“Son, stocks may rise and fall, ... People are no damn good, but they will always need land and they'll pay through the nose to get it!”

In my recent posting dearth, quite a bit has happened. I don’t feel like providing a complete update, but I can hit on some of the highlights.

In late October, we moved out of our apartment, and in to my mother’s basement. This was so that we could be more diligent at saving money, which took us a while to get going with, but has been working well lately. This is a non-ideal situation, since it robs us of most of our personal space, and if we aren’t diligent, the Stupid Dog robs us of the rest. Despite a mutual fondness between all parties, this can’t last forever.

So, at the first of the year, we contacted a real estate agent in hopes of finding an purchasing a house. Our early efforts were thwarted by a seemingly disinterested agent who made, at best, minimal efforts to contact or help us. Eventually, we gave up on him and asked Jake for his aunt’s contact info. This was a good thing.

That very (Friday) night, she called up and talked to me at some length. By Tuesday, we were out seeing houses with her, and over the next two weeks, we saw about 25 houses from over a hundred listings she had sent us, and had made three offers in one week.

The first home we made an offer on ended up being more than we wanted to spend. The second one cost about $40k less, but needed a lot of work and ultimately the owners were not actually considering any of the offers that were coming in (we hope that they do ultimately respond to our offer, so we can tell them where to stick it). The third house was between the first two in price, but much closer to home (and the freeway). Even though our offer had a 12 hour deadline on it, we got a response, and accepted their counter offer. That means that we are buying a house, which we can move into on the evening of the 18th of next month.

It feels so good to finally have a house under contract, and that it’s one that we like, where we like, in good shape, only makes things better. Buying a house in a seller’s market sucks. I’m just glad to be done with the hunting part, and we’re ready to do the closing work and move.

Best of all, we’ll have five months to get settled before the baby comes.