I'll admit, I had NO idea the craziness that is trying to buy a house. And I certainly wasn't prepared for the absolute shark hunt that would be buying a house in Maplewood, NJ. It's brutal out there guys.
The house hunt continues. We spend many weekends driving around the town and attending open houses (along with 45 of our closest house-hunting friends). We've started to pray for cold and rainy weekends to keep people away! The tricky part about this area is that you aren't just hoping the owners accept your offer, you're in a bidding war with 5, 6 or 7+ other people.
Not the one we put an offer on, but this place was beyond charming!
There are a handful of houses we considered, but ultimately passed up because we knew they would go for way above what we want to spend. We did put an offer on a house last week - it had a lot of the things we wanted, but still needed a fair amount of work and TLC. We didn't get it, so the search goes on.
The silver lining in all this is that I find all kinds of beautiful gems during the house hunt!
Houses there barely last a week on the market. The formula goes something like list house at the beginning of the week, hold two open houses, hold best and final offers early the following week. From what we've been told, 40% of the homes bought in Maplewood are going for cash (that's a little disheartening!), and often times people put in 5-6 offers before they get the house. So I think the moral of the story is that we're in this for the long haul and the search goes on. We took last weekend off because damn if it isn't an exhausting process, but slow and steady wins the race. Right? Right?!
