Offer In.

So, we made an offer on a house today! And in typical J & M fashion, it's not any of the ones I've previously discussed on this blog. I think our real estate agent might think we're nuts--out of the three that we looked at today, it's by far the smallest. It also doesn't have some of the updates that the other houses had. However, there were several small things I liked about this house more than the other houses.

1. Although you can't tell from the below pictures, it has great windows in the living room. We looked at the house in the middle of a thunder-stormy dark day, and all the electricity was turned off. Still, the house felt nice and airy.

2. Although the square footage is smaller than the other ones we looked at, it feels more open due to the flow. The other ones included many half walls, walls with cutouts, etc. It just didn't make the space seem very livable. This space is small....or "cozy"....but the house flows logically.

3. All of the other houses we've looked at thus far have had the master bedrooms that open to the backyard. While that's nice, I'd rather have the master bedroom closer to the street and have the spare bedrooms facing the backyard. Someday, when we have kids, I'd rather have their rooms facing the backyard than the street. I don't know why, I just would.

4. While the other houses had nice tile living and dining rooms, I prefer wood to tile. If we were to buy this house, the carpet would be one of the first things to go...and it's much easier to replace carpet with hardwood (or laminate hardwood) than tile.

5. It's in the city, but has a quarter-acre lot. So, still a great sized yard, but not necessarily un-maintainable either.

6. The house would probably only need new carpet and new paint. Not the MAJOR overhaul that some of the others would require.

Here are a couple of pictures of the house. Since these were taken, the house was foreclosed, and is now re-listed as a bank owned house.




So, we put in an offer. I am proud that we stuck to our offer, even after hearing that another offer had been submitted. The fact is that we're offering slightly above the list price, but with seller paying closing costs. With this market, the other offer could be drastically lower than the list price, or the other people may not even be pre-approved. The bottom line is that we know what we want to pay, we made an offer, and stuck to it. Either it will be accepted (yay!), or it won't, and we'll be in the same situation that we're currently in. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing to be lost here.

Also, I'm way less stressed than I expected to be. It will be nice if we get it, but not the end of the world if we don't. I just keep telling myself that things will work in God's time, not in my own. And, I fully realize that this house may not be in God's plan. If not, I'm okay with that. We should know by Wednesday if the offer was accepted, so between now and then, we'd appreciate prayers--mostly for our own sanity!