Our search lasted all of 3 1/2 days. We went out looking at houses on Monday night, saw one we wanted, and were crushed when we found out it had just that minute gone off the market. On night 2, we saw a few more houses, two of which we listed as strong possibilities and made arrangements to see a second time. But then, out of the blue in the wee hours of Thursday morning, our realtor sent us an e-mail with the subject line “OMG! Must See!” She encouraged us to take time off our lunch breaks and go see a new house that had just come on the market, and knew it would be gone by the end of the day if we didn’t act fast.

So, we went and saw it, didn’t want to risk losing it, and put an offer on it on the spot. The afternoon was an agonizing wait, knowing that we were hardly the only people looking at the house that day. We had made a good offer, but others could have been blown away and offered more. We hoped the seller would simply go with the first offer rather than wait for all the offers to come in and choose the best one. But just as I was leaving work, Lauren called with word that our offer had been countered, meaning that we were now exclusively negotiating with the seller and no new offers would be entertained! We immediately accepted the counter, which was very reasonable.

The house is by no means ours yet. We have the inspection on Thursday and then have until August 6 to finish all the financing stuff, which includes tracking down some hard-to-find tax documents. We were pre-approved so we know it’s not going to be an issue, it’s just a matter of finding everything.

The inspection is the least of my worries. That house appears to be in immaculate shape. The current owner, an older single lady, clearly was a Grandma Bell-like person who clearly spent every waking hour working on her lawn and landscaping. The backyard is simply too nice for us and a beagle. This include a multi-level patio/deck that actually extends all the way around both sides of the house and has holes for trees growing out of it. The inside of the house is nice too–3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms upstairs; kitchen, living, dining, 1/2 bath downstairs, plus two-car garage. The only weird thing is the bathroom sinks are really short–they only go up to my knees!

The house is on a quiet suburban-like street (not unlike Wisteria Lane), but is just blocks away from a lot of a major grocery store, a bar, several restaurants, and major roads that will hopefully make our commutes less painful. We are on a big corner lot and are interested to see who we could be sharing fences with! I’m sure Baxter is hoping for a few pups in the hood to cause mischief.

We know a lot of people here who having been house-hunting for weeks and months, and have seen a hundred houses, put in a half-dozen offers, got into bidding wars, were rejected and dejected. So if this does indeed go through and we successfully close on August 30, we will be about the luckiest home buyers in Austin, and we would owe it all to our realtor Caren who was up browsing listings for us around midnight.

Here is a Picasa photo gallery you can check out with some photos.

And again, fingers crossed that it all goes through. I would hate to jump the gun and have everything blow up in our faces.

95% Certain New House