So We're Buying A House...(Ish)

For those who haven't been keeping up on Facebook, we are currently and avidly house hunting. House hunting in Washington is probably in between paper cuts and listening to Taylor Swift as far as torture goes. Don't get me wrong; I really, REALLY want to have a house of our own. We just very quickly realized what probably everyone realizes after looking for a bit:

WE CAN'T AFFORD OUR "DREAM HOUSE"!!

Surprise, Surprise. Soooo we have to compromise. Do we really need two sinks in the master bath? (yes) Can we make do with a really tiny yard? (no) It's really frustrating!

We've put two offers on two different houses that fell through. Here's a quick history on our experience thus far:

#1 Great location! Super close to where we live now. Less square footage than hoping for, but great floor plan. Definitely in our price range. Needed some things fixed. Downside: Short Sale. Our offer was accepted by the seller, but they wouldn't fix ANYTHING after the inspection, which we couldn't afford to do AND buy appliances. So we had to back out. Bummer.

#2 Literally seemed like the perfect house. Further away, but still great area. It had everything we had on our list: Square footage, bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, yard, AND it came with ALL the appliances AND the sellers were going to pay our closing costs. Cha-ching! Downside: More expensive than we had planned. That turned out to be our downfall. To make a long story short, our loan approval was 'denied' until Bryan gets his raise in September. We tried to rent it from the seller, since his raise is a done deal, but, in their words, they 'are unwilling to continue working with the current buyer (us).' So we walked away heart broken.

One thing I have to say I have learned during all these shenanigans is to listen to the Spirit. #1 I really didn't a strong impression either way. #2 seemed like such a great deal, on paper, that I think I willed myself to love it. But there was always something, couldn't put my finger on it, that wasn't right. I had been worried from the start that it was too expensive for us, so maybe that was it. Maybe it was the Lord trying to tell us it wasn't right, in order for us to avoid the heartache when it fell through. (I literally cried for a whole day.) Either way, it could have been avoided had we just listened.

Update: The sellers of #2 contacted us recently and asked if we were still interested. After you were so rude and dismissed us so quickly? No thank you.

So we went back to square one. We considered all the options. Do we stay in our apartment for another year? Absolutely not. Can we find a house/townhouse with a yard that we could rent for a year or so? Nothing in our price range. Do we start looking at houses again? Let's do it. 

In the course of a week or so, we saw about ten houses. We have our eye on a couple of them. We're being very tight-lipped this time around, not telling anyone until our loan gets approved and we have a firm close date. Here's to hoping this one works! Otherwise we'll be living in our apartment forever!

Third time's a charm, right?!?!