Time to Change the Title of This Blog

Well, we didn’t get to do too much documenting on our search for a house near Boston.  There were strings of Sundays of open house tours with really nothing special to report.  I have a few stories of run ins with nasty realtors, but I’ll save those for another day.

We have found our can.

Because of a lease that we are currently locked into, we had decided that late May was the earliest we could consider making an offer on a house, taking into account ~60 days as an average closing time.

Our hunt just entered the serious phase  - that is, late May was upon us. 

After struggling with a string of mediocre realtors, we met Michelle from Coldwell Realtors at an open house, and she introduced us to her partner Caroline at an informal house buying tutorial last Thursday evening.

The following Sunday we did our usual trot out to a few open houses.  We ended with a drive-by look at a property that was in a nice neighborhood but was a little above our price range.

On Tuesday morning Barb noticed that the price had dropped to within the upper end of our price range and set up a viewing after a quick email to me.  Barb toured the house Tuesday afternoon with Caroline.  Barb told me that it looked great and Caroline was gracious enough to give us a second tour that evening after I was finished with work.

We both realized that this was the best house we’d seen in 4 months of open house Sundays.  I’d call it a Goldilocks fit - some houses we’d looked at were a little on the big side, most were a little on the small side, but this one was juuuust right.

The property was breathtaking - it is set into the side of hill but is easily accessible.  The neighborhood was quiet - that is to say it was not near busy Route 2 like most of the other single family homes that fell within our price range. 

And best of all, we were probably one of the first few people to be aware of this place.  The price drop had placed it into the target range of a lot of other people, so we knew we had to move fast.  There was a couple looking at the place with their realtor when we made our second evening tour of the house.

After sleeping on it Tuesday (Barb actually didn’t do much sleeping), we made an offer Wednesday morning.

The seller was out of town, but managed to reply an hour before the 8pm deadline, rejecting both our lowered price and the timeline we had set out for the purchase.

We had been prepared to pay the asking price but thought it worth the try to shave a little bit off, especially when we learned that there had not yet been any other offers.

We countered with an increase to the reduced price that had originally caught our eyes but held firm to our timeline.

Later that evening the buyer accepted our offer and we were in the Coldwell office signing papers on our very first home.

So a recap:

Sunday - drive by.  Nice place, too expensive.  Sigh.

Tuesday - see lowered price and take two tours.

Wednesday - the place is ‘under agreement’, which is to say that we have agreed to buy (pending inspection, financing, and final negotiations) and the seller has agreed to sell (pending the same stuff).

4 days of intense work after 4 months of relaxed searching and we are firmly on our way to moving in to our very first home.

We have the inspection this Saturday morning.  I’m working to combine our various little piles of money into one big pile which will shortly be handed over to the current owner. 

Mortgage shopping will be a headache, but I’m sure well worth it since we are borrowing a good chunk of money to pay for this place.  If anyone reading this has insights on how best to set up a mortgage, please leave a comment here or get in touch with us.

 Pictures to follow (a change on the server I’m using has blocked my normal route of picture publishing!).