I’m not hung up on sq/ft at all, but I have a general idea of how much will be suitable for me. When I go to these places that are untruthfully listed, then it turns out to be just a waste of time. As in I never would have looked at a place with a master bedroom of 10 x 10 feet. And yes, it was an older place and the only thing signifying the bedroom as a master was the attached bathroom. Perhaps it was added sometime back but I don’t know.
Concerning the short sales and earnest money. I’ll bring that up to my Realtor. As it seems stupid to me to leave a good faith/earnest money for a bank that isn’t even going to respond for two months. My original idea was that if I found a SS I like, then make the offer and keep looking, that way in 9 months when I haven’t found anything, the SS may come back and I can close on it. That changed when I went to make my first offer on one and the listing agent took two days to get back to my agent with some excuse that he had a sub-agent who actually knew the property. Shady stuff like that just makes me run. Maybe I got discouraged to easily though.