We’re closing on the sale of this house in less than a month now. I guess.

The appraiser came last week and we haven’t heard anything yet.

I assume it will be okay. I have no idea.

I am not a fan of the house shopping process.

It reminds me of the first time I flew in a plane. I was 18 and super excited. My family flew to Orlando because Disneyworld is my father’s favorite place on the planet. I thought flying would be amazing. I couldn’t wait.

Then we took off and I knew in about 3 seconds that I fucking hated flying.

Flying is at least over quicker than selling and buying a house.

I’d rather fly around the world than do this. I think. I mean, I’ve not flown that much, so I don’t know. I might be full of shit.

Also, that probably isn’t going to happen as I have no idea how flying around the world solves our looming homelessness situation.

Randy and I came to a hard realization last week.

I’ve been studying houses online for nearly two years. I would call it a hobby, but that doesn’t quite capture the obsessiveness in which I’ve been studying houses.

I thought I knew what I was looking at. I knew every house in every neighborhood we are interested in. I have since learned that looking at houses online and looking at houses in person are completely different.

You know what online pictures don’t show you?

• When a house smells like rotten kimchee and cat piss.
• Or the pictures which show the most amazing Rookwood fireplace, but neglects to show, just a few feet over, the goddamn caved-in ceiling.
• A dead bird in the master bedroom.

The realization we came to, is the price range we are looking in isn’t going to yield an appropriate house for us.

We are finding houses in our price range need substantial work to be habitable. Like tens of thousands of dollars. So, we started looking into a rehab loan. You pay a little higher percentage, but we could totally consider that house with the caved in ceiling then.

You guys, we’ve been stressed and tired.

It actually took us more than one day to figure out, if we are going to take out a much bigger loan to rehab a place, why don’t we just start looking at more expensive houses that are already fixed? Same amount of money, lower interest rate, little effort.

I have no idea why it took us any time at all to figure that out, but it did. I mean, we are running out of time, but, at least, we’re a bit more realistic now. So, I won’t be cutting my mortgage in half, but will be cutting it down. It’s all good.

Anyway, looking at more expensive houses opened up some interesting opportunities.

We looked at a house that someone is flipping. He bought it for 25K last year.

The before and after are just stunning.

The house is semi-secluded, yet super convenient to expressways. It sits back on a hill, there is a huge, concrete porch in the front that has a view of tree tops to the front, and to the side, you have a few of the east side of Cincinnati.

The inside is just amazing. Quirky and funky. Not too big. And it only smelled a little.

The entire lot sits on a steep hill. The driveway would be unusable with any snow or ice. I drove up the driveway when we looked at the house and I was a tiny concerned my car was going to flip over backward.

The top of the driveway has a level parking pad, but then there are at least double the number of steps to the entrance than we have now. And, if we had to park on the street, it would be at least 5 times the number of steps to climb.

There is no way we could cut the grass. Not going to happen. We’d have to cover the front and back yard with ground cover.

Also, we really want a single story. The bedrooms are on the second floor and the stairs down to the basement were rough.

Not as rough as other houses we looked at. One house, the stairs were so steep and the ceiling so low that you had to turn around and go down the stairs like a ladder. The washer and dryer hookup was in the basement.

Also, the steep hill basement kind of smelled like horses. Not that I minded. But weird.

It’s the exact opposite of what we’ve been looking for, which is a house in which we can gracefully slip into old age without breaking a hip.

So, of course, last night after having a few drinks and fretting about being homeless, Randy and I put an offer on that house.

Let me say it again. The porch, you guys, it’s amazing.

I constructed a text to Brett, the agent. I read and reread the text a thousand times and then sent the text asking him to make an offer on our behalf.

Brett called a few hours later. Randy and I were talking to Mountain girl and the Bass player on Skype. Randy took the call and for a good 15 minutes, I listened to Randy saying “Yeah, okay. Sure. Okay. Uh huh”. After 10 minutes I was concerned the conversation had been going on too long and Randy wouldn’t remember all the details.

I underestimated how much Randy was not paying attention.

He finally got off the phone and the three of us were waiting, impatiently.

Me: Well?

Randy: Well what?

Me: Are you serious, dude? What did Brett say? What is the offer going to be.

Randy: I don’t really remember anything he said.

Me:…

Me:…

Me:…

Me: Are you fucking kidding me, right now?

Randy: Nah. I really don’t. He kept breaking up, so I just agreed with whatever he said.

Me: You remember nothing?

Randy: There was something about a four thousand dollar closing credit and a home warranty, but I don’t remember what that meant. He’s going to email us.

Me: Okay then. I guess we put on offer on a house. I just don’t know what it is.

I got a text a few minutes later from Brett where he gave me two options. The options read like word problems.

Like I said, we had a few drinks.

I wasn’t sure what I was offering.

So I called him and explained Randy retained exactly zero of the conversation and I needed a quick overview. He explained the two options and honestly, I didn’t understand them anymore than Randy did. I asked Brett which of the two he recommended and went with that.

We finished up with our mountain friends and went up to the bedroom to wait for the written offer. We fell asleep hours before it came through.

You know when you wake up in the morning feeling like you’ve made a huge mistake? But it takes you a few minutes to figure out why you feel that way?

Holy shit, did we just offer to buy a house that is literally clinging to the side of a mountain? For a porch? 

Randy and I woke up the next morning and were both more subdued than usual on a Saturday. Like we both had something on our mind, but didn’t quite know how to bring it up.

Randy broached the subject.

Randy: Sooooo, you still feeling good about the offer?

Me: I mean, we really low balled it. He’ll probably reject it.

Randy: Yeah, but what if he doesn’t?

Me: He will. It’s too low.

Randy: But what if he doesn’t?

Me: Oh god. We’ve made a terrible mistake. That is not the right house.

Randy: Yeah.

Me: Maybe, he’ll reject the offer and we’ll say okay and just walk away.

Randy: We don’t have to buy it. We haven’t signed the official offer. We’ll tell Brett we changed our mind.

Me: Fuck. I guess I’ll write the “we’re total flakes” email.

Me: I need to let him know that he should never talk to us about bidding on houses on Friday nights. That has to be a new house rule. No buying houses on Friday nights.

Randy: It is a cool house, though.

Me: We’re doing the right thing.

Randy: I wish we were 15 years younger.

Me: I don’t. I like us better now. And we wouldn’t have been able to cut that grass 15 years ago, either. We’d fall and roll down the hill and get squashed by a car or something.

Randy: Well, you would.

Me: Motherfucker, do I need to remind you about the time you face planted on the sidewalk in Coshocton?

Randy: You’d be the one to roll down the hill.

Me: Yeah, that’s fair.

We’ll find the right house. I suspect it will happen before next weekend.

We have our eye on one. Just down the hill from the house with the porch.

This house has an amazing view of downtown. It’s single story living, which we want. One of our absolute “must haves” is off street parking. This new house we have our eye on has no off street parking.

But, if you look at the pictures online, the house is at the end of a block, so you’d have the whole length of the house and the front of the house for parking. The pictures showed zero cars parked around the house, so parking obviously would not be an issue.

Apparently, I am unteachable.