The house saga

I had no appreciation of the drama required to buy a house before this move. I knew it was a Major Life Event, so I suppose I should have realized that drama would be part of the deal, but I went in blind.

Just finding a place we wanted to make an offer on was hard enough, and then when our first two offers didn't work out (overbid on one, they decided to take the house off the market for the second), I got that slightly hopeless feeling in my stomach and I began to have nightmares about having baby #2 in this horrible rental condo.

When our third offer was accepted we were cautiously optimistic. Maybe we'll get a house! We thought. But the story was far from over.

The home inspection revealed that the place needs a new roof immediately and the AC is at the end of its natural life, which means we could need to replace that soon as well.

These are not obstacles so much as opportunities for negotiation, we told ourselves. And after a lot of back and forth and a lot of stomach aches, we did get to resolution that allows us to go forward with the purchase, but oh! the drama.

I do appreciate the art of negotiation. But at a certain point, I want to stop playing the telephone game through two agents and get on the phone with this current owner guy and just get this deal done already.

As of today, the only thing remaining to check out is the appraisal and we should be getting that back in the next few days. Fingers crossed - we will close on Sept 21 and move in a week or two after (depending on the timing of a number of essential pre-move-in projects).