House update

I experienced the strangest mix of emotions yesterday -- anger, confusion, relief, and regret -- when our bid for the house was turned down in favor of another last-minute offer by a competitor. I got the call from my uncle, who has been generous in providing his services as a realtor, around 5:30 while I was on the train. It brought a tumultuous roller coaster of a weekend to a crashing halt.

We're thinking now that the sellers were never really serious about accepting our offer, and that they were simply using us as bait to squeeze an 11th-hour deal out of the other buyer all along. The entire process, which probably was set to suck us nearly dry, took over a week from the time we decided to place a bid to the time we found out we'd been blown out of the water. In retrospect, nearly every action the sellers took were purposely designed to be stalling tactics -- ways to tentatively accept our offer while still holding out should something better come along at the last minute. Unfortunately, it played out exactly like that for them, and so now we've got nothing to show for two months of planning and searching.

The good news is that we're in a great position to continue the search later in April or May. We're on a month-to-month lease, the housing market continues to trend downward (read: good for buyers) and we'll continue to save money so that we don't have to borrow from our parents and tap our retirement accounts in order to have the buying power we need. We'll get through May, when my sister is getting married, and then Lauren will be on summer vacation from grad school and we can dedicate all the energy we need to what we now know to be a very hectic, stressful home-buying process.

But for right now: fuck you, sellers.