On one of our first forays out into the big scary world that is Bay Area Real Estate, I spied the house on Moana as coming on the market that very morning. In fact, our agent (the ever patient and terrific Pete Lommori) hadn't even seen it.
We walked into 6 houses that day. One of these houses was miraculous. Redone inside and out, in the neighborhood we wanted (Linda Mar) and the style of house we wanted (ranch). It was also out of our budget, but we put an offer on it anyway.
The other decent house we saw was at 415 Moana. It was a fine house. Not in the neighborhood we wanted. The backyard barely existed. It needed a fence to go up before we could move in. It hadn't been updated since 1982. But, it had good bones. And it was bigger than any of the other homes in our price range.
So in the flurry of putting the offer on the awesome house, we went ahead and threw down the offer on Moana just 'cos it was easy to do so, and, hey, it was there.
As expected, the cute house we put an offer down on was dismissed out of hand. As unexpected, the Moana offer was accepted. And thus began a crazy 6 weeks of things progressing on a house that was a fine house, but not a house we loved.
I was uneasy about this place at first. I even asked our agent to go back a second time so I could take some pictures. It wasn't as bad as I remembered it. In fact, it was sort of cute if you used a lot of imagination. The layout was really weird, which I actually liked.
I was never 100% comfortable with this place though. There are a couple of reasons, and some I can't put my finger on. Some of my concerns included:
- It was just too big for 2 people and 2 dogs.
- We didn't need 2 living rooms
- I really wanted 3 (small) bedrooms
- No wilderness near by
- All the neighbors were situated slightly above the level of the house so could easily see into the backyard / windows (I think this was the big one)
I just wasn't feeling it. Because of this, I kept going to Redfin to see if anything else was going to pop up. Meanwhile, in the back of my mind, I was fretting, "What if this goes all the way and we are stuck"; "Should we walk away now?"; "What if we walk away and then don't find something we want in time" (That's a whole 'nother story I am not going to blog about, but basically we are in a situation where we need to vacate our current residence, but we actually don't have a target date - we just know it is coming). It was a lot of stress.
On Wednesday, April 20th 2011 we heard back from the bank - they negotiated to a price they thought was fair but I wasn't happy with. Also on April 20th, I saw another rancher in Linda Mar come into our price range due to a price reduction. On Thursday the 21st, we went to see the rancher on De Solo (more info on this in another post since this one is getting rather tedious, no?). We put in an offer.
And thus began the most stressful weekend of my life thus far. So stressful that (TMI) my period decided to start up again after only vacating the premises 10 days prior. I got a lot of stuff done aroun dthe house though. Nervous energy will do that for ya :)
On Monday the 25th the bank on Moana came back with an agreed upon price (they were done negotiating, I wasn't quite happy, the Realtor was thrilled). Also on the 25th, the sellers accepted our offer on the De Solo house. Since this is a short sale, that is only step one of course. The bank would still need to see the paperwork and decide if THEY were going to accept the offer.
We needed to make a decision then and there. Take Moana in all it's luke-warm glory, or hope De Solo, the house and location that has made my heart go pitter-pat, would pull through eventually.
We had to go with our gut on this one.
And so we walked away from 415 Moana.
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