Our hou-- oh wait, just kidding.

I had this big exciting blog post planned for today saying "We found a house!  It's lovely and perfect for us and we are completely thrilled!"  

I knew how I was going to tell my friends at work and my parents over the phone.  

I've watched so many episodes of House Hunters that I'd even figured out how I was going to react when our agent called to tell us the great news-- I would of course hurry over to Brian and put the phone on speakerphone so we could hear the news together.  

And just like that, our house hunt would be over and ending on the most wonderful note.

That's how it was supposed to happen.  

In reality, we submitted an offer on the most adorable little cape yesterday morning, heard back from our realtor around 5:30pm that the sellers wanted our best and highest because there was a competing offer... and then called at 10:30pm to let us know that they went with the other offer over ours.  And I was devastated.  I am still devastated.  I know that sounds a little bit silly and over the top and dramatic, but it's true.  This was the first house, in all of our months and months of searching, that we both agreed that we could see ourselves starting our life together.

As we walked from room to room, we realized that we didn't have a negative thought about anything, aside from cosmetic updates here and there.  The kitchen and bathrooms needed updating, but the house was priced fairly enough that we could do a full renovation to the kitchen and open it up into the dining room, while putting my countless Pinterest boards to use and personalizing the kitchen to exactly what we wanted and needed.  The house was built in the 1950s and had wonderfully charming "bones," and aside from updates in those rooms, lots of pulling down wallpaper and paint would have made the home shine.  We were already picturing ourselves coming home from work in the evening and working through each room to give it our own little touch with colors and decor to make it ours.  The neighborhood was our dream area and full of young families-- I was imagining answering the door for trick-or-treaters while Hocus Pocus played in the background because isn't that what houses are for?  I had our pictures on the mantle and our first married Christmas tree in the perfect bay window, our brand new china styled in the built-in china cabinet.  

We tried really hard to not get ahead of ourselves but our agent kept telling us that our offer was very strong, and the listing agent came back and told her that our offer was very strong.  Who wouldn't get excited and hopeful?  We were on cloud 9 all afternoon yesterday, thinking "Yes!  No more open houses on the weekends.  We can make plans to move and sort out the details and finally, finally look forward to moving into our first house!"  I checked my email one last time before turning my bedside light off and I saw an email from our realtor-- "Are you up?"  I sat straight up in bed and read it to Brian as I emailed back that "Yes, of cours!" we were awake.

The phone rang and I made Brian accept the call and put it on speaker, and as soon as we heard her voice, we both knew.  The offers were very good and very close, but they went with the other one.  I did hold it together until we hung up the phone, and then I had myself the cry of the century and tossed and turned all night-- sleep was hardly in the cards for me.

It's so very frustrating to be in this position.  We feel so lucky to have great jobs, to be in a wonderful relationship together, to have good backgrounds and credit and to be pre-approved to even start the process of owning our own home.  But the market is so intense right now that as soon as something comes on, if you don't jump and get in to see it, it's gone.  This house came on Friday morning, I emailed our agent at 5am when I got up for the gym, and she had made us an appointment to get in by 9am that morning.  And it still had a competing offer to ours, both over asking price.  We have all of the pieces here to put the "let's buy a house" puzzle together, but there are so many more buyers than sellers, that there's just no inventory left.  I think, to make it worse, our price range is the popular price range too.  Homes $50k below where we're looking and $50k higher sit on the market, but anything from our safe to max zone is gone.  And everything happens so fast, if you see something and you love it, you have to move.  If you like it, you have to decide if you love it, because whether you move on it or not, someone else is going to.  

So today I needed to vent.  Because last night just plain sucked.  And that's about as eloquently as I can sum it up.  I can only hope that our search looks up from here, and that we find the house that's right for us soon, because there's not enough wine in Boston to keep me sane with this mess for much longer.