House Hunting Part 2

The weekend was full of stressful house hunting drama, for all the wrong reasons!  Normal house “drama” is stuff like:

• OMG.  I love this house.  I hope no one buys it before us!
• There’s a lot of competition for this house!  EEK!
• We need moving boxes!
• This house is beautiful, omg!  Wait..  Termites?

You know.  “Normal” stuff.  But, after my last house update, we tried to put a bid in on house number three.  That’s normal, yes?  Yes.  After all, most real estate agents have the issue of people not wanting to commit or jump on a property without seeing a lot of them first.  That’s not us though.  The housing market in the Denver area right now has super fast turn-over.  Most houses are not on the market for more than twenty days.  There are more buyers than sellers, and the most important thing is to find a house we like and try to bid on it to get it.  One of Master Pravus’ coworkers told him that she bid on four separate houses before one was accepted.  We also sort of have a deadline as we do not want to sign on to another lease, so we don’t have time to wait around.

Problem was, we didn’t get a response from our first inquiry that we wanted to put a bid on the house.

We have bought a condo before, and the process is basically the same, with your realtor supposed to be getting back to you within a few hours once you want to place a bid.  Bids are time sensitive and, while we’re patient people, the realtor should want to make their commission, so they should want to help you do this quickly.  We waited until that night, and sent another email in.  Nothing.  Master Pravus waited until the next day, and he was honestly a bit peeved.  Day two with not so much as a “got it,” or a “we’re looking into it,” or anything.  So, Master Pravus sent along a slightly frustrated email saying that we were getting responses from other realtors and even getting listings sent to us by other people daily, and did he have time for us, because why on Earth won’t someone get back to us?

Well, we might have used a bit too much hammer on that nail, because all our realtor sent us was an agreement to let him out of being our realtor.  >.>  We wanted a response, and we got it.  Panicked, Master Pravus called our realtor’s assistant who was apologetic (after all, the e-doc came with no note or anything) and explained we hadn’t actually wanted to switch realtors.  We just didn’t know why forty eight hours had gone by with no response at all on our serious (and time sensitive) inquiries! 

This is somewhat unheard of unless your realtor is only a part timer.  Ours was not.  Assistant lady apologized, said they would reply more often, actually gave us an update on said house, (which is all we wanted!) and set up an appointment for us to see two houses the following day with our realtor.  By the way, that first house fell through. (Surprise!)

So, I was a bit nervous to see Realty Man.  After all, he was kind of passive aggressive with us, and he just let his assistant work out the issues we were having.  :/  I admit I didn’t really want to meet up with him at all the next day, but Master Pravus said it would be fine.  He also said that if it was not fine that we would go ahead and dump him and find a new realtor that Monday.  After all, we had the e-doc we needed.  (Har har.)

We showed up to house #1, and guess what?  Mr. Realtor was in a much better mood.  We all were making a concerted effort with each other.  We really were.  You could tell that we all felt bad over our actions and we just wanted things to go well.  So, that house was gorgeous, and we put a bid down on that.  No dice.  Second house we saw that day was cool, but needed a lot of work so Master Pravus is holding out for another house.

Tonight we’re going to look at a house which sounds really great.  We’re looking forward to it.  We’re trying not to get too excited over any particular house because there will probably be a lot of let downs.  Still, it is fun looking.  I’m the type of person that when I see a house, for the most part I like it.  Master Pravus is all excited about houses needing no work, and while I don’t really want to get a fixer-upper, if a place needs a new window or some minor repair here or there, then I’m not too worried about it.  I mean, after all, it’ll be ours!  We have all the time in the world to make it amazing.  Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t want a place that is falling apart or needs thousands of dollars in repair work.  But, most places need something, even if it’s just a coat of paint.  We only found one house that didn’t need any work, and that was the one we got rejected for over the weekend.  It’s okay though, there’s plenty more houses out there.

Funny part is, Master Pravus said he likes that there was only one house I didn’t like and that I’m easy to please.

“I’m just glad no house I get you will be too awful, because you like the houses I have discarded for being too much work!”  Ha ha.

Master Pravus does have the final say in the house, of course, but he wants my opinions, and I have been able to point out a few things he has missed and vice versa.  For example, water damage and a sump pump on one house (which all in all is a no-go), or other little things.  Master Pravus sees things that I don’t normally notice either, like chimney damage, or problems with the gutters.  Still, it’s good that we’re both noticing what the other one isn’t.  We’re taking detailed pictures and notes too, which helps.

We weren’t going to start packing yet, but we have.  We’re noticing that a lot of the houses we’re bidding on have the contingency that you must close within six weeks, and that’s not a lot of time to pack.  We aren’t packing much, but decorations, figurines, books, etc can all go.  Once we get those types of things packed up we’ll worry about what we’re not likely to use, etc. 

We’re doing the cheapskate/very green thing of re-using boxes we find from craigslist, etc.  Actually, those cool neighbors who just moved in?  They are giving us their boxes when they are done, one or two at a time.  It has been nice though because they don’t have to bring them all the way down the stairs to get rid of them, and we’re recycling them.

This whole thing is about as stressful as I remember it being before.  >.<  But I know it will be worth it and I am very much looking forward to being in our new place!