House shopping

Hi All,

Just wanted to give you a quick update on our house hunting adventures. In the past 1-2 months Mariah and I have seen at least 25-30 houses in all areas of Cincinnati. We've visited some of the roughest neighborhoods where house bargains are readily available and we've visited some of the nicest areas where the houses have a premium attached to them. Since the housing market is really bad at the moment in the U.S. because of the sub-prime mortgage disaster it is a buyers market, especially if you are a first-time buyer.

After all of this searching we have found two beautiful houses that we really like. Last Monday we decided to place an offer on the following house: 1301 Bursal St. We placed a really low-ball offer just to see what the sellers would do, not surprisingly, the sellers rejected the offer and asked for a much higher price. At this point we decided to walk away for a few days. On Monday we are going to place another offer on this house at a higher price. If the sellers continue to be difficult we will walk away and go to our number 2 option.

This has been quite the adventure for us. We've learned a lot about buying a house during the past few weeks. We'll post our learnings shortly, although they would only apply to the U.S.

Stay tuned...

In other news, Brock is no longer sick... no more Costco food for him. We weighed him on Friday and he is 35lbs.

Michael