We Are Buying A House!

Photos of our Soon-to-be-Hopefully House
As many of you know, Jeff and I have been out house hunting over the last several weeks. We are looking in San Marcos, California a suburb north of San Diego. It is one of the more desirable cities outside of San Diego yet it is inland enough to keep the prices affordable. A few miles west and we'd be in coastal Carlsbad where single family homes are still a bit out of our reach.

A couple of weeks ago we found a great place in our favorite San Marcos neighborhood, Santa Fe Hills. It was a single family home with two bedrooms and two baths and backed onto a park. The price was great but it needed a bit of work. Several windows were broken and it needed all new flooring. We were up to the challenge and found it to be perfect for us. We put in our bid only to learn we were the first... a good sign. Typically you get a response to your offer within 24 - 72 hours. The fact that it was owner occupied and not a short-sale or foreclosure meant we should have our answer in less than a day. Three agonizing days later we get word;

"another offer has come in and it is considerably better than yours, would you like to up your offer;"

says the seller's agent. We discussed it and decided our offer was not based on whether or not there were other offers but what we felt was appropriate for the property. Another several hours pass;

"are you sure you don't want to up your offer, this other one is considerably more."

Jeff and I discussed and again we determined that the house was not worth considerably more. If this other bidder wanted to pay a lot more then the seller should go with them because we were not about to overpay for this property... we were willing to walk away.

And walk away we did. Or more exactly, we were turned away because as expected the seller went with other offer. We shed naught a tear as the next day there were four gorgeous properties on the market, all 3 and 4 bed, 2+ baths for roughly the same asking price as the 2 bed we had placed an offer on. The Big Guy upstairs was smiling on us it seemed. That Friday we had a list of single family properties we wanted to see and an appointment with our Realtor, Cindy. Moments before we left the house Jeff went online and noted yet another new single family home on the market, and this one was just a few houses down from the place we had bid on less than one week before. (Again, our favorite Santa Fe Hills neighborhood.)

We met Cindy at the first place on our list and she was already on the phone arranging a showing of the place in Santa Fe Hills. (She's good... real good) We saw a couple good prospects and I was beginning to worry that we may have a hard time choosing just one house to buy. Then off to the Santa Fe Hills place. Jeff was nearly giddy when he saw it. It had all the potential of the last place (sans broken windows) plus an extra bedroom and a much larger lot. It also backs up on open land. Unlike most of the properties we had seen, it had already been foreclosed on and was bank owned which meant we wouldn't have to suffer through a six month waiting period to find out if the house was ours. Jeff and I decided on the spot... just two hours after the house went on the market, that we would put in another offer.

Fast forward a full week... Friday, Jeff and I were all but climbing the walls in anticipation. Every conversation ended with... "so what do you think is going to happen?" and "how many bids do you think have been submitted?" or "when do you think we'll hear back?" It was tough but then the call came. The bank countered our offer but also received a new offer just that morning. We heard them out and it seemed fair. We really didn't want to give them the chance to review the new offer either... so we accepted. Unfortunately it was a verbal counter-offer and a verbal acceptance. Nothing would be official until they signed the counter and we accepted in writing. ARG! With this being Friday afternoon and the home being bank-owned we feared having to suffer another full weekend in ambiguity.

Last night we met our friends Denise from my office and Eric from Jeff's office for wine but even as we toasted to no more car payments (Congrats Jeff and Denise) we were cautious not to preemptively toast to our accepted offer. We are not superstitious people but better safe than sorry.

This morning Jeff and I were putting the house out of our minds only occasionally asking "What do you think is going to happen?" out of habit more than anything and decided to get out of the house to do a little shopping. We were at REI when we got an unexpected call from Cindy; "your offer had been officially accepted!" Boo Ya!! We weren't even expecting a call today. Straight away we embraced our excitement by wandering through International Bath & Tile and the Sears Outlet store checking out prices for refrigerators and washer/dryers. Funny how all that built up anticipation finally presents itself. Nothing says celebrate like discount appliances.

Now we get our financing in order and schedule our inspection. I know in the backs of both our minds there is a pull to stay conservative and don't get too excited. We watch enough HGTV to know these things fall through all the time. So today we let out a lower-case wooo. We'll save the big WOOOO!!! for closing day, when we've got the keys in our hand.


(closing day scheduled for September 8th, 2009)