It's too hot to think. It's not supposed to get this hot in Portland until August. Everyone is sweltering and altering their daily plans because it's just too hot for Portlanders to function. I had been going to treat my readers to a prepared rant on the conflict of interests that is house hunting, but the heat wiped out everything I was thinking. The only thing that's running through my mind at the moment is the Dora the Explorer theme song, accompanied by the gentle shushing of the fans.
House hunting, though, that's an experience. The last time we bought a house, we weren't contending with a designated lease period. We were living in military housing so we could take our time. We visited one or two houses at a time, two or three months apart. And houses were staying on the market for two or three months at a time. If we liked a house, we had plenty of time to consider it. Leisurely was probably the best way to describe it. Granted, we bought at a high point in the market, but the point is that our first and only experience with house buying was not a stressful experience. Now we're caught in the crux of a different situation.
See, now, the market is hopping. Houses will pop up briefly and be sold three days later. It seems like half of renting Portland wants to buy a house, but only a tenth of owning Portland wants to sell. And we have a lease that lasts until October. Breaking the lease will subject us to fines and fees in the neighborhood of $3,000, which is simply not feasible. Likewise, staying after our lease is up and paying by the month would be ridiculously expensive. However, trying to pay a mortgage payment, a rent payment, and the little bit of extra that we're paying to keep our rental all in one month too is also a financial infeasibility. The trick will be timing, which requires (forgive me) constant vigilance.
Every night my husband checks his email for new houses. Every night, he adds a couple to our ever growing list of houses. Then we select a few in a common area and email the realtor. We keep the realtor busy. I think we've crammed 10 houses into a week. We put on offer on a short-sale. They asked us to play back-up to another offer. "That's good," our realtor said, "but you'd be crazy to count on it." So we keet looking.
The most interesting part of this process is watching the effect that it has on Seth and myself. For a while, it felt like our personalities were merging and switching. He was the manic stress hound, pushing frantically to find some solid ground, and I was telling him, "Love, don't worry about it. Look at the facts. New houses pop up every week. We're not going to be left without options. We can just look. (How many times has he said that to me?!) God will provide. (That too.) Really." That was kind of empowering, actually. I don't often get to be the level-headed one.
