Our House: The Hunt by Numbers

So, here's the skinny on our house hunting process.

2/4/11 - Date in which we first met with our realtor to discuss our finances and see if we really could afford to buy a house.

13 - Number of houses we walked through and jointly said, "nope."

2 - Number of houses we entertained putting an offer in on, but decided not to.

3 - Number of separate trips we took with our realtor to look at houses.

7 - Number of days that the hubs and I completed an awkward dance around each other as we were both completely baffled how the other person could love a different house. It was awkward. There was even a conversation of, "what does this say about our marriage if we love different houses." Yeah, I'm an oral communicator and over-talk everything.

45 - Number of days in which we decided not to look at our house even though during our first trip out with our realtor we looked at a house literally the next street over. No worries, that visit is what led us to fall in love with the neighborhood and really focus our hunt.

147 - Number of days our house sat on the market before we decided to stop on by.

5 - Number of crappy, cell phone quality pictures that were listed online for our house. Seriously, we couldn't even make out what 4 of the 5 pictures were trying to show. The listing agent should have been ashamed.

8 - Number of minutes we planned to spend in the house. It was the last house visit of the day and we were thinking, "the price did just drop another $15k, let's just look and see if it's liveable."

12 - Number of minutes it took us to walk around the house and yard. Finally, in the basement our realtor asked, "what do you think." The hubs didn't even look at me and said, "I'm done." I was already saying, "this is our home." It was perfect. There was no need to discuss it because it was everything we wanted, except for a garage!

35 - Number of minutes it took our realtor to call us after we left the house and informed us that there was a counter-offer already out on the house.

Eternity - Number of minutes the hubs and I just looked at each other and thought, "why didn't we go see that house sooner! It was right there!"

4 - Number of sleepless nights I had waiting for the damn bank to accept our offer! It didn't help that I was out of town and was getting very little updates via text from the hubs.

60 - Number of days we requested for the closing period.

67 - Number of days the bank counter offered for the closing period. That should have been the first hint.

11 - Number of days it took to get a signed contract back from the bank. Grrr!!!

20 - Number of days prior to our closing date in which the water was finally turned on. Double GRRRR!!!

6 - Number of days prior to closing in which a plumber was finally allowed to go into our house and fix a leak in order to gain FHA clearance for our house. At this point we were thinking we might be house-less very soon and getting extremely frustrated.

2 - Number of days prior to closing in which we received our final closing cost numbers.

16 - Number of hours prior to closing in which we received the final time for closing. Nice!

35 - Number of minutes the closing agent showed up late to the closing.

1,000 + - Number of pages of paper it felt like we had to sign at the closing.


I made the joke again and again during this whole house buying process that I finally felt like an adult. You can be a teenager or a drunk in Vegas and get married. However, having a bank verify that your qualified to buy a house felt much more adult-like.

Buying a foreclosure was incredibly frustrating. I never seemed to fathom why the listing agent and/or bank was so slow in their responsiveness. I understand that they both had a lot of volume, however the hubs and I were highly qualified buyers trying to take a foreclosure off of their books. It was really tiring and wore us down towards the end. We closed on our house over 30 days ago and there's still a lock box on our front porch. The key inside it has been removed, but the box is still there. That just says how lazy and unresponsive the listing agent acted from day one. I'm taking bolt cutters to the box this weekend and getting rid of it.