The House I Got but Didn't Want

This has been a hell of a week. Full of, well, all kinds of emotions and stress, which has left me pretty firmly exhausted at the end of it. I'm trying to chalk it all up as a "learning experience".

So, Wednesday I went out with my real estate agent to see another townhouse in Mountain View. It had been listed as having had a reduced price, and seemed to be basically what I wanted: Bigger than the places I'd been seeing, but a similar location. That was, indeed, what I expected to see: The same sort of place, but bigger.

It turned out to be more than that. A lot more.

Immaculately cared for, it had parque wood floors in the kitchen and entry way. A large living room with additional space off the kitchen for a dining table. The master bathroom had a double vanity (i.e., two sinks). Peach-colored tile on the counters of the kitchens and bathrooms. Extra storage space. A large deck in back with a hot tub, and double french doors opening onto it. And another deck off the upstairs master bedroom with double french doors. It was clearly the most valuable property I'm likely to see in my price range.

There was, of course, a catch. Not a big catch, but still.

It turns out that the owner of the property had previously sold it, but that that deal had fallen through. As he (or maybe she) had already moved and was thus paying two mortgages, he was eager to sell this one ASAP. Due to other time constraints involving a few other people, it seemed clear that if I made an offer the next morning, I might have a chance to short-circuit the sales process and avoid competing with other bidders.

And that's when I made my mistake: I ended up thinking, "Well, I'd be an idiot not to bid on this property, wouldn't I?"

In retrospect, I think I was more in awe of the property than convinced that it was really what I wanted. But I decided to bid on it, and the agency faxed me forms to sign that evening, and I spent the evening at Subrata's reading them and signing them, and sent them back. The bid was made the next morning.

Okay, a few of you are probably thinking that this was a really bad idea. But there are, as it turns out, limits to how bad an idea it could be, which was probably partly why I was willing to go out on a limb. (Not that it wasn't a bad idea, as it eventually turned out. Just that it wasn't a critical failure.) The reason for this is that California is extremely forgiving in house transactions: Until close of escrow, the buyer (and, I think, also the seller) can choose to back out of the deal for essentially any reason, without penalty.

I spent most of Thursday feeling very nervous about the whole thing. I understand this is normal: When you buy a house, you're deciding where you're going to live for several years. It's more permanent than simply leasing an apartment. Many people freak out for all kinds of reasons.

At the end of the day, I learned that my offer had been accepted. Wow!

Very soon thereafter, I freaked out. In a very big way.

I became convinced I'd made a terrible mistake, but I had trouble figuring out exactly why it was a bad idea. After all, it was large, nice, well-located, within my budget... what was I so worried about?

I eventually came up with two main reasons:

1. The place seemed too "posh" for me. What do I need with a hot tub? The decor didn't seem like my style. The place seemed geared for someone who wanted to live in an elegant home, a townhouse gilded slightly like a small mansion. That's not me. I'm a pretty basic person. I want some square rooms I can decorate myself, and feel comfortable and homey in. This didn't seem like it.
2. I wasn't focusing on whether this was the place for me. I was just overwhelmed with the fact that it seemed like the most house I could get for my money. And I don't want the "most" house, I want the right house. For me. I hadn't been thinking about how the cats would get along in it (french doors don't have screens, so opening them meant letting the cats outside!), and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had a hard time picturing myself living there. Unlike one of the places I saw over the weekend, where it was not hard to picture myself physically there, with my stuff and my cats. In short, I bid on it for the wrong reasons.

Thursday evening and Friday morning I talked to a lot of people, both friends and family, about my dilemma. I realized I needed to do this when I started feeling physically ill on Thursday night (and had the strong need to hug my cats for a while). Talking to Lucy was especially valuable, Thursday evening, as she said she understood how people would get anxious after getting a place, but that I seemed to be going through more than the usual anxiety. She also said that she'd never known anyone who bought a place who hadn't known when they bought it that it was the place for them.

Not everyone felt that way, which I can understand. In many ways this house did have what I was looking for, but it wasn't just what I wanted. Many places on the market have certain big things I want: A better location than where I live now, a nice environment, and so forth.

This afternoon, I decided to cancel the transaction. My agent seemed cool with the idea, but then, he's been doing this for nineteen years and I'm sure this happens regularly. As several of my friends and family kept telling me, I'm buying this place for me, not for my agent, not for my friends, and not for the seller. It's a big investment on my part, and not because of the money (which I'm going to be spending most of one way or the other on an apartment somewhere anyway), but because I have to live there, and my home environment is very important to me.

My Mom did make a good point in consolation, though: Given the nature of the property (I'm sure it will sell, sell quickly, and perhaps for a higher price), making a bid on it was probably a good move on my part, because I could easily have decided that it was the place for me. So although I do feel badly about the experience in some ways, I'm trying to keep the perspective that it was a worthwhile one for me overall, and things might have turned out differently, in another universe.

It was definitely a "learning experience", though. One thing I've learned is that I need to be more introspective about looking at homes, and need to focus on what's important to me in a home: How my cats will do in it, how I can arrange the trappings of my life inside it, how the location and environment feels to me, and whether I can envision it as my home.

I want not to go through this sort of experience again, and I think that in this housing market - which is relatively soft - that this is a reasonable goal. It won't be a tragedy if it happens again, but I should strive to do better. If I "win" a bid on a place and find something during the inspections which make it unsuitable, then obviously that would be a different situation. But I need to "shop smarter" from the get go, you might say.

I'm going to take the weekend off and then start looking again next week. I'll find something eventually!