We went back to the house today with our realtor and my parents to give it a more detailed look during the day and poke around the outside.  The back of the house, where most of the windows are, faces northwest, so I did notice that we got a lot of subtle afternoon sunlight coming in, which makes me happy.  There are also room darkening blinds installed in the master bedroom, which also makes me happy.  There are, however, mirrors trimming the side of the tray ceiling in the master bedroom, which to me, are kind of tacky, but to all the guys, were cool because men, apparently, think of only one thing all the time.  I could tolerate the mirrors if they were one piece, but they were really random little cut pieces put together and they looked just bad. So they will have to come down.  And the whole house has popcorn ceilings, which I abhor so at some point, I’d want to get rid of those as well.  Should be awesome when we do the 25-30 foot ceiling in the living room.

The outside of the house shows it’s age.  There was some wood rotted fascia boards and some cracks in the driveway.  The deck is original to the house so it needs to be refinished and/or rebuilt.  The thermal seals in almost all of the windows are broken so they will also need to be replaced as well.  The house has good bones and has been taken care of to an extent on the outside.  It just has normal wear and tear that an almost twenty-year house would have unless it had been completely revamped and it was nothing that we (with the help of Dale, my stepdad) couldn’t fix.

Dale even climbed up in the attic and checked it out and said it looked good up there.  Probably some maintenance needed to bring it up to date a bit and make it a bit more energy efficient, but nothing that was falling apart. 

We were under the assumption that the roof was original and there was evidence in the garage of a leak along the seams of one of the support beams.  But that leak had been fixed and it was just the stain that had been left.  And a shingle needed replacing.  Our realtor advised us that the one major thing to be worried about was the roof because they typically have about a twenty-year lifespan at the maximum and if ours was original, it was reaching its end.  So that would very likely end up being our first big project.

But overall we were pleased with the house.  We knew new construction in our price range and the location we desired was out of the question and this house was built in 1990 (which still boggles my mind that 1990 was 17 years ago!!  I’m getting old!) and in good shape and renovated beautifully inside so we decided that we wanted to make an offer.

We discussed it in the kitchen and since the house was listed at $165,000 but the comps were slightly lower, we decided to offer $160,000 with the seller paying $3,000 closing costs.  Our realtor said he would head back to his office to draw up the contract and that we should stop by about in about 45 minutes.

So we went to Wal-Mart and picked up a few things and wandered around a bit.  Then we headed over and signed the contract.  Because it’s a Saturday evening, we gave him until Monday to get back to us.  Now we wait and hope for the best on this one!  This is not good for my impatient self!

As of yesterday, I’d pretty much given up.  I guess that’s what happens when I get too excited about things prematurely and they don’t work out the way I want.  I kept thinking about it and wondering what I was going to do now.  Where was I going to find such a deal with everything that we wanted that was close enough to work?  And now that I had an amount in my head, I could narrow my search and the only thing that was coming up remotely close to what we had in mind was much further out than we wanted to be.

So I decided to compromise.  I had been searching for homes built after 2000 because new construction was a bit important and because all of the older stuff we had seen had a tendency to be falling apart.  We had also seen a house in one of the older neighborhoods around where the house we lost was so I figured I could poke around at the listings in there and see what they had, because they were fairly “modern” looking and the location was where we really wanted to be.

I called our realtor and made an appointment with him to see three of these houses tonight and he agreed to meet us there around 6:30pm.  All three houses were in the same neighborhood and almost within walking distance to each other so that helped a lot.

The first belonged to an older couple who actually just sat out on the front porch when we were looking, which made me a bit uncomfortable because how was I actually supposed to judge the house accordingly when they were watching our every move.  It was a nice house but it was severely outdated and would take a bit of remodeling to modernize it to our tastes.  It had a HUGE great room with extremely high vaulted ceilings that we loved because it made the house feel so much bigger than it was.  And over to the left of the front door, it had a wet bar, which was kind of cool in concept but in look – well, it was all shiny black trimmed in fake gold.  Soooooo eighties!  The master bedroom was also huge and had two closets, but half of it was elevated and anyone who knows me knows I fall through life, not walk through and having a step in my bedroom did bode very good things.  Aside from that, it had a nice large backyard that was unfortunately, directly under the power lines and back right up to the main road.  That part had a fence that kept you from having to see it but the rest of the yard wasn’t fenced which didn’t work well with the dog.  Plus, it was the most expensive of the two and for all the money we’d have to spend updating it, we didn’t think it would be worth it.

The second house was a nice size and was done it rather formally in the Charlestonian type way (i.e. there were Charleston souvenirs and pictures all over the house).  The living room was set up kind of funny in that we couldn’t figure out exactly how you could functionally set up a TV and furniture.  There were rather visible cracks at many of the wall joints and the garage, despite being two cars, was really, really low which doesn’t fit in with Steve’s raised Jeep.  The rooms were rather small and the room above the garage was really, really hot, which is understandable because the central air wasn’t piped up there but we didn’t see any use for that room.  The backyard was nice and big and fenced but it backed up against other people’s yards rather closely.  However, the lady chocolate cookies that were fresh and warm out of the oven so that was a plus!  The grass in the front yard was also soft and beautifully maintained. 

The third house was the one we were really interested in and it didn’t disappoint.  It had a rather modern layout despite being 17 years old and the entire inside had been remodeled.  The two car garage had ample space and height, which pleased Steve.  The kitchen had granite countertops, brand new appliances and the entire house had upgraded lighting.  The paint was gorgeous and to our taste and the laminate floors throughout were brand new.  There was a deck off the back into the rather large fenced in back yard and that backed up to a park and a small utility easement which was a better view than a main street or another house. 

I pretty much fell in love with the inside.  But Steve told our realtor that he’d like to see it during the day so he agreed to meet us there tomorrow afternoon so let’s hope this all works out.

Any of our close friends and family know that Steve and I have been talking about buying our own house for the past six months or so.  We never completely comitted to it but I've spent many evenings a week pouring over the listings and when we don't have anything to do on a weekend, we take off for a drive and check out local neighborhoods to see what's available.

We were really looking blind.  We only had a general estimate, made by ourselves, of how much we'd be able to afford and a general idea of where we'd probably be able to live - and it wasn't Mt. Pleasant, because real estate here is absolutely ridiculous!

Actually, you should have seen what we could for under $200,000 in Mt. Pleasant.  Most of it was laughable at best and many of them were a quick head shake and me turning up my nose like a five-year-old.  And the trailers.  Oh lordy!  I just kept repeating "potential" over and over in my head but something inside of me couldn't reconcile the idea that we had moved to the South AND were going to buy a trailer.

So we started venturing out, over the bridges, to other local neighborhoods.  And about a week, we found what we thought was OUR house.  It was a 1300 square foot, 3 bedroom, 2 bath new contruction home in a rather desirable location that wouldn't put us all the way out in the boonies but wouldn't end up breaking our bank.

We happened to see it while we were just driving by and from the outside, it looked perfect.  It was one-story on a corner lot with a two-car garage.  It was less than a year old with five palm trees on the lot ('cause those fuckers are expensive!), a pond view of the backyard (instead of being butted up against someone else's yard), a fenced in backyard and a screened in porch.  And it was listed at $170,000, which was on the high end of our personal budget but do-able.  So we knew we wanted to look inside.

We called up our realtor and asked if he could show it to us the following day (Sunday, September 23).  At this time, he wasn't technically our realtor either.  He had just sporadically been showing us listings we liked and we knew him because he had recently sold my mother's house.  So the fact that he agreed, yet again, to show us a property on a weekend evening impressed me greatly.

The next evening, Steve and I met him and my mother there.  The house was pretty much what I expected on the inside.  Everything was brand new and up to date.  All of the lighting was upgraded.  The paint was a bit unconventional but we actually liked it.  And the master bathroom was nicely remodeled.  Funny enough, the guy had pretty much bought out all of Ikea to furnish the place so it gave a very modern and sleek look and made my jealous that we are no longer within driving distance of an Ikea.

So I told Steve I wanted it.  And that it was time to get a loan and get serious about it.  We had already applied online with my credit union the night before and knew we had to wait until the work week to get an answer so in the meantime, we gave our realtor some questions we wanted answered and waited. 

I'm not a patient person.  So I was on the phone pretty much first thing Monday morning asking my loan officer if we go approved.  She said she'd have to call me back because she had just starting looking over the app so an hour later, she gave us the good news that we had been pre-approved for the amount we applied for, which was $170,000.  So I immediately got on the phone with Steve and we decided to make an offer.

That evening, we met our realtor at his office and he explained the sale contract pretty much line by line as well as all the addendums and we looked at all the comps and decided to offer $163,000 with the seller paying $3,000 closing costs.  And then we headed off to wait.

I had a good feeling about this place.  But the waiting was awful.  The next day, when I saw our realtor's name come up on the caller idea, my heart jumped.

Unfortunately, the seller decline our offer.  Not only did he decline it, but he refused to even counteroffer.  His realtor had told ours that he was pretty much at his bottom line on the listing price.  And to top it off, my realtor called back a few minutes later to say he had just been informed that they got another offer and while he would initally think that was an underhanded tactic they were trying to pull, he had a feeling it wasn't because he knew the other realtor and she wasn't like that.

So I loved the house.  And every instinct in me wanted to go ahead and offer him full price, or rather, full price minus the $3,000 closing costs that we needed.  But Steve and our realtor said it wasn't a good idea.  That we didn't need to beg for a house, especially not in this market.  So we said no, let it pass and hoped we would find another one.  

I was upset, to say the least, and almost ready to give up.  Almost.