Impulse buys and Real Estate

In a post from yesterday I told you about buying a Celtic harp at a resale store last week. It was an impulse buy but I'm certainly NOT unhappy that I bought it. I love it and I think it's just cool as all get-out! Most of the time impulse buys are not a good thing - despite the fact that, for most of us, an impulse buy is a $1 candy bar at the check-out; it's not a $45,000 house in need of massive repair!

This past weekend my husband and I got a wild hair and went looking at properties closer to downtown. We would like to be closer to the places we enjoy frequenting so we can do the "green" and "healthy" thing and walk. We found a listing for a house in a historic section of Dubuque - built in the 1880's, huge (2600+ sq/ft is huge to us, anyway), on a hill overlooking the city with the Mississippi in the distance, BIG yard, over 1000 square feet of enclosed porch alone - for $45,000. $45,000??? We just had to go see it!

This house needed MASSIVE repairs but the second we walked into the backyard we could see ourselves living there. We got really excited about it! Wow! $45,000 minus the money the city had available for rehab of older historic homes and some incentives for buying in certain neighborhoods - we could do this! We had redone our last house - refinished wood floors, ran new wiring, dry-walled, painted - heck, Dan had even taken out a 12 ft section of wall!

We schemed and planned - concerts in the backyard, art retreats on the beautiful porches, solar panels on the roof, lots of room for guests and family to stay, a view of the river. ...Cool...

So I called the realtor on Monday to set up a showing and, guess what?? The damn thing had sold and the closing had taken place that morning! "Well... sh**..." was my first reaction. Gone? To someone else? But we were going to have concerts and parties with tiki torches and wine and twinkle lights and everything!! How could you sell "our" house to someone else?? Can you guess what my next reaction was??

Pure relief.
(**insert big sigh here**)

Thank goodness someone else had bought that house. Otherwise, we would have - we would have made our offer of $35,000, they would have countered it with $36,000 (like they did for the actual buyer) and we would have bought it. Then , maybe, if we were really diligent and worked at it every day and, somehow, managed to come up with the money, in 10 years, possibly, we would have a showplace. A big, huge, massive carbon footprint showplace with twinkle lights and tiki torches. All I can say is "Whew! That was close!" and bring on the $1 candy bars!!