opening gambits, closing costs

Today Joe and I got a babysitter and looked at four more houses. I'm not quite sure why we did this, because we actually had a check for the earnest money for a house on which we were 98% sure that we were going to make an offer in our back pocket all the while. But our realtor (a very good guy, we actually like him a lot and he's much more honest and helpful than any agent needs to be) encouraged us to just look at a few more that were closer to our original search parameters prior to making an offer on a house which we really like, but turns out to be more of a departure from what we had thought that we wanted. Which reminds me:


A SHORT PLAY ABOUT TRYING TO BUY A HOUSE

JOE
So I have to get a check for the earnest money.

MICHELLE
To show we are Earnest.

JOE
Earnest Goes to Jail.

MICHELLE
See, you went lowbrow. The first thing I thought of was the Earnst equation.

JOE
That's the Nernst equation.

MICHELLE
Doesn't matter, it's still funny.


Anyway we looked at the houses and three of them were awful and one of them was pretty nice, but it was nice in a grown-up way. You know, like it had nice granite countertops and, like, crown molding or whatever. The other house, the one that we originally liked, is a house that while it looks a little haphazard (it seems like they redid the house room by room, but each room that they did it seems like they decided to do in a different style, such that the end result is a little calico) it's a house that's going to be fun for kids. It has a good play space and a good family room and a fun backyard and a nice garden and the stairs are not the kind that Mack can hurt himself too badly if he decides to go paratroopers over the side. (And he did indeed try to do just that several times when we went back to visit yesterday.) So at the end of our four house second-guessing tour, we did what we knew we were going to do, which is to say that we made an offer on the first house, which is the house that we liked all along.

So.

Well.

(Crickets.)

They could decide to accept the offer or not. Our agent seems to feel like we'll hear back from their agent tonight, but we might not. Who knows, maybe they'll think our offer is insulting and they'll just ignore us. Most likely they'll parry back and ask for something higher. Maybe something too high, and we'll have to walk away. And lord knows, if that happens, there are tons of other houses out there empty and ready and waiting for people like us to swoop in, with our compressed cardboard furniture, mismatched bedding, and many many Legos and broken crayons to secret in the heating ducts.

Or maybe it will work out.

(Crickets.)

Man, there are a lot of crickets out here in the suburbs, aren't there?