Laziest term ever: "I was gonna but ..."

Which is exactly what happened to me. I planned on writing so many times but these past five (nearly six) weeks have just been crazy busy. And sure, to be quite honest, I’ve had plenty of pockets of time to write something down but I just didn’t feel like it. I didn’t want to get in front of our desktop which is inconveniently placed next to our flatscreen TV that, until we moved into our small apartment, I had no idea radiated so much heat. Found out pretty quickly when we suffered through a heat wave.

I spend the last few weeks of my job tying up loose ends. I thought those last four weeks would be relaxing and that I would have plenty of time to do personal things at work. While it wasn’t as chaotic as when I was going full-charge, it didn’t really slow down. I just enjoyed more of what I was going because I was meeting with my favorite volunteers, writing up executive summaries on my accounts and saying goodbye to colleagues and volunteers. It was almost a celebration of all my six years with the company. Unfortunately, it takes a person leaving for it to happen but it was nice to feel appreciated by so many people. I cherish getting to have the opportunity to breathe and say a proper farewell to those I worked so close with. Something that just never takes priority until a person leaves. I know that I’ve done it plenty of times.

Anyway, here I am. After six plus years, I’m the new gal again. I knew it wouldn’t be fun not knowing the systems and it will take a full year to understand my job and company because nothing beats firsthand experience. So I try not to be impatient with myself. But I really like being in a position in which I’m the seasoned individual offering to help. Patience, patience. Not one of my virtues yet I’m always put in positions where I need to exercise it;)

Oh yes, the home. Well, on top of everything else, we put another bid on a home. We found a town home in the area we liked. It wasn’t our dream home. Our dream home is a one story, stand alone home with 3+ bedrooms/ 2+ bathrooms, a two car garage with a driveway in a good school district. This was not in our price range. There wasn’t even a fixer-upper that met these requirements. There was also very little to even look at. We had been told by realtors that inventory would pick up in the summer. It did not.  We then came up with a list of must haves: same minimum amount of bedrooms and bathrooms, one bedroom and full bathroom had to be downstairs if it was a two story, good neighborhood and good school district. These were absolutely essential.

We attended the open house for this townhouse but wrote it off because it didn’t meet our requirements. It had a very small bedroom and only a partial bathroom on the first floor. This wouldn’t do – we needed a full bath for our parents in case they stayed with us because going up and down the stairs is becoming a real challenge. While it was a very nice home in a good neighborhood in a very good school district, we left thinking nothing more about it. Then we went to the other open houses. Pitiful. They were either beautiful homes in sketchy neighborhoods or over-priced funky homes in good neighborhoods. So we revisited the townhouse we initially dismissed. We asked our realtor if she could find out if HOA would allow us to renovate the bathroom downstairs to include a shower. (Oh, we also were looking for a home without HOA but clearly that battle was not won.) When our realtor told us that we could add a shower, we decided to take the big leap and put in an offer.

Let’s talk about that for a minute. We both liked the townhouse a lot because it had been flipped and was absolutely beautiful. But, again, it wasn’t our dream home. The Man was seriously sad about the fact it was a tandem garage because, really, unless we had two smart cars, we weren’t going to fit two cars in there. He said, “I guess I took for granted that most homes have a two car garage and a driveway.” (Our last home has a two car garage but no driveway.) The driveway is so close to our neighbors that we can literally high-five them if we reached out of our car doors. Pretty close quarters. We also didn’t like the idea of a shared wall. The Man also wanted a real backyard but, just like our old home, we got a sliver of a backyard. Truthfully, I don’t mind it because we aren’t stellar gardeners. I liked that the yard was already finished because in our last home, we never landscaped it so we never used it. Lastly, the HOA monthly fee was 89% higher than what we paid for our last home. That one is like a sucker punch. Ooof, it hurts.

You might wonder, “Why the HELL would you want to make an offer, then?!” Well, we knew that if we wanted a home in a nicer neighborhood and school district, we would have to either spend a lot more or spend about the same as our old home for a much smaller living space. This townhouse is roughly 300 square feet smaller. It’s also in a very good neighborhood in a city we desired. The school district was my first choice and the school assigned to the home is the second best elementary school in the district. The middle school is #1 and then all the kids funnel into one high school which is a pretty good high school. Yes, this is all about The Bun. Remember? And boy, it really is about location, location, location because the school district is about all this city has going for them. I mean, it’s a great town but there isn’t much to see or do. The home prices for this city are so much higher than our former residence because the school district is much better and, honestly, that does affect the appeal of the neighborhood. We used the websites, Crime Mapping & Megan’s Law, and there have been no issues. We used those same websites for our old address and the damn screen lit up like a Christmas tree.

The townhouse itself is very nice. The sellers flipped it and they did a great job. It’s quite lovely. When I showed my friends photos of the place, they said it looks a lot like our old home. But the sellers went a step further and put in crown molding, pretty hardware, a nice kitchen back splash and some other things. Other than the shower, we wouldn’t have to do much work.
After some negotiating (and by “negotiating”, I mean the sellers telling us we needed to bend over and take it. I mean, tack on another 10K to our bid) we offered the sellers 40K over asking. Please know that I don’t write this lightly, at all. I have mulled over a $50 pair of shoes for days, wondering if I really needed it, bought it and returned it because I felt so guilty. So yah, 40K over the already not-cheap asking price was something else. We both had to think about it at our work. Hubby looked at comparables in the area to see if it was a fair price while I looked at the measly inventory available and prayed. You bet I prayed. Then we talked on the phone to come together for a decision. I then called our realtor who called the sellers and they accepted the bid.

Well, that was just the start of this whole home-buying shenanigans. Oh yes, there’s more but I’ve already written so much. Suffice it to say that we are still in escrow and anticipate it will continue to be a bumpy road until the very end.