We've moved!!!

We finally took the last step in becoming a full-fledged San Diegan and bought a home in Carlsbad! We had been renting a house for the past year and a half and we're ready to do our own lawn work :) We were looking for about 2 months online and another almost 2 months by going through a ton of houses. Housing market problem my butt!! Well, at least not in Carlsbad. We had looked at other towns close by but nothing was better than our little beach city.

We put a couple of offers on homes to no avail. The first was upside down - no not like the attic down, basement up (wait, there's no basements in california) but the owners owed more on the house than it was worth. This made it a short sale. It didn't mean that they had to sell it shortly but that they were going to lose money on it or selling it short of what it was worth.

ANYWAY - So California has this weird thing where the house are not listed at one price but at a range of prices. The house isn't 800k, it's between 775k and 825k. Well, of course I'm going to offer the low end! Well, the thing about short sales is that the bank is "kind of" in charge. They own the mortgage and almost the home - it hasn't gone into foreclosure yet. The owner can still say which bid it would like. So we basically offered the low end of the range. There was another offer on the table and the other agent said, we were the best offer.

We thought we had it in the bag, right? Well, for some reason, the owner picked the lower offer! My agent thought that either the other couple put more money down or the seller's agent was the same as the buyer...

So, one down...So after a few more houses, Heather walks through one and calls me right away. You're going to love this one, she says. I go and see it the next day and can't really control myself. It's stunning. Not a thing to do to it. Totally upgraded. Big back yard. No back neighbors, great views, did I say totally loaded?

So we put a low offer on it and get into negotiations. It was rough because the owner wasn't budging too much. Finally, we thought we were over our limit. I did some magic numbering with our financing and found we could actually do the number the owner wanted so we waited for our agent to get back from vacation and agreed to the number. Problem was, that exact same DAY, someone else came in with a relocation company and bid the EXACT SAME number we did. The owner did what I think anyone would have done and said, who wants it more? Of course we were already at our limit so we couldn't dance anymore.

I was devastated. I really dug the place and wanted to close the deal. Now it was out of our reach. We looked at a few more places but nothing could take the place of the dream house. We put another offer and was quickly rejected. I kept thinking...what housing problem??

Then a miracle happened. Our agent called us late on a sunday telling us we weren't going to believe what just happened. The agent of our dream house called our agent asking if we still wanted the house. The relocation company didn't want the house and made it fall out of escrow. It was available if we wanted it. I got greedy for a quick second and thought I should lowball them for 20grand less. Then I thought better of it and wanted the place too bad. Instantly, they accepted!!

We couldn't believe it. The place was to be ours. After some intense weeks of dealing with lenders - we had perfect credit, great incomes but not too terribly much in the form of downpayment so we had a VERY rough time getting the loan - we moved into the house!

House warming party in about a month when we should have half of our stuff moved in. Want to come???