House Drama

Many of my friends have already heard this story, but I still have to share this crazy and somewhat sad coincidence related to our house search because it's pretty flipping amazing.

The back story is that almost two weeks ago I had a conversation with my friend and coworker Dan about the sale of their house in Olathe and their house search in Lawrence. A few days later when our agent was taking us out to see a bunch of houses, she mentioned meeting a couple at her open house earlier that day who lived in KC but both worked in Lawrence, and I soon realized that she was talking about Dan and his wife. This was the same day we went to see the one house that we really liked again (which is on Westfield), which had been under contract for a few weeks but then put back on the market when the contract had recently been canceled. We were considering making an offer on the Westfield house but were waiting until the CMA of our house was finished last week so that we had a better idea of how easy or difficult it would be to sell.

So crazily enough, even though the Westfield house had been empty since it was finished over a year ago, just two days after we'd gone to see it with our agent, someone else made an offer on it--which is exactly what happened the first time we went to see it! We decided that we'd wait and see how the CMA went and then decide if we wanted to try and beat the existing offer.

So that was Monday, and on Tuesday I went up to talk to my friend Dan to tell him that he'd met our agent, see what he thought of the house she was showing, congratulate him on the sale of his house, and see how their house search was going in general. We chatted about all the houses we'd seen and he mentioned that they'd finally found one they liked and made an offer on. Now you can probably see where this story is headed, but at the time, I totally didn't. We continued chatting about houses and a little while later I mentioned that there had been only one house that we'd seen that we'd really liked. Dan asked which house it was, and when I answered "it's over on Westfield" his eyes just about popped out of his head. THAT WAS THE HOUSE THAT THEY PUT THE OFFER ON. I couldn't believe it. The one house out of a hundred that we really liked! What are the odds? The even crazier thing was that Dan and his wife had already upped their offer once because apparently another party had made an offer after them!

So to make a long story a little shorter (my stories could never be considered short), Chad and I talked about it, and while part of Chad wanted the house even more knowing that someone else wanted it too (always the competitor), we decided that a) I would feel terrible trying to beat my friend's offer on this house and b) maybe this was God closing a door for us. We were definitely disappointed and sad, but we could deal with it. The good news is that the bank accepted Dan's offer and not the other buyer's--if we can't live there, I'm glad a friend is going to!

The other good news is that yesterday our agent took us to a few more houses, and we actually did find another that we liked. It's not our dream home, but it's really nice and we could certainly see ourselves living there. If we can get our house listed in the next couple of days, and if this one doesn't get snatched up before then, we just might make an offer. Hopefully I didn't just jinx us. :)