The Home Intro Recap: Finding housing in California, namely the town we were looking to buy in, is a challenging and daunting task. But when Mrs Dr. Greys Anatomy found “the one” we knew we had to act on it.
Finding time to look at homes with both of our work schedules proved to be difficult. Up until June, Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy was working a full time schedule—which equated to about 21-22 days in the hospital, some of those shifts were overnight and most were at least 12 hours. Thankfully she has cut down to 80% as of late, but at the time, we were often just two ships passing in the night as I was working 6 days a week (thankfully I cut down to just 5 days/week around the same time).
Flanners was more than accommodating with us in showing us homes, but also busy as the #1 real estate agent in the area. Often times we’d meet late at night or on weekends after the open houses had ended.
On the day we saw the house the MRS fell in love with, we’ll call it the Denali house, we were scheduled to go to Sonoma to celebrate her birthday. I had booked us a surprise trip—we were staying at a Sauna Airbnb that was also on a winery. Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy loves Saunas and I think low key wants a Scandinavian sperm donor so our offspring have a natural love for saunas as well. Me, I hate the heat and I hate sweating. The things we do for the people we love.
We walked into the Denali house, MRS and Flanners oodling over the tall windows, natural light, and functional layout.
Me, I was a little distracted by the 90’s color wood cabinets that clashed with the black granite countertop in the kitchen. The engineered hardwood floors weren’t necessarily my style, but the salmon pink tile floors in the kitchen and bathrooms were almost a deal breaker for me. I had to take a deep breath and channel my inner Joanna Gaines and look for the potential in the place. It was on the side of town we wanted to live in—no choo choo train keeping us up at night. The neighborhood seemed quaint and quiet, just down the street from the greenbelt. There were 3 bedrooms in addition to a generous sized office, perfect for my work from home gig. The house had solar panels and best of all, a pool. Now Mrs Dr Greys Anatomy was very adamant she didn’t want a pool, whereas I would quietly mumble “…but I do” whenever asked how we felt about a pool. We decided a pool wasn’t a deal breaker, either way. We stepped outside and dreamed of what we would do to the backyard, what fruit trees we’d plant, what hedges we could grow to provide us with more privacy.
We went and saw a few more homes with Flanners and at our last stop, I told him, “I know we are just dating…but what if we are ready to take the next step and put an offer on the Denali house?” I wanted to joke about how we are lesbians and that’s what we do—we Uhaul and marry quicker than our straight peers, but the MRS didn’t let me. Flanners told us to sleep on it, and if we still felt the same way about the Denali house, we’d see it together one more time and then come up with our game plan.
We escaped to Sonoma for what was really a nice time. We had dinner at Bodega Bay where I was able to order gluten free fish and chips (oh yes, another fun update about yours truly). We watched sea lions play in the bay and drove along the coast and in some bougie neighborhoods where we grabbed pictures in the wildflowers and watched the sunset. We headed back to our Airbnb, hopped in the sauna and talked about the house.
“How many offers do you think the Denali house will get?”
“How much over asking can we afford?”
“Are we really in the bottom five in terms of wealth for his clients? Are we rushing into this?”
“Yeah, the house is this much this year, but if we wait 5 years, how much more will the house be?”
“If we put that much down, can we afford sperm? It is almost $3,000 a vial…should we just have one kid?”
“We just haven’t seen a layout like this. It’s way better than the mid-century modern shit.” —The MRS as she looks at how many other houses were of the same layout.
Turns out, only 7 total…the Denali house was the only one for sale. What’s the likelihood one of the other 6 will go up for sale any time soon…Well, after an extensive amount of research, one of the 6 was just sold last summer for 100k over asking, so probably not that one. The other, belongs to a newly appointed judge, his wife, and two school aged daughters. While he did just get a promotion, he was born and raised in town and his childhood home was across the street with his folks still living there, slim chance they’d be looking up upgrade any time soon. The other 5, no information found. Impossible to determine if they’d go up for sale but given the number of people interested in buying vs those actually willing to sell their house, we didn’t like our chances.
We started to get more serious crunching numbers, trying to figure out how much we should put as a down payment versus how much we should put in over asking.
The next day we texted Flanners, “We’re in. Let’s do this.” We celebrated by doing a wine tasting at the property we were staying at, only to get chased off by the owner after we cracked open a bottle of wine. While the wines were tasty and super approachable, the owner was definitely not. Perhaps a story for a different time but it really put a damper on an overall wonderful getaway and exciting time—we were buying a house!
Flanners scheduled another time for us to see the property together and to draft up our offer. This was on Saturday evening, and all offers were due Sunday. “The listing agent is funny. She’s accepted all my offers.” We had a lot of hope.
Now, because it’s such a competitive market, typically the listing agent will have a home inspection complete as well as a city resale report in which the city comes by and does an inspection and makes sure all improvements and updates are up to code and permitted. Basically this town is a bureaucratic wet dream and supposedly the city has been known to rip up floors and tear up kitchens should they not be up to code and permitted. Every single house we saw had these two inspections completed before the open houses, the Denali house didn’t even have the city resale report scheduled.
So when we sat down with Flanners to draft up our offer, we were shocked when he suggested we don’t submit an offer for Sunday. He suggested we have one written up just in case, but he had an inkling there wouldn’t be any offers on the Denali house. He also suggested we do the unthinkable…we put in an offer for below asking. We certainly didn’t want someone to swoop in and buy this house and were anxious but decided to heed his advice. And boy, are we glad we did.
All day Sunday I was checking my phone at Berkeley (yes, Berkeley is a super fun school and makes their student clinicians and staff optometrists work on Sundays, and Christmas Eve, and New Years Eve, and every day surrounding Thanksgiving, and Easter Sunday—pretty relieved I’m no longer working there on a regular basis. I’m just not hardcore enough or in love with optometry enough).
Sure enough we got a text from Flanners right at the deadline “No offers came through. I’ll submit your offer tomorrow and I’ve already prepared the selling agent it is well below asking.”
I think we ended up offering $100,000 below asking originally. After some back and forth, we settled in the middle and our offer was accepted! We couldn’t believe it. Our first offer, below asking. It seems like it was fate!
The seller accepted our 2 week rent buy back which ended up being a blessing and a curse for us down the road. Next up, was inspection time.
We knew the skylight in the roof needed to be replaced as there was a leak, but otherwise our Spanish red tile roof was in pretty good shape. The AC unit is over 20 years old and has “FRION!!!” written on it, but supposedly passed inspection and will hopefully last us the rest of this very hot summer. The whole house inspector didn’t find anything overly concerning except the seller had plants inside the house and didn’t have anything underneath the plants, so the engineered wood floors were rotted. She had these areas covered during the open houses and showings with…plants, a guitar, and a piano. Okay…well, maybe we can replace those planks or maybe this is our sign to replace the floors and hopefully get rid of the salmon pink tile. The pest inspection showed some dry rot that needed to be addressed and he also suggested the wood trellis in the backyard come down. It is so rotted it’s started to grow mushrooms. Perhaps the most enlightening experience, however, was our pool inspection. When we got to the house for the pool inspection, we were surprised to get a text telling us to come directly to the backyard and not go through the house. The pool inspector was great, but pointed out how the pool filter was dumping chlorinated water into the lawn and it killed the fruit trees on the side of the house. He recommended a new pool filter. While we were talking to him we hear “who are they??” and see a disheveled woman in her 60’s walking over to us, yappy dog in hand.
This was the seller. We will call her Eileen. “Oh, those are the buyers!” Flanners said in his most chipper voice. She came over and shook our hands and mumbled some gibberish and eventually went back inside. Apparently, Eileen had suffered a stroke and was moving to a more affordable area and smaller home. It was clear the stroke had impaired her logic—who buys a filter that dumps chlorinated pool water where their fruit trees are??
Flanners gave us an apologetic look that Eileen was present for this last round of inspections. We knew it wasn’t his fault but meeting her was really enlightening but also worried us with how negotiations would be moving forward.
Stay tuned as wood rot and chlorinated dead fruit trees are just the beginning.