Misadventures in Real Estate

Yesterday I had my first experience at buying a home. Unfortunately this had to occur in the meth-fueled overpriced giant-bubble-waiting-to-burst market of the Bay area. After a year of looking I found a place I liked enough to mortgage the rest of my lifetime income. It was a sure thing; it had been on the market 38 days and had zero offers due to being assigned to a bad school district. It even had a dog park over the back fence; my future doggie was within reach. The owners needed to sell ASAP to close on their new house. Everything seemed to fall into place perfectly.

And then suddenly fell out of place 12 hours later, when out of nowhere a "second buyer" appeared and outbid my offer by an eye-popping amount. This new buyer has several contingencies, whereas I am ready to move, but evidently that isn't worth $40,000. So I'm still a renter. With a giant, giant headache.

The whole process was a wild ride, and not one I am eager to repeat soon. It's as if I handed over eight hundred thousand dollars for the privilege of being put in one of those zero-G astronaut training centrifuges, spun for two hours until I barfed, then dumped back out with the check torn up and told to try again another time. It takes nerves of titanium and a lot of Ativan to negotiate in this housing market.

So for now I remain a mortgage-less, tax-burdened, dog-less renter. But I will sleep well tonight.