First Time Home Owners - First Offer

Two years ago, we were debating about whether we should rent or buy. We were paying about $900 for a 2 bedroom at the time, and once our lease was over, our rent would go up to almost $1,200 a month. There's no way we were going back to a one bedroom!!! (Once you have the space, you just put junk in it :) )

With the technology nowadays, there's no need to step out of your bedroom for anything, even house shopping. We started our search on Zillow in areas we were interested in. Then we saw the property tax that comes with the house, and we were thinking to ourselves, that's like paying rent with no one fixing broken things for you. We used online tools to calculate whether we should rent or buy and the results were always towards the middle. 

Then one night, Mrs. Y was randomly looking at a map on Zillow and found an area with reasonably priced houses and fair property taxes. We were excited and contacted the seller's agent. The very next Saturday we went to see the house. We really liked it, but the house was on the market for a while and according to Zillow the house wasn't worth that much, so we decided to wait.

Christmas came, we went on vacation for 20 days. We came back and saw a similar house in the same area, listed really cheap. This is when we started researching what a short sale meant. The agent that showed us the first house happend to email us to see if we were still looking for a buyer's agent. Wonderful timing. We asked him if he could arrange a showing for the short sale and we would sign him on as our buyer's agent.

So we arrived at the house. Surprisingly the owner of the house was still inside. To not bore you with the details, it was a weird showing. Our agent scheduled another very recently listed house down the street, so we went to see that house too. It was a foreclosure, but when we walked in it looked like a model home. But we had our mind so set on the first house because of the price, we told ourselves we wouldn't even consider. The very same day, we drafted a contract with the agent and presented an offer over the phone.