There was something so pleasant about that place AKA The House, pt. 2

Where I last left our intrepid first-time home-buying heroes (i.e., E and I) we went on a financial fact-finding outing that unexpectedly also found a house that met all of our requirements.

That was two Tuesdays ago.

On Wednesday morning our Realtor checked in with us to share some newly-acquired intelligence – the house was being shown frequently (even within her office), and had received an offer while we were looking at it! Did we want to submit a competing bid?

Being the logical-negative (AKA defeatist) person I am in situations involving tens of thousands of dollars, I had talked myself out of it in a matter of minutes. I sent E a series of emails deflating her hopes and lamenting that it just wasn’t meant to be. Too soon, too competitive.

Being the logical-positive person I married, she pushed back – if it wasn’t meant to be, would it have been so oddly perfect for us, with its new fireplace and kitchen of butcher block and stainless steel? Did it matter that there was another bid on the table?

Her bottom line: there was certainly no harm in putting in a competing bid, as long as we were comfortable with it. But were we really going to make an offer having seen the house only once?

(Meanwhile, I was having an intense conversation with Drew via text message and one of my most beloved co-workers unexpectedly gave her two week notice. Between that and the house decision, by 1pm the day had reached a three-ring circus level of crazy.)

I had such a huge list of house-buying best practices I planned to execute – staking out the house for an entire day to observe the neighborhood, interviewing all of the neighbors, creating a photo & video walkthrough to show friends, measuring each room for potential mapping, singing and playing guitar throughout the house…

All of you home-owners out there are probably having a chuckle at my expense, but my internal Godzilla runs 24/7 on a proverbial OCD hamster wheel to generate these levels of obsessive-compulsiveness. Despite the implied rush from the frequent showings and competing bid, I couldn’t entirely quell my giant, imaginary, bipedal lizard without engaging in at least a portion of his proscribed OCD investigations.

Since the idea of all of that was crazy and the day was crazy (and, frankly, I’m crazy enough for the both of us), we decided to put the house to the insanity test – cramming as many of my Godzilla metrics into three hours as possible.

It was with that mission that we returned to the house 24 hours after our initial visit, armed with a camera, flip cams, tape measures, graph paper, my electric guitar, and Gina’s overpoweringly loud Fender guitar amp.

We knocked on every neighbor’s door and chatted up anyone we could find. We measured, photographed, and videoed every room. I sat in the attic with Gina’s amp on 8 – so loud I could barely bear to play it, while E walked down the stairs and out of the house.

Her report? Mild amp sounds in the living room, but outside you couldn’t hear a thing.

We made up our minds – a bid was going in.

What followed was exciting, but not in a recapituable way – three hours of amortization schedules, drawing on whiteboards, and eating Twizzlers – resulting in putting in our first offer on our first potential home.

The excitement did not end there, but my ability to sleep through the night did. More on that in the next post.