Ugh, the housing search in the bay area right now is crazy. Every decent home gets caught up in a bidding war. After months and months of searching for anything worthwhile to consider, we put our first offer on one home in San Carlos, a cute two story 4b/2.5bath with a small but very nicely terraced backyard including some views. There ended up being only 4 offers, we put in a little over what our realtor recommended (still at 200K over List Price) but two other offers were 150K over our offer (yes, that is 350K over asking). Yeah, crazy town.
The next weekend I found this property and emailed it to Ahmad. He asked me not to toy with his emotions. We ended up not checking out the open house that weekend, however, we just could not stop thinking about the home. I emailed our realtor on Tuesday to see what her thoughts were on the home and to say I would really like to see it. She set up a showing at 2:30-3:00pm (others were coming in at 3:00pm with a structural engineer so we had to be done by 3pm). Upon arriving, I got goosebumps of excitement. We were hooked. We found out offers were due the next day by 2pm. Ahmad and I went home after work and ran the numbers. We assessed and assessed and assessed what kind of offer we were going to put in, slept on it and at 5am Thursday morning I wrote our realtor to say we were in, we were going to bid. Of course, any serious bid has to have no inspection/property or financial commitments (YIKES!). So, there you have it. We electronically signed all the paperwork by 1:30pm and the offer was into the sellers by 2pm. On our way home from work, Lisa our realtor called and said "is Ahmad with you... its yours. Your offer was the strongest!"
We later found out that 5 offers went in, 2 of which were "Sharp" offers... A sharp offer is one where you put in an offer but add that if there is another offer more than your offer, you will top the best offer with a % or $XK over the best offer. This apparently annoyed the sellers. Apparently, the other key to our winning was the personal letter we wrote (including pictures of Kai and the doggie, of course). It was easy to write as we just truly felt we found our dream home. While of course there is work we want to do to the house, the land and house is really unique ...!
STATS:
3b/3baths (2 master suites), 2,600 sqft, pool, artist cottage; 0.46 acres in Burlingame Hills, CA
We are close to work and the city. In a 5 minute drive we can park and have access to public transit into the city. We close on Aug. 2nd and we can not wait! Here are some pictures from the listing for you to enjoy!
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| Little 'Cottage' / office/ playhouse |
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| Side Garden |
