The Liminal Life

During Spring Break, we reached out to our banker and a realtor in the area for the first stages of buying a house.  We've been saving for the last five years for a down payment and we finally had our 20% down payment, emergency budget, and summer money (Dr. BB is on a 9-month contract and doesn't get paid during the summer), and we have to let our current landlords know what we want to do with our lease by the end of this month, so house shopping time commenced.

We had a budget in mind, we had a list of "musts*" and a list of "highly desireables**" and two weeks ago we met with the realtor to look at two houses.  We'd been watching the listings for months, so we knew these two houses were the only ones in the area where we wanted to move that matched our criteria.

The first house was a disaster.  Somebody will buy it and love it, but it wasn't for us. 

So we went to the second house. It checked all our musts. It checked all our highly desireables except for one. It was on the high end of our price scale, but it checked our boxes.

Spring brings bullfrogs.

We dithered and dallied. We watched as nothing new popped up on the market. We looked for comps, but they didn't seem to exist. We called the realtor back and asked for a second showing. Then we made a low offer. The sellers countered. We countered the counter. They accepted.

So we're in this weird place. We haven't had the inspection done yet. We haven't really done anything except pre-approval for the mortgage. But it's "our" house and we keep talking about it as if it is ours, making plans and lists of projects and someone (ahem) frequently mentioning that the white front door should definitely be painted red.

Fingers crossed this deal goes through. Because if it does, it will be the easiest real estate deal ever done by the realtor and the least stressful search for housing Dr. BB and I have ever had.



*Musts: Single-family dwelling,  at least 2 bedrooms plus an office (3 bedrooms is fine), at least 1.5 baths, turnkey - all major renovation done, a detached garage, central air, and southern or western exposure.

**Highly desireables: 2 baths, character, wood/tile preferred over carpet, paint over wallpaper, fenced in yard, workshop space, mud room, and gas range.