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: