Last week, we decided to throw our hats into the Seattle housing ring by putting an offer on a house. We’d just seen it for the first time earlier in the day, but the pace of the market dictates you move quickly if you see something you like. The bad news is we didn’t get the house. The good news is we had to wait less than 24 hours to find that out.

The house itself was a 2,000 sqft single family home a few minutes away from where we current live. It was at the very tip top of our budget and could probably use $50k-$75k worth of work; we went after it because of the three rules of realty: location, location, location. It’s in one of the most sought after neighborhoods in the city, was close to many bus lines (read: shortening my already short commute), and had a good layout with a decent yard. Oh, and it actually had a garage and space for a king size bed… two things hard to find in our price range here.

In the end, we lost the house because we listed 45 days to close versus what has become the norm of 30 days. We couldn’t do 30 days due to down payment and vacation logistics, so I guess you could say it wasn’t meant to be. We weren’t able to get toooooo invested given the short timelines, but we were obviously still bummed. That offer, the first one we’ve done here… and first one in eight years… was a symbol of many things.

I’m nervous, but optimistic, we’ll be able to find something in our budget and with a lot of our wish list in the next month or two.