House Hunting Part 2

I think the number people looking for houses has increased dramatically. We've had too many situations where we put a bid on a house thinking that since it had been on the market for so long that we had it in the bag and it turn out that the exact same day the buyer got 3 other offers.

We began our house hunt officially the first week of September, and that was completely be accident. Our realtor has been sending us a daily email with a listing of houses within our criteria. Well on Wednesday September 2nd we saw one that we both really liked. Steven jokingly asked if I wanted to run up to The Colony to see if we might be able to find it and to just get a feel for the area, and I said sure why not. So we picked Alexis up and away we went to The Colony on a house hunt to see if either of us could remember where the house was. Lucky for us I have a pretty good memory because we found it on our first try.

Funny story about this first house.....When we pulled up we saw the little thing out front that had info on the house and I jumped out and grabbed a copy. After we all looked the flier over I noticed that the house a lock box on it and I just assumed that no one was living there. Remember I have no experience in house hunting/viewing so I had no clue what I was talking about. Having made the previous statement Steven and Alexis jump out and proceed to walk up to the house to get a better look. About the time they are rounding the house and looking at the side I notice a pair of shoes on the front porch and realize my mistake. I had just told them that I thought someone did live there when the front door opens and a man comes out asking if he can help us. Let me just say I almost died right there on the spot. I felt so dumb and intrusive. However the guy, who turned out to be the owner, just thought we were the people that were scheduled to come and that we were just really early. Steven got to talking to him and told him that we had just seen the house online and decided to drive out to see if we could find it, and the owner asked us if we wanted to look at the inside of the house. Well of course we said yes. He told us that someone had put in an offer, but that they had completely declined it and that it was still available. This is the end of the funny/happy part of the story.

We fell in love with that house, but we still wanted to look at other houses in the area that looked okay just to make sure that we weren't going into to something blind. We setup with our realtor to go look at houses on that following Sunday the 6th. Well the next day Steven's uncle Randy passed away and time kind of just went out the window. Sunday came and we did go look at houses and we came back to that house on Malone that we fell in love with after looking at many duds. Looking at a person's home while they are there is extremely uncomfortable. How do they expect to sell their home when you won't even leave for an hour or two so people can come and look at it? When the owner is there you don't feel like you can openly discuss things about the home that you do and don't like because they are there. Those homes were marked off the list immediately. But back to the first home that we really liked and that we put a bid on....The house was on Malone St in The Colony and even our realtor was blown away. When you see the pictures online you think okay it looks nice, but surely it doesn't look that nice. This house did look that nice. We left there and went to a Starbucks and filled out all the paperwork to put a bid on the Malone St house thinking that we had it in the bag because we were offering the full amount, especially since he had told us that they had declined the other offer. Well obviously that is not the case since I said that was the end of the good part. We got the call the next day from our realtor that the owner had decided to accept that other person's offer after he had told us he had declined it. We were broken hearted, but what can you do but go on and look at more houses.

So we spent the rest of the week scouring for more houses to go look at and we came up with another list to give to our realtor. And again we setup an appointment to go look at them on that next Sunday the 13th. If remember that was the weekend that it rained all weekend, so we thought for sure we were the only fools that would go house hunting in the rain, and that there is no way that anyone will be putting in any bids on homes. Wrong! The first house we looked at was the exact same floor plan as the house on Malone so we already knew that we liked the floor plan. We got there and the owners were still there, but on this particular house I understood why. They were in the process of finishing up some remodeling and they wanted to explain what was going on with it and when it was going to be finished. After they explained this they left and let us look at the rest of the house in peace. There were some things that were going to need to be updated, but it wasn't a bad house at all. We just didn't want to put an offer on it until we say the finished product of the construction they had going on. On we went to the other houses.

We came to a house on Roberts St and we really liked it. The owners had redone the kitchen area and those of you who know know this is a big deal. They had actually added two skylights and the entire home just felt light and airy and perfect. There were a few minor things that we were going to need to fix, but in the grand scheme of things it didn't matter to us. We left there and looked a couple of other homes and decided to put a bid on the house on Roberts St. While we were traveling to our realtor's home she called the buyers realtor to discuss putting in an offer on that home. He told our realtor that another person had just put in an bid and if she got ours over to him soon that he submit both offers at the same time. The way he made it sound was like that our offer was better than the other so we needed to get it in to him before he gave the other one to the seller to consider. We did what he said and sent everything over to him. Again we got bad news.....the next day when our realtor called him to check on things apparently he had had a third offer made on the home that was just slightly higher than ours. She asked him what we needed to offer to beat out the other offer because we weren't even at the top of our price range, but he never told her. When she emailed him back to find out what was going on he responded and said that it wouldn't have been fair to the other buyer if he had done that. Who here knows that you are trying to make as much money as possible when buying a home? Our realtor pretty much told that buyers realtor that he completely screwed over his client because we were willing to offer more, and that he wasn't doing his job. Talk about crazy! I personally would want a realtor that is going to bring me the best offer available. Another crazy thing is that there were so many people out looking at house and making offers in the crazy stormy weather we had that weekend.