Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Finding The One

One evening we saw a whole bunch of houses, and were starting to feel a little impatient about finding something we wanted to live in. The last house we saw that day was this one:


I don't know why we didn't take any pictures inside, but all we have are our memories. I'll start with the good. Walking through that house, we (all 3 of us) were like kids in a candy shop. The layout was awesome and spacious! The stained glass, decorative fireplace and woodwork were original! The kitchen was new and fabulous! There was a screened-in porch overlooking the backyard! OMG the finished attic was SWEET, with built-in dressers and everything! The BASEMENT was the best, with a lighted bar and a ton of rooms!

But the bad: the house was bank-owned & vacant, and Every Single Damn Radiator had blown out, a telltale spray of soot giving away the lack of winterizing. Completely new heating system needed. THEN, in the last room we entered, in the farthest reaches of the basement, we were greeted by my ultimate dealbreaker, MOLD.

Talk about letting the wind out of our sails. We walked away from the house like this:


Carrie reassured us that Berwyn has lots of houses like that. So why hadn't we seen any that were quite that nice?

The next day Jed was mulling over the house that broke our little first-time househunter hearts, and on a whim, wondered what would happen if we increased our upper range by $2000. If maybe we were looking on JUST the wrong side of the range for a higher caliber of houses, and knowing that an extra $2000 on the list price would probably make a negligible difference in an eventual purchase price.

So he ran a search on Realtor.com and found a house on the same block as the other house, same style of checkerboard brick bungalow, traditional sale, nice pictures, listed at exactly $2000 over our original range. Realtor.com can be deceptive--you'll find houses listed as For Sale that are well into negotiations, or even already sold. So he called Carrie, not daring to hope that this pretty house could still be available. Well, it was! And we went to see it that week! And it was awesome! The nicest house we'd seen in all of our Berwyn home shopping.

By this time we knew we wanted to make an offer on it, but we wanted our parents to see it first--to get their approval and their eyes. We knew our dads would see bad things we were missing. So we arranged to have the 6 of us go back to see it that weekend. We spent 45 minutes in the house, going through all the rooms, then through them again, assessing the space while everyone, especially our moms, exclaimed over how great the house was. The only thing was the owner was there working in the yard, so we tried our best to keep poker faces when he was within earshot. The fact that we were there for so long probably gave us away, though. As we left, we exchanged subtle glances & parting words with Carrie, who was going to do research on the sales history & put together the comparables for an offer. We were so excited!

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