Looking for a House

is like having a baby. You've got to plan, prep, prepare for dissappointments (!), sicknesses, blah, blah, blah. We found a rental in a nice neighborhood for a good price nine minutes from our church and Justinbustin's school. It didn't work out, so we knew there was something better out there. After that happened we decided to go ahead and buy since we'd be paying the same. We can't buy what we would REALLY want so we're looking at what will work and what will rent out well after a few years for investment purposes.

We found that today in a new home development - beautiful gorgeous houses that were IT when we walked in. We took care of Brando's clients who bought one of the last lots available and decided on the other lot available for ourselves. We walked into the office to sign on the dotted line and the guy had just got off the phone with a lady who he gave his word to to hold until she could come in the next day for her 11:15am closing with the check. On older houses two or three people will place bids and the seller accepts the one they like the best. With new houses it's pretty much you want it or not. The guy said he didn't know what to do - this was the first time this had happened to him in a long time and he didn't know what the legal issues were. Brando asked him what he would usually go by and the guy said he usually goes by his word. Brando says he respects that this guy gave his word to someone else, and if you can't go by your word what else can you go by? And so we didn't get the house.

There's a reason for this, after all this was such a HUGE improvement over the rental that I was HIGHLY disappointed about not getting. It is brand new, had a bigger yard, was $20k less than the range we'd been looking at, and only 4 minutes further from the church than the rental house was, as well as being OURS not a lease. Whatever the reason is for not getting this house we may know in a few years or we may not ever know but there is one. In the meantime I'm house hunting venting to Kel Bel and reminding myself that the same thing happened to us two and a half years ago when we looked in Cedar Park (north Austin) and somebody put a contract on the same house the morning of the day we decided to sign the papers and look at how much has happened in this journey of life since - we went to California, Brando got in with real estate, we've met some AMAZING friends, and learned a bajillion and one things along the way.

PS Not to compare houses to babies... babies trump houses hands down. But houses are nice. :D