Update

I haven't been updating the blog as much lately, and I am so sorry about that. I have been pretty busy and little preoccupied lately. We have been very focused on buying a house. And in the last few weeks the priority to buy a house has gone up like a billion percent. I will get into the reasons for recent push later, but first I'll brief you on our real estate search thus far.

January - We placed our first offer. There was another offer on the table, and the buyers were willing to waive the home inspection. We were not. Looking back on it I am happy we didn't get the house. It needed a lot of work.

February - This was a slow month. I think the snow storms deterred many interested sellers from placing their home on the market.

March - March Madness!! We put in offers on two houses! The first house we weren't willing to go up on our offer amount. The house was on the market for a month and there was no way we were going to offer asking. (If a house on the hill remains on the market for over a week, it isn't priced well.)

We lost the second house to an all cash offer. Someone paid cash for their house! Amazing. The house was on the market a few months ago and went off the market. The seller apparently moved and sold the house to a relocation company. The relocation company must have got a sweet deal on the house cause it was priced very reasonably.

We actually offered more than the all cash offer. The things you can do with cold hard cash.

April - The "bad news" showers continue... Two more offers, two more rejections! The first offer we placed was for well over asking, like over 10% over. We still don't know what the winning offer was. We were told there were multiple offers on the property, and the owners went with the offer they did because they were putting down a large chunk of change.

The last offer we made was sort of funny. Craig and I walked away from the house thinking, that house is fine. The space inside was nice. The back patio was on the small side though. And we thought the house was overpriced. It was on the high end of what we were willing to pay. We went to an open house and the listing agent even agreed and said he had a difficult time talking the owner down to the price it was listed though.

So we were not going to pay asking for a house that we, our realtor, and the listing agent agreed was overpriced. The comps for the area verified the house was on the very high end. We wanted to just be done with the whole process though and offered slightly less than asking. We didn't get the house, but we weren't all that disappointed to lose it either.

We just saw three houses yesterday and two looked promising. I think after five losses, we are due a winner.

And we need a house RIGHT now, for two reasons. First, our niece will be staying with us this summer. She will be interning at a PR firm in Washington during her summer break. So each time we look at a house we decide which bedroom would be hers. I can already see her clothes scattered about the room and smell her Vera Wang Princess perfume. It will be so much fun to have her around.

We are also looking to adopt! We are so excited to add a little one to our family. We have tried on our own, but have been unable. So we met with an adoption attorney last week. In order to adopt we will need to complete a home study, and this can't be done until we are in our permanent residence. So we want to buy NOW!

Please keep your fingers crossed for us. Maybe even say a little prayer and wear your lucky socks! We are ready!!!