House!

We went back to see the house for a second time yesterday, and have a little issue inspected. The little issue was just that - a very little issue, nothing to be concerned about. And we roamed around the place some more, and liked it more and more every minute.

Here's the stairway to the Imaginarium.


I mentioned the carpet yesterday - this carpet's actually quite cool. You can see it a little in this picture. It's not the "70s olive drab apartment carpet" I initially thought. (At least, I don't think so ... someone else might, but it's not their stairway). ;o) I find that an interesting shade of green (sort of a Spring Vine color), and it has that cool swirly pattern in it. So I think the carpet's staying.

When I had been in the Imaginarium the first time, I didn't even walk all the way to the back and look at that bedroom. I did yesterday, and I was astounded - it's huge! All the rest of that space up there, and then a huge room taking up the whole end of the house as a bonus. Here's a couple pictures - one end of the room ...



... and the other end of the room ...


I also took a picture of that outside door which opens on to a balcony - the door I'm thinking of replacing with a full glass patio door, for the view and light.


So ... we made an offer! Then a flurry of negotations took place. Our offer was low; they countered pretty close to their asking price; we countered with a good increase but still well below them. That was yesterday evening and we haven't heard back yet.

I'm not too worried - in fact, I'm actually enjoying this negotiation. Maybe I'm overthinking or overplaying it, but that's just the thing - I'm kind of treating it as a game. Try to outguess the sellers, try to figure out pscyhogically what effect each scenario will have. Like, for example, our first counter offer jumped $7,000 above our initial offer. That's a lot to come up all at once, but our agent said that would show a good faith effort and our sincere interest in buying the place, which will make the sellers think twice and take us more seriously, if our first offer put them off due to how low it was ($25,000 under their asking price).

But after this, I intend to make each new counter incrementally lower, next time maybe only increasing our offer by $1,500. My guess is that will make them realize that while we are serious, we're not going to roll over easily, I know what I want to pay, and I'm going to fight to keep the price in that range.

Well, like I said - I may be overthinking it, but I think this part is fun. And I have the luxury to do that, because I'm almost positive we're going to get this place no matter what. You see, if they counter at all (which I believe they will; their first counter didn't come down enough from their asking price to be serious, and the house has been on the market for over 2 years), we could accept any of these prices at any time - we can afford it at this price. I just want to see how low I can get the price to go, because obviously the lower it is, the less of my money I have to spend for down payment, and the lower my payments will be.

So as the Dread Reverend is fond of paraphrasing, "We've agreed in principle, and now we're just haggling over price."

I am excited. Oh, here are a couple more pictures.

The recently remodeled kitchen, with the Wall 'O Cabinets.


That whole wall is a bunch of specialty cabinets. One section is a pantry, where when you open the doors there are two units of shelves for canned goods and the like, then those swing out to reveal two more behind them. You could store six months worth of canned goods in that one cabinet alone - amazing. A couple of the others are filled with slide-out shelves. As nice as my current kitchen is, one thing it lacks is cabinet space. I don't think I'll ever have to worry about running out of cupboard space in this kitchen.

The second picture I have is of the backyard - nicely privatized with those beautiful evergreens along the back.


So ... we'll see what I hear today from my real estate agent. Wish me luck!

By the way - Congratulations, Rhys!!! :o)