Susan and I have submitted an offer on a house yesterday. We've done that once before - not sure if I even blogged about that, since we knew it was very unreasonable, and wanted to see how low the seller would be willing to go. That seller decided to play hard to get, so it didn't go anywhere at all.
This time around, we found a house in a perfect location for both of us. It came on the market just a few days ago; as soon as Susan saw the listing, she told me to put down an offer when I went to the open house, since she couldn't make it. I was a little hesitant, but hey, you don't question a woman's intuition.
On Sunday, I went to check out the house, and felt very confused. The neighborhood was pretty nice, a quiet cul-de-sac behind the town park, and the lot was sizable... well, for Burlington, at least. The house... that's probably the part that confused me the most. First of all, it's definitely not your cookie-cutter colonial. Judge for yourself, here's the view from the back:
It doesn't have one roof, but rather a collection of shingled surfaces that face the sun at different angles. Anyhoo, there were all kinds of personal belongings all over the place, like this TV that was conveniently placed right in front of the fireplace:
Everywhere, the house is a study of contrasts - large bathroom, but small bedrooms; new heater, but it's placed right next to a busted window.
The biggest source of confusion, for me, at least, was something outside, this:
A two-car garage is not just a rarity in this price range - it's an utter impossibility. What the hell is going on here, said Stan.
Thankfully, Susan made a surprise appearance, and helped me tour the property. Together, we decided, heck, we can throw them a low offer, and see how they react. The house went on sale for $309K, which proudly made it the second cheapest out of 86 houses currently on the market in town. So, we pulled a number of $280K out of the sky, since we were pretty sure that even our agent would balk at anything lower.
Well, here comes the pudding. This morning, our agent called me with quite a message: the seller accepted our offer. After nearly falling out of my chair, I scheduled a home inspection as soon as I could: maybe the inspector can help us find the nest of giant cockroaches that are driving the current owners out. But hey, even if we do find them critters, at least we'll have more living area to share.
