I’m generally a laid back and nice guy. I don’t let many things get to me. Only in a plaid mood would I stab my computer with a screwdriver. There are only two things that really get my blood boiling. One of those being when strangers sit across from me in a restaurant. The other is house shopping.
Elise and I set a goal to have a house by January. That wasn’t really anything written in stone, but just a goal. We set that goal when we moved back to Austin this January. We figured we could save a good chunk of change in a year. We did just that. The lease on our apartment is up in January. Perfect time to buy a house, right?
We’ve been driving around by ourselves and shopping online. Recently we’ve had our agent take us to look at houses. The hard core looking where you actually go into the house. The weekend before last we found a house that we liked and thought we could afford. Based on our research, we made an offer on the house. The sellers counter-offered by dropping their price by $900. We quickly realized that they weren’t going to budge. Neither were we. After a quick reevaluation of our finances, we decided that we really didn’t need to pay that price for a house anyway. We were upset. We lost a lot of sleep due to the anticipation and eventually, the let down.
Della (our agent) immediately sent us a ton of new listings the very next day. Elise was swamped at work and it was my job to narrow the 40+ homes down to ten. This was stressful for you humble narrator. I carefully chose the houses that I liked best and the ones that I felt Elise would like as well. One really stuck out in my mind – this based on photos and a description. We looked at nine or ten houses on Saturday. We both fell in love with that one house.
To make a long story short, we made an offer on this house on Sunday evening. Della called the listing agent and left him a message telling him that she faxed our offer. We didn’t hear anything until 8 p.m. last night. The listing agent told Della that there was another offer that had been put on the house. He didn’t indicate if that offer came in before or after ours. Elise and I really wanted this house, so we upped our offer by a few thousand dollars.
Elise called me today and told me that the sellers are going with the other offer. Apparently the other buyers are paying the majority in cash. I’m pretty pissed. Elise and I both have a feeling that this listing agent wasn’t very ethical in this situation. There’s a little more detail behind that statement, but I’m done thinking about it. Time to move on. As everyone has been telling us “If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be…”