryan and I had talked earlier at lunch about the possibility of putting an offer in and agreed if it looked as good as it seemed to go ahead and put the offer in. Just saying in case you thought I was a crazy lady.) The realtor had to be somewhere at 5:30pm so she rushed home and drew up the paperwork, which Bryan signed almost the minute he walked in the door from work at 5pm. The realtor sent the offer on to the listing agent, who passed it on to the sellers who said they were going to sleep on it.

Because we knew it was bound to go fast, we offered the listing price and our realtor made sure to communicate to them that we’re pretty flexible on our move-in dates, which in this case is good for both parties because we’re still renting our townhouse through the end of June and we’d rather not overlap on rent and mortgage payments and on their side, they still have to turn around and find another house to buy now, so having some wiggle room is definitely in their favor. I heard back from our realtor a couple hours ago that they’ve decided to keep it on the market for the rest of the day (I think they already had some showings lined up for today) and then make their decision at noon tomorrow, but that they’re leaning toward accepting our offer and a big part of that was us being so flexible about closing and move-in and stuff.

So, that’s all I know. Now we just wait and see.

We actually put in an offer on another house a couple weeks ago, but ended up dropping it because that house had so many offers that it was going for more than the listing price and, in ours and our realtor’s opinion, more than it was worth. It was a nice house and had a great floor plan, but it was a little older and there were several things that we would have wanted to update too. We said at the time that if it worked out, great, but if not there’d be something else that would work out. And that’s pretty much how I feel this time around too. Although I admit I’m a little more hopeful about this one. Anyway, fingers crossed I guess!