Buying a New Home in Southern California on June 7, 2015
My dream of living in California and owning a home is about to come true. Assuming everything goes well with the closing process, we will live in our new Orange County home on June 30th. It’s not even half the size of our home in North Carolina and our backyard is basically non-existent, but our playground is the beach and the mountains and it’s open 365 days a year. The process of buying in southern California hasn’t been simple for us. We would like to own a three-bedroom home in southern Orange County, but I think the cost of living here is one of the highest in the country. The current market is also a nightmare. Normally, from my experience, the asking price on a home is the highest someone would have to pay, but it’s the starting bid here. We put a bid on a house for $20,000 over asking price only to be beat out by someone who bid $25,000 over asking price, waived all appraisals and inspections and paid cash. It took six stressful bids to final have one accepted, which means we had five let-downs before this.
As soon as a house that interested us became available, we would rush to see it that moment and put in a bid on the spot. If it made it to an open-house the cash bids would come flowing in and we didn’t stand a chance. Do you know how stressful that is? It’s the most expensive financial purchase of our lives and we had hours to decide. Then, we’d have to wait a day or two for a reply. Every moment was excruciating. We didn’t want to get excited about it just in case a better offer came in, but we were bidding on what could possibly be our home. We wanted to dream and plan and imagine our life there. Admittedly, I cried over the process more than once this month.
We’re now in escrow and tomorrow is a big day. We will get the appraisal results back and if they are too low, we could loose the deal. I’ve already put in our notice to leave our apartment at the end of the month and the packing process has begun. If the deal falls through, we don’t have a place to live next month. Making it all come together seems impossible right now. So… I’m hoping for the best and planning for the worst.
Should I be deliriously optimistic about it already? Probably not. It will be a devastating blow if it all falls apart, but if it goes as planned, I enjoyed every minute of buying our new home. Screw it! I’m going with the crazed enthusiasm. Check with me later in the week to see if it paid off.
