Buying 'the' House

So it took us 3 months to find our "new" house. This was back in the hay-day of the Real Estate game when it was more of a seller's market; 2002. I'm sure our agent was pretty sick of us by the time we got to the point of signing up for another house. Or he believed that my wife and I are picky beyond the common man. The last few weeks we were meeting with his assistant to look at houses since he was probably locked into other clients moving faster than we were. That's OK because we found a place that we both like (most of the time) and in a neighborhood that is very stable and noteworthy.

The house was actually one that we had looked at when we started our search. We liked the house, but the price asked did not meet the presentation of the house; dirty and unkept. So we passed and on went a 10 week foraging through homes. We did go into a bidding fiasco for a house that was just on the edge. On the edge meaning not only on the edge (outside of) of the Heritage Hill Historic District but also on the line of two neighborhoods; the renaissance coming from the historic district and the "hood" which developed in the decades before and continued to that day. What it meant was a risk with the neighborhood depending on which side surged forward. There was no way to really tell. Three houses south, burned out drug house. One block east, full home restorations under way. A half block north, the protection of Heritage Hill. We went after it, but after 2 tries we and our agent were flabbergasted. We met their asking price, which put us at the edge of our top ceiling, but asked for $1000 for minor roof work where one could actually see light coming through. At inspection, there was wet white caulk (or toothpaste) stuffed in the holes... which does not constitute a proper repair... at least in my book. So, the sale went down in flames for $1000. It was the most frustrating experience. But it wasn't meant to be. So we kept looking.

Over the course of those weeks, we looked at several levels of homes, neighborhoods, new and old constructions... everything. We decided after pretty much exhausting the city that we wanted to look at that big brick house again and gave the green light for another look-see. We got a call that night from our agent. We were going to look at the house the next day and that there was a new agent on the other end as well as a significant price drop. They couldn't sell it and had broken down. Gold!

We were the second people through the house with this new agent. The home was now cleaned up with a few lingering details that were not the best. But we liked it and loved the dining room. While the first person through was asking her dad if it was a good purchase, we were prepping our offer... full asking price. A day later, we were in and on our way.

Inspections uncovered plenty of minor problems but the most significant was the garage roof which cracked like potato chips as our inspector walked on them. The disclosure statement had "new roof" and this was clearly not. Long story short, we got $2000 to get a new roof on the garage. We closed the deal a few weeks later.