Finding our back-up (and how it became the real thing)
If you read part one and two, you’ll know our house sold before we had anywhere to go. So part three picks up where the pressure really kicks in, the house hunt itself, and the slightly wild way we ended up in our new home.
The house hunt
Once our place sold, I felt the pressure straight away. Everyone wants you to find something quickly, but I was determined not to rush it. We had a rental lined up as a backup, so if the right house didn’t come along in time, we weren’t going to be stuck making a decision we’d regret.
And we did have a proper wishlist. Four bedrooms, two living areas, a bigger section, and ideally somewhere close to where we already lived. On top of that, it needed to fit our price range and, if possible, have a bit of scope to add value. That’s a lot of boxes to tick, and if you’ve been house hunting yourself, you’ll know how rare it is to find something that ticks all of them at once.
Knowing we had the rental as a fallback took a surprising amount of pressure off. It meant we could keep looking properly instead of settling on the first place that came close.
The back-up offer
The house we ended up in came about in a way I wasn’t expecting. A real estate agent I knew told me to go through a property that already had an offer on it. Honestly, my first instinct was no. Why would I get invested in a house that someone else was already buying?
She said something like, just go have a look, shoot your shot, see what happens. So we did. We went through, liked what we saw, and put in an offer of our own. The vendors accepted it, which meant we were now sitting in a live back-up position behind another buyer.
That’s an odd place to be. You’re genuinely interested in the house, but you know someone else is ahead of you in the queue. Then the first buyer couldn’t meet their finance conditions in time, and just like that, our offer became the live one.
From conditional and unconditional
Once we were live, everything moved fast. We had our finance conditions to tick off, and we got through them quickly. Going unconditional felt like a huge relief, especially after the uncertainty of the back-up position.
The best part is how it turned out. We ticked off every single item on our wishlist, four bedrooms, two living areas, a bigger section, room to add value. And it’s only 450 metres from our old home, so we didn’t even really have to leave the neighbourhood we loved.
If there’s one thing this stage taught me, it’s that sometimes the house that seems like a long shot is actually the one meant for you. You just have to be willing to shoot your shot.
