The Woes of House Hunting

Here's my sob story for today: I've officially lost my patience with house hunting.

"The right one will come along, you just have to be patient."

"If it's meant to be, it's meant to be."

"These things take time."

I've heard these, and other variations of these statements, over and over again in last few weeks. I know it's true, but the Everything-Happens-For-A-Reason reasoning is starting to get under my skin. These are the type of comments that are used in sucky situations, which is why I hate them. I hate sucky situations. The last time I was offered these sentiments was when I got kicked to the curb by a boyfriend.

"I'm tired of hearing that! This is what you say to people who get dumped," I said in frustration to Keith. "It didn't help the last time I heard that and it's not helping now!" (I'm a little dramatic in the morning before I've had my coffee.)

"But didn't it work out for you," he said. (In a very, I'm-right-and-you-know-it tone, I might add.) "Didn't you end up with me?"

"Yeeeeeeessssss," I shot back in my I-don't-like-to-admit-I'm-wrong-but-I-know-I-am tone. "But all those sympathetic comments from my friends didn't make my heartbreak just disappear."

Then he pointed to the cat who was spread out on the kitchen floor and said, "But you never would have met this kitten if you hadn't gotten dumped."

Why's he got to bring the cat into this!?

Now that I've established that I'm upset I can fill you in on the rest of the details. They go a little something like this: We found a house we loved! We made an offer! We were excited! We negotiated and negotiated. We worried! We had our offer accepted! We celebrated! (I started stalking OneKingsLane.com.) We had an inspection done. We found out there were a lot of things wrong with the house. We stopped celebrating.

The house is 60-years-old. It's no wonder that it needs some fixes. My dad said, "I'm 60 and I need some repairs." Then he looked at the inspection report and made one of those hmmmmm sounds. The ones you don't ever want to hear from your doctor. The sound that means, "This is worse than I thought." Keith had been making those sounds all day. If my cat knew how to do anything but beg for food I'm sure she'd be making those sounds, too.

I know that we can do more negotiating and have some (or all) of these problems fixed. We can ask for more money at closing to fix them ourselves, or try lowering our initial offer. We have options, but now we both have that sinking feeling that there might be more things wrong with this house that the inspection didn't reveal. (Hello, have you seen that Mike Holmes show? If I'm going to be on HGTV it's going to be Bath Crashers not Mike Holmes Inspection. Just saying.)

That's where we stand now. We've made three offers on three house with not much to show for it. So go ahead, leave your thoughts below, but please hold the sympathies and everything-happens-for-a-reason-type comments. I've got plenty.