First home offer: rejected



This weekend our fledgling house hunt reached a milestone: we made our first official offer and we received our first official rejection.

 

Looks like I will have to wait a little longer before I can tie on my apron and get cooking in a kitchen that is all my own.  By the way, this kitchen looks eerily similar to the one that my mom had back in the 1980s, down to the yellow oven, counter tops and fridge! The only difference was that our wall paper was white with yellow flowers.

Offer Number One went to a 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath townhouse in a great location. Even better was the price - nearly $40K below our lowest budget! We never thought we would find something "move-in ready" in that price range. There were SOME compromises: the patio was small and not very private. The square footage was only 1,450. The kitchen and bathrooms were basic and no "frills." But it had a lot that we DID like: hardwood floors on the bottom, a spacious bottom floor floor-plan, a playground and swimming pool just half a block away . . . and yes, the price was so amazing.  But apparently others thoughts so too.

The house was listed on Friday. By the time we viewed it on Saturday at 11:30 a.m. it had already received two offers. We decided to make an offer and went slightly above asking to be competitive. On Sunday we found out the townhouse went to someone who had $250K in cash and made a much large offer.

I guess it wasn't meant to be. We'll continue to look although as of today there is nothing on the market that looks at all like something I'd want to tour much less live in.  Hopefully more houses will become available as the year continues to unfold.  Ideally, we'd like to move by June when our apartment lease is up.  It's either that or go month-to-month starting in July and face a heft monthly penalty for not signing another lease.

We've heard that this is a process and we should be prepared to tour dozens of homes and make a handful if not dozens of offers. 

I'm really curious - do you remember how many homes you toured when you were house hunting? How many offers did you make before an offer was actually accepted?