House hunting in the USA!
Well we have been back in California for a month now. We are really pleased to be back, Jasper’s work is going well and it makes such a huge difference for him to be back in the office. We are also very much enjoying the sunshine, it’s been beautiful and sunny between 26 and 32 degrees since we arrived.
We visited our friends the Bair’s in Manteca the other weekend too which was fab, it’s nice to know we have such lovely friends here.
As for house hunting that has been an interesting experience so far!
We have signed up with a couple of realtors who are absolutely lovely. Roberta and Jan have been so helpful and couldn’t have been nicer!
We must have viewed at least 15 houses so far either with Roberta and Jan or by visiting open houses. We have also driven past at least another 15 and completely ruled them out based on area.
It is very interesting buying in not only a new area but in a new country. There is a lot of new terminology to learn and a lot of interesting tastes which we don’t particularly love!
Having explored pretty much every option on area we have found a great area, easy commute distance and very close to shops and restaurants. It’s also a safe family friendly neighbourhood, great for us, the cats and future Potts and resale value.
We put a offer in on a house a couple of weeks ago, a bank owned property that was only 800 sqf (thats half the size of our house in Bath!). After working out plans on how we could extend and improve the space we decided because of the area and it’s current condition it would be a great buy. We were unsure how much to offer as the asking price was $439,000 but we had been told that there were 5 other offers in on the property already! We went for an offer of $460,000. We completed all the paperwork to put the offer in, this took us over 2 hours!! This was just one of the very different aspects to house buying in the USA – paperwork, paperwork, paperwork! We waited and waited and finally 5 days later got the response from the bank – unfortunately it was not a positive. Someone else had offered more than us and therefore we were unsuccessful.
This of course was gutting, we had been so excited about finding a house in a good neighbourhood for an affordable price that we would be able to move in to before our lease on our apartment was up.
However, as we all know if it wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t meant to be.
We carried on looking at properties and revisited a house we had viewed the same day as the one we had offered on. It was a much bigger house 1300 sqf and on a bigger lot, so a nicer back garden which is something I desperately want.
After looking at other recent sales in the area and taking in to account the amount of work that needed doing on the house, we put in an offer $40k under the asking price. A price that we feel was fair for the property. However the owner was not so sure and countered with a price just $9k under the asking price. There was no chance we could go that high based on the house needing a new roof, kitchen, bathroom and other electrical and heating issues fixing.
So we have now put offers in on two properties and we didn’t get either of them. We both feel quite disheartened about the whole house hunting process but we are strong believers that something will turn up.
I think we will go to some more open houses this weekend to see if there are any other areas that might be options. Other than that just keep our fingers crossed that something amazing will come on the market soon.
On a happy note I found loads of cool stuff in TJ Maxx last night so as soon as we buy a house and I put my shed up in the garden expect to see some amazing photos of my new home office/workshop! 
Peace out!
Fi
xxx