House Search

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In early January, Arnon finally convinced me that the time had come to buy a house. He's been wanting a house because he's tired of dealing with unresponsive property managers at the complex we live in. Plus we received notice in December that our rent will increase from $1576 to $2548 in early March.

So Lea, Arnon's mom, introduced us to Chaya, a realtor who was a colonel in the Israeli Defense Force until a few years ago. We were assured that she would be efficient, aggressive, punctual, and highly responsive, and she was.

We met up with Chaya two Saturdays ago and saw twenty houses in Sunnyvale and Santa Clara. The following day, we made an offer on a house but didn't get it.

Last Saturday, we saw thirteen more houses and decided that we liked two of them. We were going to bid on both houses but Lea really loved only one of them, so we decided to forget the other one.

There was an open house scheduled for the next day and Lea was worried that there would be a lot of competition, so she suggested that Chaya contact the seller's realtor immediately to place an early offer. As we were standing in front of the house discussing this, the seller's realtor pulled into the driveway and we were able to talk with her right away. What luck!

That night, we submitted a formal offer, which the seller accepted the next morning, prompting her to cancel the open house.

On Monday, which thankfully was a holiday for us, we spent the day getting the house inspection taken care of and secured financing. We also spent some time with Lea and Arye (Arnon's dad) to talk about repairs and upgrades we need to make to the house.

So as of today, we're just passing time until escrow closes on February 5th and we get the keys to our new home. I can't believe that it's only been five days since we first saw the house. Arye was afraid that we were being too impatient, but when he saw the house, he knew it was right for us.

I'm so grateful to Chaya and Lea for all the hours they spent helping us with our house search.