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I haven't written anything about my condo search in a while - not since August 4, I see. Not much happened in August. I did not win the bid on the second place, that I mentioned in that post; again, that was fine because I didn't really feel right about it, despite the unit itself being nice. After that, I think I looked at only one place in August, as nothing good came on the market.
Then just as September was rolling around, another place came up. It had been on the market for about a month, but priced just outside my range so my agent hadn't bothered to even mention it. However, the seller had dropped their price, so we went to take a look. It was quite roomy, around 650 square feet but featuring one large living room, with the kitchen space off (and open to) the living room, a decent-sized bedroom (about half the size of my current, larger than it needs to be, bedroom) and bathroom, plus a large storage space and parking space. The living room had plenty of big windows but also adequate wall space; there's no real view, as it faces the inside courtyard of the development, but that was okay. Finally, although the location wasn't my ideal (staying in the Capitol Hill area), it was still quite good, in Queen Anne but very close to the hip and artsy Fremont neighborhood.
The overall price and monthly payments were still high for me, but in a reachable range, and I'd recently been preapproved with a third lender who offered interest-only loans, making this feasible. I still needed to ask for the seller to cover the larger share of the closing costs, but the seller's agent had already indicated willingness to work with us, so I made an offer that basically knocked a few thousand off the actual price in order to include that amount for closing costs.
And (after working out a few minor details) the seller accepted my offer.
The closing date is October 7, and I will be moving during the following week. Although I am going to be paying a lot of money for me and things may be tight in the short term, I'm still happy with the place and its location, and I think this will be good. We had the inspection last week and it passed with no problems; even better, today I got the appraisal results, and they valued the place higher than the asking price, by about the amount that I knocked off for closing costs. So it looks like I'm coming to a happy ending for my search.
Then just as September was rolling around, another place came up. It had been on the market for about a month, but priced just outside my range so my agent hadn't bothered to even mention it. However, the seller had dropped their price, so we went to take a look. It was quite roomy, around 650 square feet but featuring one large living room, with the kitchen space off (and open to) the living room, a decent-sized bedroom (about half the size of my current, larger than it needs to be, bedroom) and bathroom, plus a large storage space and parking space. The living room had plenty of big windows but also adequate wall space; there's no real view, as it faces the inside courtyard of the development, but that was okay. Finally, although the location wasn't my ideal (staying in the Capitol Hill area), it was still quite good, in Queen Anne but very close to the hip and artsy Fremont neighborhood.
The overall price and monthly payments were still high for me, but in a reachable range, and I'd recently been preapproved with a third lender who offered interest-only loans, making this feasible. I still needed to ask for the seller to cover the larger share of the closing costs, but the seller's agent had already indicated willingness to work with us, so I made an offer that basically knocked a few thousand off the actual price in order to include that amount for closing costs.
And (after working out a few minor details) the seller accepted my offer.
The closing date is October 7, and I will be moving during the following week. Although I am going to be paying a lot of money for me and things may be tight in the short term, I'm still happy with the place and its location, and I think this will be good. We had the inspection last week and it passed with no problems; even better, today I got the appraisal results, and they valued the place higher than the asking price, by about the amount that I knocked off for closing costs. So it looks like I'm coming to a happy ending for my search.
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