The Drama

We presented an offer on Tuesday afternoon, and waited to hear back. Wednesday came and went, and most of Thursday. Thursday night, our agent called us to tell us that she had received a counter to our offer. They had offered to give us the closing costs we wanted, but had raised the asking price of the house. I was furious. I wanted to tell them to keep it, but instead we managed to put together another counter, raising the price we were willing to pay closer to the original asking price, and reducing the amount of closing assistance we were asking for. We also stated that this would be our best & final offer, and that the offer expired after 24 hours.

We submitted the offer to them at noon on Friday. At 4:00 we got a call from the seller's agent asking for an extension on the time limit. Apparently they were anticipating another offer and wanted to compare the two. This was too much, and I told the agent that our deadline was firm. We were also nervous that this deal was over, so we made arrangements with our agent to look at the other townhouse in the community that had come down in price during the week while we were negotiating. We would see that one Saturday morning.

When we arrived at the other townhouse, our agent notified us that our offer had been accepted.

Heading for Suburbia

Just before we applied for our mortgage, Jenn and I realized that we thought we could afford more than we really can. It happened slowly: we started at the right number and didn't see anything we thought we could live with in the area we wanted. We assumed people were overpricing their properties, so we increased the top end of the search one step, then two. Then we looked at houses to see what they were like inside, and then somewhere we lost track of what our true price range was.

We are hoping to find something in the DC suburbs just outside the Beltway.

Pre Approved.

I go the call from our mortgage officer that we've been pre-approved, and now its time to start looking at houses in earnest.