The Severed Cortex

Someone said it was a buyers market.

As it turned out, we had planned ahead and scheduled a day of house hunting the Saturday following Thanksgiving. Even without a contract on the house, we felt like it was time to actually walk into a few houses and get a feel for the area. Our realtor was very pleased to learn we had a contract on our house when we showed up for the long day of house hunting. I could see the dollar signs in her head because I'm sure she wasn't seeing a lot of buyers in this market.

And a long day it was. Our target price ranged from slightly below our previous house sale price to what I'll call 'a significant amount above that'. That opened a lot of possibilities for us and since we didn't care whether it was new construction or not, it opened up even more. We started the day near the low end and slowly moved our way to the upper end of the price range. Twenty-two houses later we had a good idea of all the areas south and west of Springfield proper and what each area offered. What really stood out to me was that there was a clear difference in house just above the midpoint of our price range. It's not that the house near the low end weren't nice houses. They were. But once you got to a certain price level you started seeing granite counters, real wood floors, and real ceramic tile. Nothing we saw this day really stood out. There were houses that would certainly work, but none that jumped out at us. Well, maybe one that jumped out at us.

Four days later we were back at it again after work, viewing 5 houses in Sherman. We did it again the next night with 4 more. Eight days later we looked at nineteen more houses. For those of you counting, that's 50 houses in a span of 14 days. Most people can't believe we looked at 50 houses and I'm sure our realtor was tired of squiring us about but if she was, she never let on. We looked at more than 80 homes when we bought our first house, most of those on our own via the open house method.

By the end of that weekend we narrowed the list down to five. Seven days later, after walking through them again, we ranked them as follows.

1. Fox Meadows West
2. Tara Hill
3. Centennial Park
4. Panther Creek (home of the LPGA State Farm Classic)
5. Piper Glen (a well respected public golf course

The Piper Glen house would have probably been number one or number two mainly because it was a bargain at the price. You don't see too many houses that are on the course at that price range with a walk out basement. But, before we could see it a second time, someone else recognized it for the bargain that it was and beat us to the punch. Somebody got them a steal on a golf course house.

Information is king. Again, if I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be in the business I am. The house in Tara Hill was actually listed well out of our price range. By a little more than 15% out of our price range. Our realtor ran into the builder and during the course of the conversation he asked her if she was showing houses to anyone. When she said yes he asked why she hadn't shown his house. The simple answer was, it was out of our price range. She also told them what our max price was. He told her she should go ahead and show it to us. That little conversation told me that I could get the house if I was willing to spend max dollars, a 15% discount on list price.

The problem was that we still liked the Fox Meadows West house a little more and since it was listed right at our max bid, we would offer far less. The house had been on the market for more than 300 days without a single offer so we figured a lowball was in order. We lowballed. Not a ridiculous lowball mind you but a lowball nonetheless. Hey, given the market and the fact they hadn't seen a contract in a year, they should have been happy. We even gave them room to come up a little. However, if they reached above the 'come up a little' level, it made more sense for us to take the Tara Hill house. The house in Tara Hill was bigger and had an extra bedroom on the main floor. That, to me was worth the 25K difference, and that wasn't even factoring in the custom cabinets. The sellers, unfortunately, countered with a darn near list price offer. I told the realtor to not even bother countering back. We offered on Tara Hill and the house was ours. A gentleman's agreement. We knew we got a deal and in return, we weren't going to beat up the seller on the inspection items. Very little turned up in the inspection, we asked for less than that, and the buyer fixed more than we asked for. A win-win for everyone.

The offer was accepted on December 18th. I truly expected to be 'homeless' until at least mid January. Our realtor thought we'd be in right after the New Year. I laughed. I may have even LOL. He who is still nervously laughing knows he is wrong. Our banker told us the following Monday that she could close on the 29th if we wanted too. We asked to close on the 30th instead. It pays to live in a small town, work for one of the premier employers, and work with people who have lived their lives together since birth. We closed at the same bank where the builder had his construction loan and I received a $200 discount at closing for being an LRS employee. Our president (and founder) has a vested interest in the bank. I also get 5% off at Quizno's if I show my LRS gold keychain. If you need a toasted sub, I got the hookup.

And then the unpacking began.