Let's try this again...

The realtor called me this afternoon. The bank/mortgage company/repo dealer/whoever they are countered our offer. We offered significantly less than the list price and asked for pre-occupancy (moving before we closed). They came down $900 on the list price (basically, they spit in our face) and said no way to pre-occupancy. We hmm'd and hawwed and got increasingly testy.

My initial knee-jerk reaction was to tell the realtor to counter with a figure $10,000 more than our initial offer. When Rab arrived home, we talked and decided we were in love with the location but not the house itself. The list of things we hoped to improve upon grew and grew as we talked about the house more and more. Improvements cost money and if we purchased this house, there would not be a lot of extra funds laying around to pay for all our dreams.

We got out the list with all of my notes about the other houses we saw during our visit. We went between two others - leaning all the while toward one over the other. The clinchers kept coming the more we pondered: The Gray House is more charming, is almost $20,000 less than The Bigger House By The School, seems to be a better home for our dining room set (this damn antique set has caused more problems than it's worth!), and needs fewer changes than any other house on our list (how ironic is that? The house that we can afford to change doesn't need a bunch of changes?!).

Tomorrow, we'll put an offer in on The Gray House. At asking price. Here's a picture of it. Cute, huh?