House Hunt Update

So far, I'm finding house hunting to be incredibly frustrating. I feel like we've seen 100s of houses online, and out of those, maybe 25 are worth seeing. I do not understand what people are doing to their houses, honestly. Scary stuff out there. Plus, tons of houses we like are on short sale status, which makes everything way more complicated. In fact, we actually made an offer on a house, but it's on short sale status. This means that we may wait for months and months before we even hear from the bank that they've even looked at our offer. Also, it means there is very little room for negotiation, as we are dealing with the bank rather than the seller. Yikes! Clearly, B and I can't wait forever, as our leases end early this summer. So, while we wait for an answer (or mere acknowledgment) on that house, we must continue to shop.

Unfortunately, none of the other houses we find really compare to the one on which we made an offer. Most of the other houses are smaller or have major flaws (lack of bedrooms, need a ton of work, etc.). Plus, for some reason, our realtor doesn't always seem to listen to us. I feel like we've sent her tons of homes we want to see, yet we've barely seen any houses. And then yesterday, she told us we've now seen enough houses to know what we like. We've only seen 9 houses in person...pretty sure that's not enough. She also showed us homes that didn't meet some of our requirements...another odd move. Further, we've now sent her at least 2 homes that have sold before we even had a chance to see them. That's sort of frustrating, but I'm not sure how to push things along either. I think B is going to send her another list of houses with specific instructions to set up appointments for all of them. Hopefully that will work. We haven't even looked in SLP yet, which seems weird to me. Idk what to think about all that.

Ultimately, I think B and I are going to wind up compromising on a lot of things we want, which is sort of a bummer. I already feel like I've compromised a lot by giving up on Saint Paul (I really don't like Mpls all that much), and now I don't know if we will be able to afford a house that we like either. That's frustrating and hard.

Anyway, I don't know why I thought buying a house would be easier than this, but I was clearly wrong. It's tiring, consuming, and stressful. Plus, I keep worrying about the economy and whether I will be laid off. If that happens, we would be in major trouble. A tiny part of me thinks maybe it's better to just keep renting for a while until things settle down. However, the other part of me knows that we need a place to live whether I'm working or not. And we could always get a renter if I lost my job. Still scary, but I think we would manage. I just wish the house hunting and moving (and the recession) could be over now. A girl can dream, right? :)