I just generally wanted a place to lump all of this.

So, my SO and I are trying to buy a house. The lease on this house is up in September, and we've been working on the paperwork necessary to buy a house since like... god. April, I think?

And we're finally on the "go look at houses" stage.

Full disclosure btw because in America WAY TOO MUCH EMPHASIS is placed on "getting a house" as a measure of success and wealth, etc.

We are ONLY able to do this because of generational wealth-- we've managed enough stability and money to be able to afford a house and be reasonably certain that the slings and arrows of life won't cause owning a house to be a terrible mistake, but we have NOT managed enough to afford a down payment in our area.

So like, I am very proud of the work both of us have done to be able to do this, but also we are VERY VERY LUCKY and a product of circumstance and we really needed BOTH of those things to even have a chance.

With that basis out of the way

Y'all house shopping SUCKS.

Like, the market has stabilized a LITTLE bit just in the past few months, but we saw FIVE houses yesterday, which seems like a lot all in one day. Of those houses, two of them are ALREADY off the market, including our first choice (though it's not fully sold yet, so we're still trying to get in as the backup if the deal falls through)

And of the remaining three, there were MULTIPLE other people there looking at two of them just while we were there. >_<

We're going to look at three more today, which like, we need to do, but all the loan people are gone until Tuesday so we won't be able to move on them over the weekend, whereas it's possible someone else MIGHT be able to move on them if they already were working with their bank,

And of course it's really frustrating because you can't just like, bid on everything, you have to think about and rank stuff, and we're in a price range where we're mostly looking at houses that are 40-50 years old so there's a lot of like trying to figure out if the work that needs to be done on one place justifies it's difference in price from anothere etc

And I'm not SUPER picky about what we get-- I have a list of things that would be nice to have, of course, but it's not super concrete stuff.

Like, I would like a covered patio. I like having space in the kitchen regardless of how it's decorated. I would love to have a large tub in one of the bathrooms. Pool isn't at all needed, but is a plus rather than a minus. I like houses that have some character or have something weird about them. I like having a lot of light etc etc

But like, none of those are dealbreakers to a house that has other things.

But I want a house I buy to feel like my home? Like I don't just want a house, I want a house where I look at it and go "ah yes, my house"

And we've been very lucky in that most of the houses that have come on the market in the right area seem to have that vibe for me. But it also means I REALLY need to see a house and kind of roll around in it before I even know if I'm interested a lot of the time.

Like, I swore up and down that the main thing I DIDN'T want was to live in a house that was just a two-story cube.

And by that, I meant houses that looked like this:

But then our top choice house is LITERALLY A CUBE.

Like this:

(Those are both WAY nicer/bigger than what we're looking at, btw, but I dont' know enoguh about house volcabulary to find something better)

But the cube house was one where I looked at pictures and was like... okay but the inside is cute and then when we walked in I was just struck by like... no, this is my house.

Whereas there was a very nice house we looked at, probably the best combination of price and age and in-good-repair out of the lot but I was just kind of like... no. This is someone else's house.

But there's no like... specific thing I can really point to that makes me feel that way.

But then that means that like... the emotional weight of looking around is greater than I feel like maybe it is for some other people?

Like, I can see a whole future me in my top pick houses.

And so there's a certain amount of like... that whole future me vanishes when we don't get the house.

Or if we pick another house.

And that whole future me is in limbo while we're waiting to hear back from the loan people etc etc etc.

wish i could help, but can confirm, house buying sucks.

especially in a hot market.

It's not like, crazy overwhelming or anything, but it definitely took me by surprise yesterday when we went to look at stuff and I sort of shut down for a bit afterwards. There was just an emotional and mental toll I was sort of anticipating because of other people I've known who have shopped for houses, but which I was not read

ready for the INTENSITY of.

And it all has to be done SO QUICKLY. Like I think the average time a house is on the market in our area is like, 5 days?

Which is higher than some places, even!

AND we have the "good fortune" of wanting a kind of quirky weird little place versus a "normal" house.

But yeah. It's very stressful and emotional and (because hot) sweaty work.

yeah.

when we were looking for our house, which was like.... four years ago now? we had to make offers same day, or at most the day after, if we wanted a chance.

and my parents are moving now too, and they had the same issue.

it's.... really insane.

It is COMPLETELY insane.

Yeah that's wildly insane

All the good luck in your direction, tho

house hunting sucks ass (esp right now) and you might be in for a bit of a long haul, it's good that you have several months leeway
but you'll get there eventually!

We found another real good place tonight that is fresh on the market so maaaaaybe we can get it. It’s a duplex but it’s REALLY NICE.

Offer is in on the house. /nervous

fingers crossed!!!

I’m REALLY hoping we get it.

Well, things are signed on the offer, but apparently there were lots of offers.

So now we just have to wait to see if they pick ours, which they likely won't because we initially offered just the asking amount. We're willing to negotiate on that, but didn't want to OFFER more in this particular case without being asked.

But there was a SUPER WEIRD like "you have to sign these documents super fast" thing at the end of all of this that I DO NOT LIKE.

I was able to at least skim them and everything initially LOOKED fine, but I would have ideally wanted to pour over them a bit more and it FELT really scummy even though I don't actually think it was.

And the part about all of this that is the most shitty is that like...

That house was only on the market three days before we started to put in our offer. And we also looked at houses 2 and 3 days ago. So the likelihood that we have already lost the other houses we looked at is REALLY high.

Even though it's only been like, 48 hours.

I hate this.

Well, we lost the house we wanted, so we're back to looking/trying to find out information about other houses.

There's one we would put an offer on except the house has a pool and the pool is in DEEPLY bad repair.

We're waiting to see if they'll either bring the price down or (more likely) give us some kind of "fix the pool" allowance, because right now it looks like it's something like 15k in repairs which is a big no from me thanks.

But it would be REALLY NICE to actually have a pool and the house is... weird af, but also really unique and interesting because it's weird af.

It's definitely one of those houses where I walked into it and looked at my SO and was just like "Wow, choices were made"

Example, but not the only thing: which rooms are carpeted and which rooms are tiled are totally arbitrary.

Only shaded porch part is on the side of the house right outside the kitchen window, which has a sill on the outside so it almost looks like a drivethru. But there's no shade around the pool or the back of the house.

The master bedroom is long and narrow and split level for some reason?

Choices were made. And yet, it's kind of charming. It's a big no if they aren't going to do anythign about the pool though.

HOUSE.

HOUSE HOUSE HOUSE HOOOOOOUSE.

There’s still stuff that could theoretically go wrong but our offer was accepted and we’ve signed the first set of paperwork.

hell yeah!!! congrats!

We ended up with a house that isn’t even one of the ones I talked about here- just kind of came out of nowhere and ticked all our boxes

We’d seen it before but it was originally listed WAY too high to consider.

(Not going to say exact amounts on here but it was originally listed for 16k more than we’re buying it for)

And we saw it but were like “lol nope”. But they dropped it down and we actually negotiated it down a little more than that.

And it’s EVERYTHING we were looking for. Absolutely everything.

I am beside myself.

Congrats! Super, super happy for you!

that's awesome!!

All the paperwork and crap for house buying is a constant stream of pain. I hope this slows down in a few days.

yay!!!

I want to get back to my pretendy fun times, but I am just EXHAUSTED. There’s so MUCH.