We finally signed a lease and completed the walk-thru on the new place.
We blazed through the house so quickly the first time that we missed quite a few things about the house.
I'll back up to the single most depressing day of house-hunting ever.
We found the perfect house/lot on Wednesday night and made an appointment to see it last Saturday at 2:30.
Since we were going to be up there, as we saw other places pop up on the MLS we made calls and appointments.  By the time we left the house Saturday morning we had appointments at 1:30, 2:30, 3:30 and left a few messages to try and see a few others if possible as well.
Traffic is a nightmare through Tacoma on Saturdays, or everyday of the week, year, this lifetime.  So we were running late.
Since the house we really wanted was a 2:30 appointment and we were running 30 minutes late for the first appointment, we agreed that we had 15 minutes - no more - to look at the first house, impress the owner with our cleanliness and all around bubbly personalities and then head out.
We were in, we were out, we chatted for a few minutes and then hit the road.
The housing market in Seattle and surrounds is BRUTAL.  People are paying thousands of dollars above listing price, waiving inspections and appraisals, and battling each other to "win" a home.  Every other time we have ever rented or purchased a home, we walked in, decided what we wanted and simply got it.  This adventure is nothing like the rest.  
Houses get 2-10 applications within HOURS of viewing.  We were turned away from a few houses because the owners already had plenty of applications to choose from and they simply didn't need to show the house to someone else.
We arrived at the house we were confidant we were going to battle for, and we loved it.  It was pretty much the exact same layout of the house we have now, but a bit bigger, in a rock-star school district, and it had the most amazing backyard ever.  We were in love.
Then the owner dropped a bombshell on us that she realized she could get more for the house than she asked and decided to raise the rent.
Crushed.
We set a cap at what we wanted to pay for rent because we are hoping to continue to save money to buy another house in the future and we simply don't want to be stuck staying home all the time because thats where all of our money is going.
We drove away defeated.
I began to wonder if we would be homeless.
I think I told someone I probably had a better chance as an overweight, nearly 40, mother of two to convince some dude to marry me than I did to get a rental property. 
It was a dark day.
We drove by a few other houses and were denied showings due to plenty of applications already submitted, we had lunch, then were heading home when we got a call to look at one last house that day.  
It would work.  It wasn't ideal, but it had some great strengths so we submitted an application and headed home.
We also applied for the 1st house we looked at that day, because our souls were weary and we were starting to think a van down by the river sounded luxurious.

Fast forward to Sunday night.  We were selected to rent the house we blazed through.  We had to e-sign the lease without looking at the house again, because the guy had other people ready to jump on it.  We were feeling a little uneasy but decided to just go for it.

Imagine our surprise when we got to the house this Saturday and realized it was MUCH better than we thought.
ALL of the closets are much larger than we recall.  Yay!
It isn't a townhouse.  I know that seems like something I should have known but it was a crazy day.
The neighborhood is pretty awesome, the schools are great, the location is well...I'm running out of unique adjectives to describe it all.

After finishing up the details with the house and paying the man a million dollars, Matt and I drove down to the little shopping area/town about a mile from the house.  On the way there we passed parks, open fields, running trails, and mountain bike trails.  We sat outside of a little Mexican restaurant and the sun was setting over Lake Sammamish in the distance and the Snoqualmie mountain foothills were looking over us.

We left the restaurant and headed toward Seattle.  With no traffic on a Saturday afternoon it took us 18 minutes to get to Safeco field.

This could just turn out to be a fabulous move!

Comments

Allison said…
Wow!!!! I love reading this adventure with you.

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