My Home Buying Experience: Part 2

If you've read my previous blog My Own Home Buying Experience: Part 1 then you know we've been pre approved and I have a list of things I would like in a home.  So now we've started touring some houses a couple weeks ago and found that we weren't able to get the things we need in a home in our price range in the areas we began to look in.  So just like trying a new food, I kept my mind open and went to look at some homes in a different area and found that not only did I like the feel of the neighborhoods, but that we would be able to get a lot on our check lists in this area.  And while I thought I would be a hard customer to please since I'm in the business, come to find out, it's my husband who embodies a number of traits of a buyers that keep me on my toes as a realtor. There have been too many times I've come home and the table talk at dinner revolves me sounding like a broken record booo-ing about the fact that my clients try to find the value of a home based on a certain popular real estate website that may rhyme with pillow. That is the last place you should look to try and find the value of a home or base any offer or listing price from. But yet the other night, my husband says..."but I looked on this site and found the home should be worth blah blah blah".  This must be karma for something I've done, I'm sure of it..haha.  But we found a home we really liked this last weekend.  The downside to the home was that the kitchen was super small and so was one of the bedrooms.  The kitchen was updated and I could tell the home owners spent a lot of money since the cabinetry and finishes were top notch...but again, the kitchen was very very small.   The house across the street, which had been updated in the past 5 years and had a terrific view just sold 4 months ago for $60k less than what this home was listed for which had no view.  So we put in an offer that I felt was more appropriate to what the home was really worth without trying to offend the sellers at the same time (but even so, an appraiser would very likely take the sale of the home across the street and use it to value this home). But the according to the realtor of the home for sale, the sellers put a lot of money into the kitchen and downstairs floors and would not budge on the price regardless of the home across the street with the terrific view.  And my husband and I were not willing to budge on the offer we put in so moving on.....more to come soon.