They accepted our offer!

We have been looking at houses and condos for about a month now (maybe longer). While we were on our honeymoon, we had decided that we were going to wait a while to buy, since we didn't really have the down payment for a long term solution, and if we bought a short-term solution, the cost of buying, selling, and mortgage interest was basically the same cost as renting. All that changed when we got back and we found that some ... adverse circumstances had cropped up at our apartment. So, we looked into moving to another apartment, but the options available without going up in price were unattractive. So, we turned to buying. We had chosen two price points -- $235K, which would be the same cost as renting, and $300K, which is about the edge of affordability, if we assume that we want to be able to afford all of this on one salary.

We started casually, looking at a couple of open houses. We quickly learned some of the euphamisms : "convenient commuter location!" = "on a busy street". "Cozy" = "small". "Easily accessible to public transportation" = "Yikes!". Well, that last one is a bit unfortunate. At first, when I saw a house in Framingham that was pretty big, and "near the train", I thought -- Oh, look at that. Its near the train. Wouldn't that be convenient. We quickly learned about the wrong side of Framingham. In Boston and Cambridge, public transportation is a definite plus. But elsewhere, not so much.

We had been looking in Maynard, which seemed to offer a good balance of commute time, price and size. Our main criteria were 1200 - 1500 sq. ft at $300K, not more than 45 minutes away from both Natick and Burlington. For a while we were going to open houses on our own. When it became apparent that we really were serious, I got in touch with some mortgage lenders for pre-approval letters, and from thence I got into the real estate professional network, we found a buyer's agent, and everything seems to be taken care of from there.

We had made an offer on a Condo in Woburn, which was BEAUTIFUL, at $285K. No yard, but it had these two awesome decks. I bought a couple of books about container gardening, and I was willing to do this. The property was priced to sell, however, and they had multiple offers. We only have about 5%, but another buyer had $100K to put down, so they won. It was a big bummer.

So, we looked at some more houses. We went to some open houses in Woburn on Sunday. Some of these properties were real pieces of work... One of them, apparently the husband had house-project ADD, because some things were beautiful, some things were falling apart, and the windows weren't finished being put in upstairs, and there were no doors on any of the upstairs bedrooms. Yikes! We had started to think that we might need to come up a bit in price. Everything we saw at $300K had one compromise too many. One of the houses I had put on our agenda because it met our criteria, but when we got there, the listing agent handed us a sheet saying it was $340K. It was gorgeous. Mike and I looked around to be polite, and then got out of there.

So, I called our agent, and I said I wanted to look at a couple more things in Maynard, including going back to one of the first houses we had looked at. I mentioned the gorgeous house in Woburn at $340K. He looked it up and said it was listed at $324 -- I guess there was a mistake on the sheet!

So, we went back to this house in Maynard which Mike had liked, but I had said no way. When we got there, I felt really different about it seeing it the second time. The first time, our complaint had been that we would have liked 200 less sqare feet, but $20K off the price. They listed at $315K, and considering they hadn't had any offers on the property, we thought we could get them down pretty easily. We had seen two things that day in Maynard. The first one was close -- a very nice house, but in a "convenient commuter location." So, I might have taken this second house in Maynard, if I hadn't already seen the house at $340K, which turned out to be for $324K.

So, we went and looked at it again. (The $340K house). Gorgeous kitchen. Good space in the living room and dining room. The wood panelling will need to go. 3.5 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms. Full basement. Dining room, living room, eat-in kitchen. Laundry is in the bathroom -- which I don't get why everyone seems to put laundry in the bathroom or kitchen. Parking for 6 cars! Anyway, on Tuesday night, we offered $310K for the house. After some brief negotiation yesterday, we settled on a purchase price of $315K. Housing inspection is Saturday.



Wish us luck!

Fighting the Good Fight

This is my license picture that was taken when I got my new license this past month.


This is my license picture from just over a year ago, approx. last July.


I am continuing to fight long and hard to continue on this trend.