Oh, the shopping process.

[druidp]

We have a FAVORITE house out there, which we put an initial somewhat-lowball offer on, to be countered in a not serious manner, which we left alone at the time. Three weeks later, that house hasn't budged, either in price or in status, so today we upped our offer by $10K to see if they'd consider it.

We have a runner-up house which is ideal in every way... except the "garage" is really a glorified storage shed, without even an actual driveway. So DH won't go for it (his two sole requirements are a decent kitchen and at least a 1.5 car garage).

This shopping is nerve-wracking. Especially since inventory is fairly low, so any remotely quality & updated homes for reasonable prices are flying under contract within a matter of hours.

[Pom]

I feel your pain. We have been shopping for 9 months and have lost two homes due to appraisal.

Best of luck. Hopefully this offer will get negotiations started.

[MrsAxilla]

Jun 5, 2012 21:33:06 GMT -5 druidp said:

We have a FAVORITE house out there, which we put an initial somewhat-lowball offer on, to be countered in a not serious manner, which we left alone at the time. Three weeks later, that house hasn't budged, either in price or in status, so today we upped our offer by $10K to see if they'd consider it.

We have a runner-up house which is ideal in every way... except the "garage" is really a glorified storage shed, without even an actual driveway. So DH won't go for it (his two sole requirements are a decent kitchen and at least a 1.5 car garage).

This shopping is nerve-wracking. Especially since inventory is fairly low, so any remotely quality & updated homes for reasonable prices are flying under contract within a matter of hours.

Can you add on the the garage? Pouring a concrete driveway is pretty cheap, or so I'm told. About $4 per sq ft.

[housegeek]

Is the favorite house overpriced? I'm not sure why youd lowball it if you love it.

[druidp]

Jun 15, 2012 12:18:59 GMT -5 housegeek said:

Is the favorite house overpriced? I'm not sure why youd lowball it if you love it.

Yes, it was. And there it sat for about 40 days without moving - they finally dropped the price by $7500 this last week. And, alas, someone must have met them a bit more than we were willing to, because now it's under contract. We're guessing it went at 235K, and we weren't willing to go over 225K.

But ah well, more time to save up a bigger downpayment, and we're keeping our eyes open.

Oh, and we are considering adding a garage - DH is in talks with a contractor my dad works with a ton to get estimates for if we decide to go that way.