It seemed too good to be true, and it was. Our offer was rejected. They made a counter offer that was only a smidge less than the asking price and still thousands of dollars beyond our budget. Oh well.

Funny thing is we are pre-approval with our lender for three times that asking price.  They would loan us half a million dollars for a house at the lowest available rate. Of course that would make our payments orders of magnitude over our budget. We would be completely broke and defaulting in a month.

No wonder the mortgage industry is in shambles.

As if my life was not hectic enough…

Remember when I said we went “real, live, actual house shopping”? Remember when I said we saw “one house that was flat out amazing, but is listed well above our target price”?

Well, our realtor sent me an email late last night, while I was still at work, pounding out code. She said that she spoke with the selling realtor on that house. The story is that the house was last occupied by a widow who passed away last November. Since then, her five kids have been wrapping up her estate. The house is the last piece they have and they are “very motivated” to get rid of it. The selling realtor, even after hearing that the house is tens of thousands of dollars more than we wanted to spend, strongly encouraged us to make an offer.

So, remember when I said that this house was only if option if we “place a low-ball bid”? This afternoon, we submitted the paper work to offer $20,000 less than the asking price. That’s still the upper limit of what we budgeted, but I felt like anything less would guarantee them laughing at our bid. If they bite, we’ll have bought our first house.

…

Wow. Even typing out those words gives me butterflies.