We found a house…sort of. Last Friday, we headed out to the Maplewood area for a marathon viewing of five gazillion potential homes. As we were searching for our car on the streets of Hoboken (having forgotten, yet again, where we parked), I said to Rocco, “You know, I don’t promise we’re putting in an offer on one of these houses on Monday.” My patient and nurturing husband’s response was, “No, we’ll put one in this afternoon.”
Fucker.
So we toured some houses – the first several of which were slightly out of our price range. All of them had been on the market at least a month, however. The thought process was we’d go ahead and see them in the hopes that they’d drop their price in the next week and we’d be able to pounce. Cunty McCuntsteen (a.k.a. Rocco) threw a hissy fit in house number three and demanded to be shown cheaper houses. He clumped about muttering, “They’d have to drop the price $50k for us to even be in shooting distance.” We managed to see the whole house but were only there a whopping ten minutes before Rocco was back in the car and waiting to move on to the next house.
At the end of the day, there were only 2 houses under consideration. Both were a stretch, but Rocco had a clear leader in his mind. The idea of having to put a bid on one actually made me vomit a little in my mouth. Rocco had a clear winner in his mind, but I couldn’t quite reconcile myself to having no yard whatsoever. The second house was just a little too expensive to really be a viable option. Needless to say the drive home was very comfortable and relaxed – no tension to be found.
By the time we got home, the price of the 2nd house had dropped 20k…now the houses were the same price, same amount of taxes, and on a more even playing field. I still couldn’t make up my mind and kept stalling an answer for Rocco. I was not so secretly relieved that Easter would buy me another day to reach a decision. However, at 3:17 Easter morning we got our daily MLS listing email revealing that house number three (the site of Rocco’s implosion) had just dropped their price $50k. It no longer mattered what my answer was. Rocco was putting in an offer. Stat. So while mixing up mimosas and serving brunch to our company, we managed to get an offer together and submitted.
Rocco slept like a baby. I’m not sure if it was a result of his decision, or a result of multiple mimosas. My slumber was not so zen, but I am fairly resolved. Despite my trash talk, I do respect and value his opinion. (Hopefully he isn’t reading this and feeling too much pain as his Yankee ball cap gets tighter and tighter on his swelling head.) If he feels this strongly, I’ll support the decision and make it work.
Yesterday we learned the house is actually a short sale. Cue the furious violins ’cause drama is a’brewing. So Rocco’s frantic attempts to avoid homelessness are now all for naught. The earliest we’ll get in is the end of June. I repeat – the EARLIEST. Apparently with a short sale it can just delay indefinitely. The gatos are not going to take kindly to multiple relocations – but that will probably be a minor inconvenience compared with living with a pit bull (very possible scenario). Hopefully Rocco and I will still be living together by the end of this…and maybe even still speaking!