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[unicornduke]

We saw a house this morning and made an offer on it. It was nice, close to important locations, half acre, quiet area and we really liked the house. It was a little more suburban which hurt me in my rural feelings but I got over it because it was nice. It was listed at 250k, we offered 285k. Offers needed to be in by 6pm.

Just got a call about 45 mins ago from my realtor who said we were 7th out of 16 offers.

Bonkers stuff.

Anyway, we're still looking. There will be other houses and worst comes to worst, F's mom is looking to sell her house in about a year.

I stopped by two open houses on my way home from our showings this morning and I'm glad the others didn't make the drive up, they were both duds. One was an old farmhouse that they had renovated so thoroughly that the only thing remaining from the original house was the weird layout. Otherwise, very generic. Hilariously, the neighbor started chainsawing as soon as the open house started, which amused me greatly. Other house was very meh.

I'm feeling better on the blood front, I can make it up the hill now without feeling horrible. Definitely more effort than before giving blood but better.

Mara had a terrible night last night because several rounds of giant thunderstorms rolled through. I may talk to her vet about getting Good Drugs for her because she refuses to lay down, paces around, pants and pants. It's gotten a lot worse in the last two or three years so might be time for some help for her.

Can't remember what else has been happening oh well. Stuff. Things.

Comments

[graydon]

One was an old farmhouse that they had renovated so thoroughly that the only thing remaining from the original house was the weird layout.

That made me laugh. (and is excellently phrased!)

And yeah, bonkers stuff. I hope you find a pocket of sanity!

[which_chick]

The real estate market here (I am a landlord who also writes mortgages for other landlords) is quite hot. In the last three months, everything I've seen that was sanely priced sold in under a week (this is rental properties... duplexes, lots with multiple buildings, 'needs serious work' fixer-uppers, definitely not move-in-ready SFH stuff) at higher than the ask. I don't so much have my fingers on the pulse of the owner-occupied market, but I suspect it's similarly ... busy. Inflation paired with super low interest rates is likely responsible for a good chunk of the fluff in prices, at least for rental properties.

There is always another house. People die or move into retirement communities or relocate for jobs or get divorced or downsize because all the kids are grown and moved out. It's annoying and time-consuming to have to keep shopping, though.

[unicornduke]

That poor farmhouse haha. It had three separate staircases.

We are trying to be a pocket of sanity for ourselves. We talked over what price we would offer and decided 285k was what the house was worth to us. Our "good house" budget is up to 300k and the "amazing house" budget is 350k. But this house wasn't worth 300k so we didn't offer that.

Even our realtor is trying not to push us into higher bids because she said yesterday that she's concerned about extra high bidding pushing house equity upside down when the bubble pops. So all of us are proceeding with caution.

[unicornduke]

Yeah, I thought things were slowing down a little, we've been one of two offers before but that was an old farmhouse. But I guess the suburbs get wild or something.

There's always more houses and we debated on waiting for a less suburban house to come on the market but we really liked this one. I had a feeling once I texted the realtor our offer #s at noon and she replied there was already 6 offers that we weren't going to get it. Oh well, wasn't gonna happen.

We really narrowed our focus a lot once we saw some houses, got a sense of what we like, have some criteria for distance and depending on what pops up, my guess is that we'll only see one or two per week which is doable after work or a morning on the weekend. The drive is the biggest aggravation for me and driving an hour each way isn't the worst.

[graydon]

Having boundaries is good!

I've been sort of darkly amused that there's a full-blown "move to the country!" plague response going on. Definitely having an affect on house prices around here. (I expect the whole "wait, this thing needs fuel oil for the furnace" counter-bubble is going to hit sometime, too. Hasn't yet, but it's gonna.) "Move to the country" makes a lot more sense as a plague response when there's no public health or municipal water and when there are rural centres of production.

[unicornduke]

I think there's been some of that here but most of the movement has been folks moving from NYC to the Hudson Valley. We're too far north and so there's some local movement from the city out but not a ton. That particular house was close to things, ready to move in and suburban so I should have figured it would get a lot of bids. The actual out there houses and old farmhouses aren't going with that many offers and so fast. The housing market in our area is hot but not as hot as houses that need a decent amount of work are selling fast. There's a bunch that have been on the market for a while so the flippers aren't really grabbing things up to slap them together. I think the folks who moved out during the pandemic are going to move back soon now that all the restrictions have been lifted. :|