househunting sucks.

we made our second offer last weekend. the first house we offered on we weren't sure about, and we rushed into it because we thought we'd lose it. we ended up losing it anyway, but we were relieved. we weren't ready for the commitment or sure about the house. in hindsight, it wasn't that great... new floors would have been expensive, and fixing up the kitchen would have been more trouble than it was worth.

the second offer was a different story. I even had my parents up for the weekend to look at a few, and they approved of it. they've hated everything we've sent them pictures of. so that's big.

it's a really nice house in shoreline, kinda small but in a great location. it's a "block" house made of concrete cinderblocks, but is still cute. the downsides are no second "living" space, so no nerd den or rec room, and that there's no garage or carport. otherwise it was really nice. gorgeous kitchen, three bedrooms, cute little woodstove... yard was perfect size for us, and we liked the neighbourhood.

problem was, the list price on it is $355k. while we COULD pay that much (we're pre-approved anyway), we don't want to take on that much of a monthly payment. we set a self-imposed cap of $325k just to keep the monthlies under control. we offered $300k hoping to meet in the middle, but they spurned us. said they'd only drop $10k and they were willing to wait out the recession to get their money out of it. not sure how they figure that works, but oh well. we walked away, but we're not-so-secretly hoping they change their minds and come crawling back to us. it's a flip, and at some point they need to face the fact that they picked a bad time to flip a house and they probably over-did the house for the neighbourhood. our $325k offer was reasonable, what they are asking is not, at least not for this economy.

so we're still looking. but nothing we've seen before or since has held a flame to the one we like. we've looked at over fifty houses now, and only a handful have been what we'd consider a good fit for us. a couple have gone off the market. at least the one we really like is still available, only because it's priced too high.

we'll keep looking. the idea of being in a house by presidents' day is no longer viable, so using the long weekend to move furniture up from nana's house is pretty much out of the question. if we find something else, great. but realistically, we're just waiting out the house we want, waiting for the sellers to blink in this game of financial chicken. they're paying a mortgage and HELOC on it, and losing money every month. we're sitting on a downpayment earning three percent interest and paying the same rent we have been for a couple years. unless someone else comes along and is stupid enough to pay what they want, we should win this, they'll have to blink first.

even so, I'm tired of househunting. I just want to find something we like, make and offer and move in.