Gut Check Time

I wanted to write about this sooner but I was not emotionally stable until today so I am going to give you a recounting of making our first offer on our first home. Spoiler alert: I end up a sobbing mess.

Mr. A and I made an offer on a house this past Sunday! Woot woot! Now I am sure you are wondering what the house looks like and all of that so here is the link: http://austinhomesearch.com/Search/Details.aspx?li=289381&or=1&cp=1 Please, I will wait while you judge…

Back to our story, 6 weeks ago when we started looking at houses we NEVER would have given this house a chance. It has very few of our required items, sold as is (which means if there is something wrong the seller will not fix the house) and it has yellow Formica countertops. Come on, this house on paper was a joke. But we decided to give it a chance because it had great light and square footage and was within walking distance to one of our favorite restaurants/margarita joints.

It was listed on MLS on Saturday and we go to the house Sunday morning at 930am, and the bitch already had a full price offer on it. Seriously. I know. So we proceeded to check it out and realized there were SO MANY great things about this house. The best of which was although there was a lot to do, we could totally live in the house while we fixed it up. It was a perfect situation for us. So we proceeded to head home and talk numbers. When we first thought of a number, we thought we could do full price plus maybe about $5K. Our REALTOR advised us that the house was priced WELL under market value and that we should go in with our best and final offer. So after crunching numbers and taking a walk around the neighborhood we would be buying in we came up with an offer of $11 over asking price, all closing costs paid by us, and a 45 day closing. We thought that was a pretty damn good offer.

All day Monday we obsessed over the house. We thought about changes we want to make, where our furniture would fit and how much fun it was going to be to take on this project. We nervously waited all day as our REALTOR submitted the offer. There were a total of three offers made on the house. All of them more than asking. We knew it was going to be close. At 9:30pm we got the call.

There is nothing worse than being told you did not get the house that you have now fallen in love with. Our REALTOR said it was really close, but could not tell us what the deciding factor was. I went from the high of researching DIY videos to the low of crying on my sofa cell phone still in hand in disbelief that we did not get the house. $11K over asking and we still did not get the house!??? Seriously!? I thought this was supposed to be a buyers market! I guess that aint the case in Austin people. I wanted to blame someone but there was no one to blame. Just the overwhelming feeling of disappointment. Mr. A and I both just hugged each other and sat in silence for a good while as we let the loss wash over us.

So after a few days of mourning that loss, I am picking myself back up again and we are on to look at more houses. I am still not over that house, it feels like I got dumped right now and I am looking for a rebound.  Inventory is so low, and there are tons of buyers out there just like us, so we are going to be acting fast and offering aggressively and find a house to rebound with. We are not messing around anymore. Gut check time.