2003-07-22 - 12:10 a.m.

House Fretting

The house picture has become more frustrating. It's become clear that the house we like is not only at the limit of our price range, but is in fact grossly overpriced. They're asking a healthy 25 grand more than any other house in the area has ever sold for. Our buyer's agent thinks it's because they bought recently, just before 9/11, and are trying to recoup all their transaction costs and still make some money despite a market that has been nearly flat for the last couple of years. So not only do we have to worry about some rich bastard walking in and outbidding us, we have to worry about the owners realizing that they can't own a house for less than three years and make a profit of it, and deciding that moving at all is a bad deal.

It may turn into a race against time for all concerned. As long as we don't buy a house, we're both piling money away. If this same place went on sale for six months and my employment hadn't been interrupted, we could afford it.

Realistically, that won't be what happens, but knowing that it could happen deepens the frustration. Julie seems especially irked. We've looked at houses more expensive than this one without flinching, after all. It's just that they were leaving more appliances behind (we're in the gray area where even the cost of a good oven can make or break the deal for us) and that those houses might actually have been worth what they wanted for them. Still, it sucks that we've been through the bickering about how much we could afford, and the bickering about what we each wanted, and where we could live, and then finally found a house we both liked, only to be unable to buy it.

If someone else buys is, I want someone to TP it every night for the rest of that person's residency.

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