Rustico. My Bay Area house sold in 5 days at 99% of asking. Packaged it right, priced it to market, and moved on.

Josh. The decision to buy was equal between my wife and I. Perhaps I wanted to wait longer, or buy a cheaper house that needed more work or was smaller, or liked Santaluz more than she, but I started this with a buying mentality. Personally, I could have rented for maybe a year or so, but after that I would have wanted to buy something. My wife wanted things a bit sooner, but in the end, if she had to, she would have waited a year as well. So we compromised. After all, we had been looking for a year and a half already by the time we bought, that is a lot to ask of a spouse to wait and wait and wait after looking at hundreds of homes.

Remember that I was the anal one on specs and price etc. She just wanted a place to live in in an area she fell in love with. She was picky, yes, but for the things that mattered to her. I was the one picky on price and other stats. Also, as I said in my posts, finding one house that you “both” love was a challenge, let alone one that you “both” love and that is priced right in a neighborhood that you “both” love. I am sure as single people we would have taken half as long to find a home. But that ain’t the point.

And the reason I come back for the occasional tidbit update is because I won’t forget the great help I got from folks on this site along the way.