Sari and I have been looking for a house for the last three weeks. We were preapproved for a loan about a month ago and started looking right away. Nevet in my wildest dreams did I think that finding a house would be so difficult.
Last Monday (Jun. 5) we putan offer on a house that was in the Greenwood neighborhood in Seattle. The asking price was $379k but as we knew there were going to be multiple offers we offered $400k. The house ended up selling for $460k! The truth is that even if we had that much money we wouldn't have paid that much for it. We took comfort in that until tonight.
After being discouraged with our first offer we finally found a house on Saturday that we really liked. It was the last of 10 houses that we had looked atthat day. It was a bit farther north but still reasonably close to Aurora, Greenlake, etc. The asking price this time was $370k. Again we offered $400k and again some ass came in and will end up paying about $440k! This is getting frustrating.
Sari and I are willing to push the financial limits with our first house. What we're not willing to do is compromise on what we get in a house just because some arrogant snobs are buying all the houses we like. We're not willing to buy a 2 bedroom fixer in south Seattle. All we can do at this point is be patient. People tell us on a daily basis that our house will come along. The question is will we be up against somebody who's willing to pay $80k-90k more than we are?