Strike One...

Our quest to secure a residence in the Northern Virginia area has been temporarily stymied. We made it to the second major step in the process after spending several hours with our new best friend Stan (our friendly Real Estate agent) putting together what I thought was a fair offer on a townhouse in Vienna. Since much of the DC area is clearly a buyer's market, we smartly asked significantly less than the asking price. However, when we finally got the counter-offer back, we were a little weirded out. They came down a little bit, but also added two strange things: 1) they stated that the fireplace came as is (apparently there had been a chimney fire that they never repaired) and 2) they scratched out the home warranty.

It was a little disconcerting that they never got the fireplace repaired. It sort of gets you thinking what else is broken that they never repaired, and how are they going to respond to our home inspection if anything is wrong. The home warranty removal just didn't make sense period. At this point in the negotiation we are still $20K apart, why start quibbling on something that's only $400?? Even with those warning signs, we went ahead and countered, moving up the same amount they went down. When they came back a second time they wouldn't budge, so we countered with "see you in hell candy boy" because we have many more options to consider buying.

This would have been our living room as seen from our dining room if things would have worked out differently:

House Hunting...

As many of you have probably already heard it looks like Sarah and I are going to stay in the Northern Virginia area. We’re excited about staying in one place for a while, although Colorado still seems to be a possibility one day. I ended up accepting an offer for a job in the Clarendon area just a short while ago as the “permanent” job after my rotation program. It’s still with the same company I’m at now, just on a different project with a different customer. We’ve decided that we are ready to buy a place to call our own, and start building some equity. Given that I’m now going to work in Clarendon and Sarah will remain at her job in Herndon, we’re starting to zero in on Vienna as a good area to concentrate on. It just about splits the difference for our commutes, it’s metro accessible, and it’s not super ridiculous to buy a place there (at least for a town house). It will be a little more of a trek for volleyball outings, but I’m sure we won’t let a little bit longer drive get in the way of our volleyball fix.

As we dive into the real estate market, we are learning all sorts of new meanings for things like points, arms, and co-ops. I think we are starting to get the hang of things, but nothing beats the experience of doing something for the first time. We went on our first house hunting trip with our realtor just a few days ago and looked at seven townhouses in the Vienna area. Nothing struck our fancy so far, so we'll continue the search.

We’ll be in touch once we need people to help us move!