The problem with the whole everything happens for a reason and whatever is meant to be will be line of thinking, especially with regard to real estate, is that it makes me spend an inordinate amount of time and energy seeking and finding significance in the world. Sometimes, everything is a sign to me, everything. These times make me wonder if perhaps I'm bipolar and in a manic phase.
With the last house, I thought it was going to be our destiny to live there. I had asked my coworker how she came to move to her current house, and she had told me a story about how her son, who was two at the time, was sick one day and she stayed home with him. Not being able to get out, she started checking out mls and saw a house that looked nice. Then she decided to pack her son into the car and drive by that house, just to see what it was like, and she thought it looked even nicer. They looked at a few houses, still liked the first one, which was still on the market, and bought it without a second thought.
It just so happened that last February, Swee'pea was sick one day, a few days after I heard this story, and I started checking out the mls listings. And I saw a house that looked nice, and packed Swee'pea into the car and drove over to it, just to see what it was like, and I thought it looked even nicer. Then we looked at the inside of it a couple of times, and that was supposed to be it. We were supposed to buy it without a second thought. But we didn't get it. (And, at the time, I was pretty relieved, and took the relief to mean that it wasn't meant to be our house.)
Right now, I'm feeling some pretty intense regret. This latest house was really something special and for all our obsessing about the fact that it was not walking distance to downtown, I didn't place proper priority on the fact that it IS walking distance to my work, and would therefore support a single-car lifestyle much more easily than a downtown house would. Living downtown would pretty much not support single-car living at all, unless Sugar D found a job here in town. Sadly, this realization didn't come to me until after we found out we didn't get the house.
I'm also intensely regretting not removing the condition of sale this morning. We had such a long closing date that it would have been very low risk (unlike the last house, which had a closing date that pretty much guaranteed at least some bridge financing), especially in this seller's market. We would have had four months to sell our house. Sadly, this realization didn't come to me until after we found out that we didn't get the house, and that it went to another conditional offer, a conditional offer with a reasonably short timeframe to waive the conditions.
When Sugar D came home, I asked him if he was sad about it. He said, "Enh... not really. It just wasn't meant to be."
And I said, "Well I KNOW that but I'm still sad that it wasn't meant to be."
Most of me figures, well we've learned something. The first time we were so gung-ho, we threw caution to the wind. The second time we were too cautious. So the third time we should get it just right, right?
But there's another part of me that believes that if I'm feeling this much intense regret, surely that house is meant to be ours? Surely it means that something will fall through in the other offer and we'll end up getting it, right?
Where a few hours ago, I wanted the possibilities to go away and leave me with some certainty, now, I'm clinging to that thread of hope, still wanting to believe that we'll end up in that house and someday laugh about how it almost never was.
Hello 2024
10 months ago
6 comments:
Oh, I hate the whole house buying / selling pain and agony. I'm sending wishes that it works out just the way it should.
I'm definitely not a house fatalist. There was a house on MLS that I felt that prickly sense of - that's our house, I can feel it. It was beautiful, but over our budget. Then it came down in price, and then it came down again. We could have bought that house very cheaply. But hubby hated it, there was no place to put any toys. It was NOT our house.
Building a house is lots of fun. But it doesn't lend itself to that sense of cosmic connection.
You cannot dwell on meant-to-be-s. You simply cannot. That may seem a simple and clear-cut answer but, from where I'm standing right now, it's the only answer.
You will find another house that you love and damn them all to hell if they destroy that garden.
I think the key to real estate is to remember that there will always be another house. That house may, indeed, have been perfect for you, but so will another house, and you will eventually find it.
I, of course, was really bad at remembering this when we were house hunting, but Hubby was good at it. And he was far less stressed by it all than I was. And we did eventually end up in a house we love.
Be careful not to sentimentalize the house purchasing project too much. It's just a house. A shelter. The people inside it make it what it is.
I'm all for the mercenary approach to house hunting.
It may be too late and it may not be done where you live, but have you considered letting the sellers know that you'd make an unconditional offer (perhaps at a slightly higher price) if the current deal falls through?
That said, when we were house hunting, there was this one absolutely perfect house that I fell in love with. As it turned out, our offer was rejected and we ended up buying the house directly behind it.
And every day, I look out our kitchen window at that absolutely perfect house and thank whatever gods there may be that we didn't end up living in it.
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